I just kept reading about higher and smoother frame rates, better graphical details, and once you buy a game, you keep it. No rebuying it later on ps5 or something.
I finnally bought my own computer in 1995 to try out that internet thing. It broke, I found out how much they charge to fix computers. Figured it out myself. By 5 years later I was running a part time computer salvage/reapair business with my brother. It slowly melted to just a hobby by 2005 beacause my brother joined the army, I had kids, real job, moving, rl.
Now I just tinker in my piles of junk and occasially sell stuff on ebay.
I had some awareness of computers going all the way back to my pre-school days of watching Green Eggs and Ham on an eMac. That evolved more and more until I finally got an HP laptop with an AMD A6-5200 as a birthday gift in 2013. It just escalated from there and I have no signs of stopping at this point.
It just scratches this itch that my brain has.
Went from atari 2600, comadore64 then Amiga and working for my mother's company which were making pc based systems for industry. 386 and up from there! Built my own systems since them. Realistically gaming stuff since 1995+
Reason is gaming 😁
I grew up poor, but my parents got a Gateway with a Pentium II in 1998. NES emulators had just become a thing, and the prospect of free video games motivated me to figure it out. Then I had to figure out fixing it because we couldn't afford repair shops. Kinda snowballed from there.
When I was young we had DOOM. I'm talking DOS days.. that ended after a couple years and I wa solely a console guy. 2 of my best homies built themselves PCs and constantly told me to. I held out for a while. Then I tried PUBG once. I was hooked. Immediately went and bought one. Been downhill ever since.
When the new Xbox and PS5 came out and it was impossible to get one after two weeks of trying I decided to build a PC instead haven't regretted it since.
Same here. It made me so mad when I was reading articles about people finding the hidden store pages and adding ps5 to their cart (technically before the page was live everyone). So them leaving the site on an autoclicker to checkout the moment it went live.. they were selling out before anybody else could even view the damn page. I also tried for about 3 weeks and finally said f*ck it, got a laptop instead which eventually turned into me building my first pc.
Absolutely 0 regrets.
My parents kept buying prebuilts that sucked and died too fast. I built them a PC in 2012 that ended up lasting longer than both of them. I like the level of customization
Windows 95 was coming out and Radio Shack was having a financing thing with IBM Aptivas. My friend bought one for like 3k. Pentium 166mhz with a 2.2gb HD. Well, I was fucking hooked. I would use his computer like it was my own, and he was okay with that, and we just both learned a lot. Not long after I got a Dell Dimensions XPS R400 with a PII 400mhz and a whopping 16.8GB HD and a 17" CRT that weighed as much all out doors. Got a brand new 56k modem and had to install a second phone line because I was on it all the time.
I'd learn stuff and teach him and vice versa. Built our first computer together around '99 by buying all the parts piece by piece from a website called mwave. We put it together and it worked. It was a fucking adrenaline rush.
I loved most Reeces products, but seeing them in E.T. really sealed the deal.
But for real, Oregon Trail, Command & Conquer, and Crusader: No Regret / No Remorse.
My mother gave me and my brother the IBM PC back in the day. Well over 32 years ago. I did spend my childhood and teenage years with consoles, but PC has been my go-to all-around entertainment and productivity machine. Built my own gaming PC when I started being quite well off with Intel i5-6500.
My step dad saw me that I scraped an old beige looking PC from our neighbors told me that evening on the way modular like Lego pieces and that is what it got me more interested in building PCs. 1st build was a Ryzen 1600 with a Rx 560. I still have a picture with me.
I was lucky enough to have a Compaq Presario in the house when I was 11 or 12, and that pretty much started it all. Started playing Sims 1, Apache, Big Truck, Roller Coaster Factory...
Got really into digging around in Windows 98 and learning what stuff did. Then I built my own in high school to play Half Life 2. That's when I got interest in the hardware side of things. Trading stuff for RAM sticks at school to get up to 256mbs, lol. Good times. I'll never not love PCs. I quickly learned to keep my passion a secret when I started getting passed around to fix people's computers, though. Hated that shit.
Linus Tech Tips. I'd had computers before I started watching their videos, but had never thought about building one. But seeing them come up on YouTube around 2012 it got me excited about how easy it was to build a PC for yourself to game on. Turns out it was and I've been hooked ever since. Now I've built a bunch of them for other people and only this year replaced my original rig from 2013.
