Ok, I admit that I am not much of a gamer these days. I was never much of a computer gamer - my reflexes are too slow for shoot 'em ups and long adventure games just don't interest me anymore. Trying to scrape up people for a role playing or a board game is tough. I was dabbling in collectable card games, but at the time it was almost a full time job just to keep up with everything just in Magic:The Gathering. Not sure if that has changed.
I finally got around to listening to this talk. Even though I am not much into gaming today, a lot of what Wil talked about in his gaming life mirrored my own life path. Gaming, for me, was a huge socializing experience. Could have been playing Space Invaders after our bowling league, sitting around playing various games on the Atari 2600, hacking & slashing our way through the latest D&D module or sitting around playing a huge multi-player M:TG game. Who won or lost was never important. Well, at least not after 5 minutes :). It was social. We spent more time talking, eating & drinking than playing sometimes. And that was OK.
He concludes the post with some advice for online gamers, but goes for everyone:
One of the core messages of my speech was "don't be a dick" when you play games online, and a lot of people told me how glad they were to hear that. I think I may just go ahead and make it my new motto:
Wil Says, "Don't be a dick!"
