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Blog Thingy 04 : A "Game" Changer
🕑 Added 2017-08-18 20:43:37 +0000 UTCBeen a while after the last blog. I just focused on working the rewards out and had some rough days within the past week so I wasn't in the mood of writing fun things but I kinda need it now myself after all that.
Last time we talked about childhood games, and I promised to talk more about a certain game from that, and here we are, Warcraft III.
I could call this the game that changed my life. Well, how I view life actually, and I will explain why it changed my perspective completely on things and it's the beginning of my "creator" path. This game forged me into an artist by giving me nothing relatable to drawing. Strange, but you will see how.
I was a big Blizzard fan back in the day. I still am, but far less invested into playing games as you know why. I mostly spent my highschool days playing games, and playing games is considered a cool thing to do for anyone in my country. I know it's considered geeky or nerdy in Western cultures, but as teenagers in Asian country, it's different here. Every teenagers I know play games of some sort no matter which genders, and you guess the era of the game genre, DotA was a big thing back in my highschool - early college years.
So every kids on the street knows how to play DotA. They would have to find a gaming center/shop to learn how to play it if they don't own a computer. If they don't know how to play that, they're screwed on making friends, or at least they'd have to find some game else trending to play or they will really could be considered that weird kid, and I'm not over exaggerating this. You would know this is real if you share the same childhood with me.
I was surprised learning the pop culture of the Westerners considering gaming kids as losers. We all went like wtf? Playing games are cool as shit! If you're from a Western cultures and found this really strange, I'll have you know we found yours different, too lol
But I was a bit different. My father got me into RTS and strategy games really early so I was way familiar and into Warcraft, Starcraft, C&C, KKND, Age of Empires, etc. before the DotA wave strikes so as much as I love DotA as a MOBA game, my attention brought me into the deeper side of Warcraft III, the World Editor.
If you're new to this, all of Blizzard's RTS games come with a mod/editor of their own which allow players the make entire whole map/mod from scratch. It's a game changer, and a life changer to me.
I dived into World Editor's community and spent days, months, and years learning about making maps. There wasn't that many people into map editing and stuffs in Thailand, and my English wasn't decent enough at the time so I kinda missed out the opportunity for joining the English speakers' community but that's ok. We have like 20-30 people constantly playing custom maps and enjoyed our days just doing that. I'm glad DotA brought people's attention back into WCIII again. I made soooo many maps. Some of them were seriously planned out and some just for the sake of luls but we enjoyed every bit of it. I could say it's the most precious moment of my teenager years. We were such a tiny community, but all of us really had fun time.
Too bad I searched my parents' house's computers and the files were already gone since it was so long ago, but I just found out after all these years, there are still people playing one of my unfinished masterpiece of a MOBA map called Swords and Scepters I made since 2007 and that is freaking awesome. I cried a little knowing that it still exists...
Here is the map's download link on Hiveworkshop.com if you happened to want to check that out. My name was Tempopopoback in the gaming days ► https://www.hiveworkshop.com/threads/swords-and-scepters-v-2-44.81391/
You might be at this point confused how this is related to my artist career at all.
The thing is, after spending my days on World Editor and WCIII in general for 4-5 good years, I came to realize that I have spent 80% of the time playing the game on World Editor and having fun just watching the others' replays of the maps I made. I hardly even played my own maps due to the amount of time provided.
It made me realized that I had so much fun as a creator. Even more fun than playing the games themselves. The moment of me seeing people enjoying what I made, giving critics, recommending them to the others, and seeing the amount of people joining the community because of this tiny thing I made bit by bit, was the moment of bliss. I would not find that kind of joy anywhere if I have not spent time creating those maps, and I found myself having fewer good times playing them myself. It was more enjoyable seeing the others playing them.
That totally blew my mind, and changed how I viewed myself. I found out that I found way more happiness being the one creating things then being the consumer.
Since then, even after the whole community was gone as WCIII is not played anymore during these days, I always look back to those moments that crafted me as a whole. Because of that moment, I made up my mind that whatever I do as a career in the future, it would have to be related to creating stuffs, not just a job that involves doing what routines said. I would rather die to take that kind of job for a living.
That idea sparked my Patreon career as I somewhat ended up getting into a job that involved drawing as a routine and had no freedom of creativity almost at all (which I might also talk about that another day). Without WCIII and the World Editor community, I would no way have realized such mindset that developed the whole me today.
Sorry for such a long and almost unrelated to drawing topic today. If you guys managed to finish reading the whole nonsense, kudos to you!
Ya'll have great days.
Comments
Fuya
Yeah, the Asian parents steriotype is true after all lol oh well it's good we can now play game as much as we want, if we have time for it, that is.
Densetsu Meru
Being an Asian in the West, I got the 'stop playing so many damn games and study harder' card instead. So I was a geek/nerd but it was frowned upon just for a different reason. That said, I'm still playing games now so I don't care what my parents think, lol.
Fuya
I remember spending weeks just reading the lore of WC and WoW on the wiki. Too bad I didn't play WoW due to the monthly registration payment which I couldn't afford back in the days and I also didn't have credit not debit card, but yeah, WC lore also gave me the whole new world of fantasy stories and myths. It's the best, even better than the LotR world setting, or any fantasy setting around I must say.
Fuya
I think today's most played MOBA would be DotA2 and LoL since they're free and has lots of player base. They are popular, but not like the game of town like back in the days probably because there are so many competitors now, and you seem to have a similar highschool years as me talking about students ditching schools to play games at internet/gaming cafe lol. Yeah CS was also a huge thing, and probably Ragnarok Online too in my country. I just wish I have more time to play games.
Fuya
In a Western country, that's pretty unusual, or may be not? I don't even know if the steriotype I got was true lol
Fuya
C&C was really fun with friends, too! I'm lucky to have a gamer dad so we had at least 2 computers with games on them so I could have a LAN battle against my brother or a visiting friend anytime.
Chordat
Warcraft 3 was the second RTS I ever played, and the first work of fiction to introduce me to high fantasy tropes - paladins, elves, orcs, dwarves, magic and polytheism, etc etc. Hell, a lot of fictional tropes in general, especially the tragic hero archetype in Arthas and Illidan. Blizzard's Azeroth shaped my initial perception of fantasy and fiction in general, and it'll always have a special place in my shrivelled black heart. It also inspired my fondness for hammy acting. :D TREMBLE, MORTALS, AND DESPAIR! DOOM HAS COME TO YOUR WORLD!
Mars in the Sky
Heya Fuya, first time posting on your blog but have been reading your blogs for quite a bit. DOTA and LoL was a thing (probably still is) through middle school and high school here. There's also CS: Source as well in which lots of the students back then would ditch classes to play it at a nearby internet cafe. It definitely does affect your social status in a way since people would be talking about games most of the time. I do enjoy the times when people would come together in a group and host mini-tournaments where the prize is mainly bragging rights, where both spectators and players would go ape shit when things go down. I can't say that video games have changed my life directly nor have they influenced me to get to where I am right now. But it is through video games that I get to meet all sorts of people, good and bad, and I definitely don't regret letting video games into my life. I wish I could be playing some of the new and trending games now but I never would have thought that real life stuff would take up so much of my time.
Inquisitor
Gaming definitely wasn't a 'geek' thing to do when I was growing up (In a Western country), pretty much every male played games. Though it was about 99% males in my school, which I always though was a bit weird.
pengin senshi
Thank you for your origin story! I played a bit of Warcraft 1 when that came out, but I didn't own II or III so I missed out; I was playing a lot of Command & Conquer: Red Alert, though!