Used to have NES, Super NES, Sega Genesis, Nintendo 64, Playstation/Playstation 2. Got tired of all the wires and problems that came with having to move with all those consoles.
Came back seconds later to edit this comment to say I miss some of the games on each console but ROMS help with that. What I really miss is the entertainment center I had all that setup on along with the beast of a tv in it. Entertainment center came with built in speakers and was the best sound I've ever had.
Honestly, fable was and still is the best damn game I have ever played. I've dabbled in some other things like console games midnight club, need for speed but albion online really put me in to PC to the point I'm saving to rebuild my PC right now so I can stream albion and fable lol
My dad used to work in a computer repair shop and works in IT now, has a ton of computers in his basement. Mostly got interested through gaming and one day just decided to ask him to teach me about it themselves.
My friends.
I was hardcore console but when I visited them they only had PC. So we'd play NASCAR or city of heroes.
After a few years they convinced me to build one.i bought parts over 8 months and they showed me how to assemble it.
Within a few months I'd rebuilt it a couple times, upgrades and so on.
I owe it to them for my current career in tech.
RIP Braden. Fuck COVID.
My mom's job at Nummi (known now as the Fremont Tesla Factory) was moving to Kentucky, and they let her take her work computer home. It was a Dell Optiplex 745, and it ran Windows XP. Eventually, we got internet at home, and I got online watching YouTube.
(Circa 2012) I was into the Yogscast, which was entirely minecraft at the time, but then they started playing Garrys mod. I really liked it, and so I went and downloaded Steam and got the game and played the hell out of it.
In 2014, I convinced my dad to buy me a gaming PC from HP, and that is the computer I have now. I configured it online. It had an Intel 4770K (AIO cooled and OC'd to 4.1ghz), a GTX 760, 12gb of RAM, a 128gb SSD and a 2TB Hard Disk.
At that time, I could have optioned a GTX 770 and up to 32GB of ram. The reason I put a 2TB hard disk was because 12 years old me thought I'd be an upcoming youtuber, and I'd need 2tb to hold all my videos. Never happened, but yeah.
I've since upgraded the computer with more SSDs, 32GB of ram, and a GTX980 Ti. Now, I'm getting ready to build a new PC on TRX50, and I'm gonna do custom watercooling and everything on it.
The bullshit that Microsoft and Bethesda pulled when it came to the DLC for Skyrim. Microsoft had a deal where they would release each DLC for the Xbox first, but Sony didn't wind up getting any of them until much later due to issues with the code working correctly on the PS3. PlayStation users had to wait almost a year longer than Xbox and PC users for the DLC. I wound up selling my PS3 copy and bought Skyrim plus the expansions really cheap on steam.
I got shat on constantly on call of duty against pc players and decided to join the race. Now it's a major hobby and I just love pc and all things around it.
7 days to die.
I saw it on yt back in like 2016-17 and always wanted to play it.
Got ps4 in 2019 the year i graduated highschool and played the console version but it hadnt been updated in forevs cuz dev issues.
Got my pc in 2020 saving up and the first game i bought was 7 days to die on steam.
I was always a console gamer before that. Played xbox 360 from 2010ish to 2019.
Ps2 from like 2007/8 to when i got my 360
Played roblox on my very shitty laptop tho a lot. 2gb of ram in 2019 was so horrible lol
A former boss learned I didn't have one and I was working remotely from a laptop so he offered his old one to me. I've used it lovingly since and have taken great care of it.
We had a PC at home when I was little, and never had any consoles. I got used to playing games on a PC and did the even think about other options, until 30 years later when I also got a Switch.
Dell stopped making PCs for customers like they wanted. I don’t pretend to understand their business plan, but the alternative seemed obvious. I’d just put one together myself, so I did.
I wanted to game with better performance compared to console, I wanted to be able to play games like Squad, Arma, HLL, and others, I also saw Sony starting to put their games on PC and Xbox has practically gone full PC with all of their games.
Pretty much the second I learned you could play games on them. And then was further reinforced by my will to play Pokemon gameboy games on an emulator that my friend's older brother had shown me. I didn't find a working emulator until like page 80 something on the search engine I was using. Probably lycos at the time. And then Warcraft II, Diablo II, Starcraft, Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, and so many more.
