In 1999, my brother in law sent me a copy of Quake 2.
I knew about online FPS in theory, but didn’t really have the ability to take part. I was on a 56k dialup modem and, because of my job at the time, my computer was a Mac. But Quake 2 worked on a Mac. And, after slogging through the single player of experience of getting lost, finding keys, putting keys into doors only to find out it was the wrong key, then walking around getting lost some more, I gave up on the single player experience and tried to find out if multiplayer would work on dialup.
Oh yes it does.
And then as it happened, the company I was working for stopped paying me money, and I decided it was no longer worth it to design things for them for promises of future money that never actually came, and so I was unemployed. Unemployed and I just recently discovered that I can play Quake 2 online whenever I wanted.
So, I spent about a year playing Quake 2. A lot. I picked up the odd freelance job to keep myself in cigarettes, flaked on bills which forced my roommate to pick up the slack, and when things got worse than that, I’d hit up my family for loans and we’d both try to ignore the the fact that the word “loan” was absurd. I’d try to devise scenarios in which they’d see their money back, and they’d nod and acquiesce to these fantasies, because neither of us would own up to the concept that I was an unemployed loser and would continue to be so. I spent every day living under crushing, humiliating poverty that kept getting worse, because the work I was doing wasn’t anywhere nearly enough. I was living at a deficit, waking up poorer than I was when I went to sleep, because I’m gonna need to eat at some point today and where the fuck is that money gonna come from? I lived every day depressed and alone, feeling victimized by the world for putting me in this position. There’s all these things I could be doing, but I’m not doing any of them. I’m in the bedroom of my apartment playing Quake 2.
I had a matchmaking program and a list of a few dozen servers that I liked, and I knew most of the regulars on those server. I knew their playstyle and whatever bits of personality they invented for internet use. We all had our manufactured personalities, cobbled together from bullshit. and we hung out together shooting each other with railguns and pretending we’re all friends.
The comforting thing about communities like this is also their biggest problem. If you were just a piece of shit playing Tetris all day every day, you’d have more opportunities where you’d be forced to look at the world around you and realize nobody else is doing that. Other people play Tetris, but other people go for walks now and then. But if you’re playing online, there’s other people out there that are also playing online, and it’s guaranteed somebody out there is more fucked up than you are. I mean, okay sure, I played Q2CTF3 for four hours straight yesterday, but it was a team CTF game that we planned. And we had to have a couple warmup matches before the real match, and then, you know, we played a couple DM matches afterwards because we needed to let off steam. But then this one guy went through and played Q2CTF4 right after that for another four hours just to learn the attack vectors better. That guy is a fucking psychopath. I will never be that bad.
So it was a combination of desperation, opportunity, and the illusion of community that kept me playing Quake 2 for a year straight. I never joined a clan (because clans are for loonies, and I’m just playing this game every now and then for fun), and I never even got that good at the game. I liked the tactics of the game, especially in Capture the Flag mode, but I just didn’t have the reflexes to dominate the servers like other people would. And even if I started taking PCP to make me a better Quake player, I was still hampered by my connection. Sure, playing game on dialup was a possibility, but I was still coming from a disadvantage because of my ping, and the fact that I was playing on an iMac, so even in the confines of this stupid thing I was doing, I wasn’t achieving there either.
I was on a mod team. Our mod was stupid. It was a regular team deathmatch, except there were these two mechs that would spawn somewhere in the map. If you jumped inside a mech, you’d be on the Mech Team, and get all sorts of weapons and be a lot more powerful than the other players, but now all the other players (the Human Team) want to kill you and steal your mech. I don’t think we ever actually named the mod, so I think it was distributed as something creative like “Quake 2 Mech Team Deathmatch” or somesuch. I just did a quick search and I couldn’t find it. There were two servers (where I “knew” the admins) that were running the mod, but those servers were unpopular because nobody wanted to download a stupid mod just to play the game. Everyone involved in the mod fought all the time because everyone thought they were the project manager, so there were lots of conversations about “Wouldn’t it be cool if…” followed by “[someone else] could make that no problem” followed by “Why hasn’t that person implemented my really cool idea he is a lazy shithead.” On it went. We were mired in bullshit office politics despite the fact that none of us were in the same office, nor were were getting paid, nor did we have any idea who any of these other people were.
For the telling of this story, it would be lovely if there was some dramatic moment that stopped me from playing Quake2, and if I could come up with a fake one that sounded good I’d tell it right now, but there was no moment of realization where I uninstalled the fucking thing and spent the following year of my life lecturing young people like myself on the dangers of getting wrapped up in this bullshit, but I didn’t even stop playing all at once. I just played a lot less until I wasn’t playing it at all. I ended up getting a stupid retail job that I hated and thought was beneath me. Everyone was an idiot and I was frustrated that I wasn’t making any friends. I was still alone, and still knew I was wasting my life, but on the upside I had enough money to buy food. I could pay my rent and I could buy different video games that I would play for a while and then stop.
Gradually, things got better.
A couple years ago, the id pack was for sale really cheap on Steam. I bought it and, because Quake 2 was part of the pack, I installed Quake 2. Spent about an hour fucking with the config settings and trying to join a game of CTF. My connection was considerably better than it used to be, but not having played the game for over a decade, I was getting fucking ruined. I’d never see the guy who shot me, just spawn and die, spawn and die. I spent about 10 minutes running around the map and picking up guns and ammo, bringing it back to our base so the good players would be well equipped when they respawn, then I thought that instead of doing that, I could be doing something I liked. So I uninstalled the game, and left those terrific players to pick up their own gear.
Maybe some day things will get better for those guys too.
