Grunchy
Rich   Calgary, Alberta, Canada
 
 
In my 4th decade as a Gamer
In the 70's we had Pong. Then came the Atari 2600 and video game arcades. Then I got my first PC in 1981 which used the BASIC (Beginner's All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) Programming Language. The 8-bit Commodore Vic20 had a whopping 1.02 MHz CPU, 3583 free bytes of RAM, 8 colors and 8x8-pixel characters, a display size of 22x23 chars. and the 1530 Datasette Tape Drive. (Cassette tape storage with a read/write speed of 50 bps and potentially but not really 90k storage on one side of a 30-minute tape). Umm, that's 30 minutes to read not even 90k of data if you have no read errors. Rewinding a cassette tape and starting over takes, well, time. Then came the 8-bit Commodore 64 "I adore my 64, my Commodore 64!" with a 3 MHz CPU, 38911 free bytes of RAM, 16 colors and 8x8-pixel characters, display size of 40x25 chars. and the 1541 Floppy Disk Drive (5 1/4" floppy disk storage with a read/write speed of up to 300 bps and 170k capacity. My avatar is the crazy dude from the C-64 game "Asylum". From 50 bps to millions of bps, wirelessly!! in 30 years. Now we have 8k HDTV, virtual reality and can watch 1080p TV and access the internet on our cell phones. And now we're on the cusp of colonizing other planets. The future, if there will be any, is going to be outrageously amazing. Just because I've been playing video games for almost 4 decades don't mean I'm any good at them but I sure as hell enjoy them and always will. Long live Steam!