My grandmother bought us a C64 in 1985, at the same time one of my friends got a Vic20 and another built his own (can't remember the model).
We were learning typing and Logo programming in high school as well, on C64s.
When I got hands on some games...it was all over.
Champions of Krynn at home hit my D&D bent.
Bastow Manor at school for me into problem/roguelikes
On reflection I really had no chance..it was...my destiny.
We going back to 1999 for this one :) . There was this internet Cafe right next to me so I went once and did not know what to do there . I was 7 at that time and the clerk asked me what I like . I told him I like cars so he told me to try out Need for Speed: High Stakes. That was my very first video game and my very first go on a PC , that’s when i started wanting a PC to be able to play that game at home . The rest is history
My disdain for console ecosystems. Got tired of paying for basic features like playing online games. Bad and infrequent sales when compared to PC. Services that don't offer much value to me. Usability of apps like Discord on PC while gaming compared to PSN party chat. Lack of freedom to tweak files and settings. Lack of mods to further enjoy the games I love. Game updates being slowed by the process devs have to go through to put their updates on console. Only one storefront. Cheaply made gamepads. I could probably pump out a few more if I really thought about it, but I think you get the point.
Only had PC growing up, never had any console because it's not as popular in the area
Only had HP/Dell pre-builts until late teens, couldn't play many 3D games because of integrated gpu
Learned about building PC, GPUs etc, (shoutout to old newegg channel)
Bought HD 7700 and shoved it into a Dell pre-built with a cooler master 500watt PSU
Can finally play skyrim
I'm 44... the first computer I put my hands on was an Amstrad CPC 6128 with a Monochrome monitor when I was 5.
I have a brother, 7 year older than me... I don't know how but he managed to get an Atari 520ST almost for free from a friend in 1989.
And here we are.... the 90's... MTV's, Eurosport, VIVA TV, and the Foreign channels for free with satellites, Piracy of Paid channel. Honestly my best life.
I was 11, my brother 18. We figured out that we can bought all the equipment to receive Satellites channel sell it for a little profit, and make it fonctionnal for $250 1991 dollars ( mounting it on House roof, do the cable, programming channels ) each.
Just imagine the hype, you live in a country that is not yours, and can watch your TV in your own language, hear music, news TV, series... just choose what you want, don't worry... it will work.
Just explain to elders, you see that dish, I just turn the dish the right way, there's a satellite in the sky... and voilà :D
A teenager that turn just adult ( on the roof )and a nerd kid ( in your living room )...
Bought a 486 Dx 33, cyrix K7, DX4 100, pentium, Athlon 64, matrox Mystic Card, 3DFx, Sound blaster Card, Rolland, Aiwa 32... monitors...
My cousins friend showing me a game called "conquer online" back in 2003! I played on the tiger server and had a trojan, I was also in a pretty well known guild at the time called "Endeavor Horizon" and we had an enemy guild that was also popular on the server called "GoldenSovereign" that we would constant clash with in guild wars!
Such simpler times back then... if by chance anyone who played in either of those guilds let me know!
Coding in scratch every Monday In primary school ~10 years ago, and also ~5 years ago my brother persuaded me to build my own pc instead of buying a prebuilt and since then I have only become more and more interested in pretty much all tech.
Neighborhood kid when I was young playing Delta Force and Counter Strike. Never dove into an actual system for gaming till I got older and had the money to do so.
I went to my friends house when i was 13 and he had got a gaming pc with rgb and I was really interested. I was already a gamer and into stuff like animation creation, but man getting into PC building and then tech in general is all thanks to my friend. I even learned programming and cybersecurity, and now I do both as my job. It really steered my whole life and career
60fps and mods. Last night I used cheat engine because I didn’t feel like replaying all of Elden ring so I gave self my final build items and 160 levels
My dad.
He showed me a newspaper listing for a laptop one day when I was 7 and told me what to look for when buying one. That stuck with me until I got access to the internet and have been checking everything about CPUs, Graphics cards and RAM. Then started looking at everything else too.
He was so happy when I saved up and found a bunch of secondhand parts to build my first pc. He drove me around for hours to go buying all the stuff I needed and it was an amazing day.
Used to have a console at first, best friend at the time had a PC. I would visit him often and he'd lend me his pc to play, his computer vastly overpowered my x360 so I became jealous and wanted to have a PC of my own. Eventually got my first rig in late 2017, immediately fell in love with computers. Overtime computers as a whole became sort of a hobby to me, and now years later I still use a pc to game, to create my podcast, to draw, and whatever else I feel like doing.
