A Milestone of Sorts…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 4, 2013

Today (well, tomorrow as I write this), my eldest daughter graduates from high school.

This boggles my mind. But then, when we decided to have her, I wasn’t yet out of college. Yeah, I know, shock. These days the tendency is to wait until both parents are well-established in their careers before having kids. We had her only two months into the beginning of mine.  It was a little bit of a leap of faith.

I was working on Warhawk and Twisted Metal by day (we hadn’t yet gotten into the uber-crunch mode), coming home to spend a couple of hours with my wife, and then she’d sleep and I’d be in charge of taking care of my daughter.  Within a couple of months, as she was sleeping slightly more regularly, I’d play games on the computer not far from her cradle. For the next few hours, when she woke up, she was my responsibility. After that, I’d crash for four or five hours, then get up and get ready to catch the bus to work. It was rough.

In some ways, I mark the passage of time by the games I was playing. Yeah, it’s kinda weird, but everything else was kind of a blur. Without looking them up, I couldn’t really tell you what the hit songs were at the time, or what was popular on TV.  But in those few waking hours I had in the evening, I gamed. And those are what I remember.  Some people have soundtracks for their life. I’ve got videogames.

What I played in those late, occasionally quiet hours included the original X-Com, and Epic Pinball.  At least those are what stand out in my mind.  Oh, and Wing Commander III. And Wing Commander Armada (which wasn’t so great).  Doom 2… which I actually didn’t play too much, because even with the sound turned way down, I felt a little weird subjecting my infant daughter to all those monstrous noises (though apparently they were fine in X-Com).

I remember with some amusement how, after being *so* excited for each installment of Wing Commander (including the spin-offs), the arrival of WC3 was much less of an event for me. At the time, I blamed it on some lackluster spin-offs that had dampened my enthusiasm. But in hindsight, I think it’s pretty clear: I’d just had my first child child, and I was in up to my neck in my “dream job” of making video games myself. What game could compare to that?

Weird what you remember, huh?

Weirder still to be on this side of it all. I can’t really say I don’t know where the time went, because it’s been a very, very eventful 18 years.  But it’s still hard to believe.

As a graduation gift this week, we gave my daughter a new laptop. You know, for when she goes to college herself, in the fall. It is for taking notes, writing papers, doing research, and… yeah, entertainment.

Her eyes lit up. Her (nearly) first words were, “It will run Minecraft, can’t it?”

The cycle continues…

 

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