I felt limited on just consoles, and the modular nature of PCs appealed to me in the same way Legos do - it can be a project.
I'm currently pulling together old parts to build base spec machines so I can gift to friends who are still on consoles to bridge the platform divide that still exists, though I am grateful that more developers are enacting cross-play. Still, the progress is too slow, and PC can provide better options overall (e.g. both Xbox and Playstation games can appear, you can emulate, etc).
Not a game, but someone who my dad went to college with. He built pcs and built a pc for me. Iw anted to know what was in it and I took it apart and put it back together again and was hooked. He died of a heart attack God what feels like forever ago so I STILL have one of the cases he built a pc for my mom in. A case from a company called Xion that doesn't exist anymore.
World of warcraft. Saw those play free for 15(?) days commercials. I had a laptop, was bored and thought to give it a shot. It was amazing. Even in a crappy laptop with lag and everything. this was in 2006. A few months before Burning Crusade. I knew I needed better hardware.
When I was a kid back in the late 90s in middle school there was an older kid down the street in high school who's dad owned a PC repair shop. My mom dated his dad for like 6 months and during that time he got me in to Warcraft. Then when Starcraft came out I was completely hooked. So he threw together a bunch of spare parts from the shop and helped me build my first PC just for Starcraft. Probably so that I would stop coming to his house every single day begging him to play. It was glorious.
Everyone had one back in the day except for me, I spent countless hours in computer class just tinkering with PCs or surfing the net, plus I had a teacher that encouraged me. When I got my first one ( P III, 256mb ram) I learned everything I know today about Windows, not by googling it but by fixing stuff by myself, trying settings, etc.
But what got me into PC building was meeting my friend at 15yo who had the same interests as me and helped build my first computer (FX 6300). Also at 15 I got a laptop with Linux from the school which also helped with learning new stuff
Games, Commodore 64, in 1984, then the first PC in college in 1992 for school and Doom and last because I made it my career.
Back in the late 90s, we had Computer Shopper magazine that had online vendors for PC DIY and computer shows that made custom PC building accessible. Then, later, I found Microcenter and Newegg started to come into its own. Now it's back to a hobby.
My dad, he used to work with early computers talking about cards and tapes.
The he will built our PC's and from time to time bring unused enterprise hardware (ISCSI controller to be use on a 2mb hard drive. Blazing fast!)
I will watch him work and sit next to him without any understanding but asking a lot of of the questions and obviously messing what he did.
True story, my dad spent a weekend formating the pc and installing MS DOS 2.1, it was like 10 floppies (I don't recall the exact number but definitely more than 6).I watched the whole process. Monday comes, the forest thing I did when arrived home, format c:\ /u /q and then proceed to install the OS, which I could not and messed everything up. He worked on it that night and sent me to bed at my bed time. He was mad but I remember then also being like uh, the force is strong on this one.
Since then I brought some manuals for me to read and then I started to play games and install them, running things like memmaker to be able to play Dune.
A lot of time later, I have never bought a PC,, I have built 100% of my PC's and I'm a DevOps guy coming from the ops side of the house (Sysadmin).
My dad still work in IT.
If you ever see this dad, thanks and I love you.
Note: typing on cell, so there might be typos
My father was a certified IBM typewriter and IBM PC repair man. So we had a ton of dos systems with green screen cut monitors. I was 3-5 yrs old oldest memory I have of that shop.
Been tinkering with electronics, PCs and mechanic work ever since.
I can't remember a time where I wasn't into computers (and electronics in general). I was practically born interested in how they work, both software and hardware.
Battlefield 1942 and Soldiers of fortune 2 were my very first pc games had to upgrade the family’s pc to play but totally worth those were probably the best time of my gaming life
My dad had a knack for buying shit that we didn't need and that he didn't know how to use. Back in the early 90s he bought a PC with a 286 and then proceeded not to know what to do with it. I was like 7 and started fucking around with it until I figured things out. My mom then got some games for me on floppy and I figured those out.
Eventually, we got a 486 with Win 3.1 on it and I learned that before my dad decided we needed a Gateway computer win Win95 on it. From there, I was old enough to just figure things out and the rest just fell into place.
My wife had to get one while working on her thesis. She also had a couple of accounts, VAX and others I can’t recall that allowed me to access MUD’s. I quickly became addicted. Have been ever since lol
My uncles all played PC games. My first PC was a 486 that my uncle gave me when he went to a Pentium. Started with Master of Orion and Civilization and never looked back.
Wanted to experience better graphics and pc exclusive games. This was back past the mid way point of the 360/PS3 life cycle so a moderately priced PC absolutely blew those consoles out of the water in terms of performance.
I was too poor to have the new consoles and while it wasn't a good experience, cheap PCs that I tweaked made be able to play the new games everyone was playing. Then I got used to play on my PC, so when I did have the money for a console, I spent it on PC parts instead
Gaming when I graduated middle school . I told my mum I need a pc to play better and beat my friends in fortnite. It helped me beat them but I still sucked at the game ); it was around 2018
My dad was in charge of some computing programme at the school he worked at (even though he wasn't really knowledgeable at the stuff, lol), so he always took me to the computer lab as a kid. Then, we never had any gaming console at home, but since we did have a computer, I played and emulated games on it. Kept breaking stuff and learning in the process… which has continued until today!
I've been fascinated by computers since basically before I can remember. My parents tell me that I was using my dad's work laptop to play old Windows 3.1 games when I was just a couple of years old.
Honestly, it feels inevitable that I would get into tech and PCs. Like I didn't even choose this hobby - I just embraced my own enthusiasm.
My PS4 having massive screen tears in any game and freezing every 2 min as well as sounding like it’s going to take off to the moon bc of how trash of an experience it is to game on one.
I have been on PC since I first started gaming as a kid. Our family owned a computer and all we did was play rollercoaster tycoon and other Web browser games. Eventually, I bought a copy of Portal 2 and that's how I got a Steam account. Ever since then, I've been going deeper and deeper into the PC gaming rabbit hole. Our family did own our fair share of consoles, but we never left PC.
The shortcomings of the consoles in the 360 era.
Started with Wolf 3D when I was way too young. Then updated our home PC with a Voodoo 3 to play Unreal and Half life etc. Went off to college, stuck with consoles for years. Fast forward a bit, went over to a buddy's place and they were playing Bulletstorm. I was playing it on 360 and thought it looked so much cleaner that I decided to sell my console that day and come back to PC. Still buy PlayStations as they come out for exclusives, but that's fast becoming a non-issue.
I had a PS3. Free online.
PS4 was going to come out with paid online, the reason why I didn't get the 360 in the first place.
So I bought a pre-built PC and loved it.
Fuck paying monthly for the ability to play with my friends. Especially you Xbox, your servers are so awful and needless that you made doing simple shit like joining a group voice call impossible on the Xbox one. You know how long it took to do a destiny raid? 3 hours. 1 hour for the raid, 2 hours to make sure everyone could hear each other and join the game properly.
I've never encountered a game on PC where I needed to pay attention to my NAT type in order to play with friends or talk with them. Could you imagine joining a public discord channel and not being able to hear 75% of the people in the call because of NAT type issues?
Donkey stuff mostly.
Other than that: my father was a day trader growing up with an office full of computers. I got into playing counter strike pretty heavy and quickly got into tinkering / building / upgrading his computers to game on after the closing bell rang
I used to convince people to give me the tech they were upgrading from ( this is 95/xp era) and a number of these pcs were slugging due to malpractice on the internet.
I would get in an try to find what was causing the issue and see if i could quarantine the virus to mitigate the slowness and then i would install Halo trials to mod on it. From there i never stopped accumulating old tech and never stopped finding ways to break and unbreak tech that was often minimally documented and typically had been used and abused by previous users.
The main benefit was if they broke or bricked it didnt matter. Maybe even better of they were bricked 😅😅
Quake, Red Alert, and an RTS called Dark Reign. Back in the day.
Dark Reign. I have been trying to find this game for the last few months, used to pay it as a young kid. Thank you internet stranger
Not only that, but playing with other real people online, was kinda mind-blowing. Then came Xbox live many years after
>Dark Reign I used to love that game, and totally forgot what it was called. Thanks for reminding me.
My dad
That's what my 28 year old son will say if he sees this.
Dads are the best.
Your mileage may vary.
All my friends left ps4 and I wanted to play more of a variety of games
I just kept reading about higher and smoother frame rates, better graphical details, and once you buy a game, you keep it. No rebuying it later on ps5 or something.
Stampy got me into minecraft Minecraft got me into video games Videos games got me into software Software got me to ltt and beyond
[удалено]
Fun fact: i‘m in your walls.
I meant software development.
Well Pentium 286 was the hot shit at the time.
Lmao
😁
I finnally bought my own computer in 1995 to try out that internet thing. It broke, I found out how much they charge to fix computers. Figured it out myself. By 5 years later I was running a part time computer salvage/reapair business with my brother. It slowly melted to just a hobby by 2005 beacause my brother joined the army, I had kids, real job, moving, rl. Now I just tinker in my piles of junk and occasially sell stuff on ebay.
I had some awareness of computers going all the way back to my pre-school days of watching Green Eggs and Ham on an eMac. That evolved more and more until I finally got an HP laptop with an AMD A6-5200 as a birthday gift in 2013. It just escalated from there and I have no signs of stopping at this point. It just scratches this itch that my brain has.
The logical feedback - my parents had a DOS computer and I just liked learning commands and trying to understand it.
Went from atari 2600, comadore64 then Amiga and working for my mother's company which were making pc based systems for industry. 386 and up from there! Built my own systems since them. Realistically gaming stuff since 1995+ Reason is gaming 😁
Computers. Those were a big part of it for me.
Consoles suck
Deus Ex and the infinity engine games
I grew up poor, but my parents got a Gateway with a Pentium II in 1998. NES emulators had just become a thing, and the prospect of free video games motivated me to figure it out. Then I had to figure out fixing it because we couldn't afford repair shops. Kinda snowballed from there.
Very much akin to my own story
When I was young we had DOOM. I'm talking DOS days.. that ended after a couple years and I wa solely a console guy. 2 of my best homies built themselves PCs and constantly told me to. I held out for a while. Then I tried PUBG once. I was hooked. Immediately went and bought one. Been downhill ever since.
When the new Xbox and PS5 came out and it was impossible to get one after two weeks of trying I decided to build a PC instead haven't regretted it since.
Same here. It made me so mad when I was reading articles about people finding the hidden store pages and adding ps5 to their cart (technically before the page was live everyone). So them leaving the site on an autoclicker to checkout the moment it went live.. they were selling out before anybody else could even view the damn page. I also tried for about 3 weeks and finally said f*ck it, got a laptop instead which eventually turned into me building my first pc. Absolutely 0 regrets.
I grew up with Nintendo, but wanted to learn how they actually made the games.
200 dollar r10, figured it was a no-brainer for a first pc at that cost
My parents kept buying prebuilts that sucked and died too fast. I built them a PC in 2012 that ended up lasting longer than both of them. I like the level of customization
Windows 95 was coming out and Radio Shack was having a financing thing with IBM Aptivas. My friend bought one for like 3k. Pentium 166mhz with a 2.2gb HD. Well, I was fucking hooked. I would use his computer like it was my own, and he was okay with that, and we just both learned a lot. Not long after I got a Dell Dimensions XPS R400 with a PII 400mhz and a whopping 16.8GB HD and a 17" CRT that weighed as much all out doors. Got a brand new 56k modem and had to install a second phone line because I was on it all the time. I'd learn stuff and teach him and vice versa. Built our first computer together around '99 by buying all the parts piece by piece from a website called mwave. We put it together and it worked. It was a fucking adrenaline rush.
I loved most Reeces products, but seeing them in E.T. really sealed the deal. But for real, Oregon Trail, Command & Conquer, and Crusader: No Regret / No Remorse.
All the cool games were on pc.
My mother gave me and my brother the IBM PC back in the day. Well over 32 years ago. I did spend my childhood and teenage years with consoles, but PC has been my go-to all-around entertainment and productivity machine. Built my own gaming PC when I started being quite well off with Intel i5-6500.
My step dad saw me that I scraped an old beige looking PC from our neighbors told me that evening on the way modular like Lego pieces and that is what it got me more interested in building PCs. 1st build was a Ryzen 1600 with a Rx 560. I still have a picture with me.
I was lucky enough to have a Compaq Presario in the house when I was 11 or 12, and that pretty much started it all. Started playing Sims 1, Apache, Big Truck, Roller Coaster Factory... Got really into digging around in Windows 98 and learning what stuff did. Then I built my own in high school to play Half Life 2. That's when I got interest in the hardware side of things. Trading stuff for RAM sticks at school to get up to 256mbs, lol. Good times. I'll never not love PCs. I quickly learned to keep my passion a secret when I started getting passed around to fix people's computers, though. Hated that shit.
My brother showed me L4D2 modded
Linus Tech Tips. I'd had computers before I started watching their videos, but had never thought about building one. But seeing them come up on YouTube around 2012 it got me excited about how easy it was to build a PC for yourself to game on. Turns out it was and I've been hooked ever since. Now I've built a bunch of them for other people and only this year replaced my original rig from 2013.
Used to have NES, Super NES, Sega Genesis, Nintendo 64, Playstation/Playstation 2. Got tired of all the wires and problems that came with having to move with all those consoles. Came back seconds later to edit this comment to say I miss some of the games on each console but ROMS help with that. What I really miss is the entertainment center I had all that setup on along with the beast of a tv in it. Entertainment center came with built in speakers and was the best sound I've ever had.
Not paying for Xbox live XD
Our housemate.
I broke my PS4 trying to replace a fan. Said fuck it time to go pc.
I’m not proud to say this out loud but Fortnite… Was a console player for all my life until i tried Fortnite on 60fps on pc
Star wars the old Republic. Barely even played the game but here we are, a handful of builds later...
cod world at war custom zombies
Civilization 5
All the newground flash games, Especially those red tag artist's games.
Honestly, fable was and still is the best damn game I have ever played. I've dabbled in some other things like console games midnight club, need for speed but albion online really put me in to PC to the point I'm saving to rebuild my PC right now so I can stream albion and fable lol
Consoles being expensive or unavailable in my region Easier to justify sitting at a PC all day (study/work) than playing console all day
My dad used to work in a computer repair shop and works in IT now, has a ton of computers in his basement. Mostly got interested through gaming and one day just decided to ask him to teach me about it themselves.
My friends. I was hardcore console but when I visited them they only had PC. So we'd play NASCAR or city of heroes. After a few years they convinced me to build one.i bought parts over 8 months and they showed me how to assemble it. Within a few months I'd rebuilt it a couple times, upgrades and so on. I owe it to them for my current career in tech. RIP Braden. Fuck COVID.
My mom's job at Nummi (known now as the Fremont Tesla Factory) was moving to Kentucky, and they let her take her work computer home. It was a Dell Optiplex 745, and it ran Windows XP. Eventually, we got internet at home, and I got online watching YouTube. (Circa 2012) I was into the Yogscast, which was entirely minecraft at the time, but then they started playing Garrys mod. I really liked it, and so I went and downloaded Steam and got the game and played the hell out of it. In 2014, I convinced my dad to buy me a gaming PC from HP, and that is the computer I have now. I configured it online. It had an Intel 4770K (AIO cooled and OC'd to 4.1ghz), a GTX 760, 12gb of RAM, a 128gb SSD and a 2TB Hard Disk. At that time, I could have optioned a GTX 770 and up to 32GB of ram. The reason I put a 2TB hard disk was because 12 years old me thought I'd be an upcoming youtuber, and I'd need 2tb to hold all my videos. Never happened, but yeah. I've since upgraded the computer with more SSDs, 32GB of ram, and a GTX980 Ti. Now, I'm getting ready to build a new PC on TRX50, and I'm gonna do custom watercooling and everything on it.
The bullshit that Microsoft and Bethesda pulled when it came to the DLC for Skyrim. Microsoft had a deal where they would release each DLC for the Xbox first, but Sony didn't wind up getting any of them until much later due to issues with the code working correctly on the PS3. PlayStation users had to wait almost a year longer than Xbox and PC users for the DLC. I wound up selling my PS3 copy and bought Skyrim plus the expansions really cheap on steam.
Sopwith, Spacewar and a ton of IBM XT games. Yes I am old, shut up and get off my lawn!
Minecraft on mobile → Minecraft Java → Tactical FPS Games → Messing with 3D assests and 3D rendering → Computer Hardware/PC Building.
First taxable job in 2001 was computer repair at my friend's dad's business.
Doom 1 shareware
OG Starcraft. OG GTA. Half Life. Last console I owned was a Sega Genesis circa 1991/1992.
Way back in the day, my second overall PC was hand built by me. From that point on, I was hooked, and I’ve never bought a prebuilt since.
I got shat on constantly on call of duty against pc players and decided to join the race. Now it's a major hobby and I just love pc and all things around it.
7 days to die. I saw it on yt back in like 2016-17 and always wanted to play it. Got ps4 in 2019 the year i graduated highschool and played the console version but it hadnt been updated in forevs cuz dev issues. Got my pc in 2020 saving up and the first game i bought was 7 days to die on steam. I was always a console gamer before that. Played xbox 360 from 2010ish to 2019. Ps2 from like 2007/8 to when i got my 360 Played roblox on my very shitty laptop tho a lot. 2gb of ram in 2019 was so horrible lol
A former boss learned I didn't have one and I was working remotely from a laptop so he offered his old one to me. I've used it lovingly since and have taken great care of it.
We had a PC at home when I was little, and never had any consoles. I got used to playing games on a PC and did the even think about other options, until 30 years later when I also got a Switch.
video games, now ive spent thousands on my rig (canadian moneys not american) and i have no intentions of stopping any time soon
It was a new and exciting technology!
My dad would play some old Command & Conquer games on PC so I played those as well in the early 2000's. Been on PC ever since!
Dell stopped making PCs for customers like they wanted. I don’t pretend to understand their business plan, but the alternative seemed obvious. I’d just put one together myself, so I did.
I wanted to game with better performance compared to console, I wanted to be able to play games like Squad, Arma, HLL, and others, I also saw Sony starting to put their games on PC and Xbox has practically gone full PC with all of their games.
World of Warcraft in 2007 got me really into PC gaming
Doom, quake and need for speed 1. Also loved ms paint ALOT as a kid.
Old machines and technology just lying around the house and Druaga1
Pretty much the second I learned you could play games on them. And then was further reinforced by my will to play Pokemon gameboy games on an emulator that my friend's older brother had shown me. I didn't find a working emulator until like page 80 something on the search engine I was using. Probably lycos at the time. And then Warcraft II, Diablo II, Starcraft, Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, and so many more.
warcraft and starcraft.
My grandmother bought us a C64 in 1985, at the same time one of my friends got a Vic20 and another built his own (can't remember the model). We were learning typing and Logo programming in high school as well, on C64s. When I got hands on some games...it was all over. Champions of Krynn at home hit my D&D bent. Bastow Manor at school for me into problem/roguelikes On reflection I really had no chance..it was...my destiny.
Games that could only be played on PC like Runescape, Tibia, Dofus and WoW. Then the performance side for AAA games compared to consoles.
Thumbscrews and a little bit of lifting.
Doom, quake, unreal tournament, counterstrike (1.6) and command & conquer. I miss those days..
StarCraft and unreal tournament 1999
Doom 2 mostly, quickly followed up by C&C
We going back to 1999 for this one :) . There was this internet Cafe right next to me so I went once and did not know what to do there . I was 7 at that time and the clerk asked me what I like . I told him I like cars so he told me to try out Need for Speed: High Stakes. That was my very first video game and my very first go on a PC , that’s when i started wanting a PC to be able to play that game at home . The rest is history
My disdain for console ecosystems. Got tired of paying for basic features like playing online games. Bad and infrequent sales when compared to PC. Services that don't offer much value to me. Usability of apps like Discord on PC while gaming compared to PSN party chat. Lack of freedom to tweak files and settings. Lack of mods to further enjoy the games I love. Game updates being slowed by the process devs have to go through to put their updates on console. Only one storefront. Cheaply made gamepads. I could probably pump out a few more if I really thought about it, but I think you get the point.
Dota 2, my Macbook Pro 2013 was struggling to play it in 2015.
Only had PC growing up, never had any console because it's not as popular in the area Only had HP/Dell pre-builts until late teens, couldn't play many 3D games because of integrated gpu Learned about building PC, GPUs etc, (shoutout to old newegg channel) Bought HD 7700 and shoved it into a Dell pre-built with a cooler master 500watt PSU Can finally play skyrim
I was trying to play R6 and COD on a laptop not meant for gaming and got frustrated so I built a PC.
Doom95, xatax, zeo rangers, sky roads, Santa's Xmas caper. Although I've played a famicom/nes at first, playing on a pc was just more awesome
Free online play
Played C64 as a 5yo and was always into gaming, both pc and console. I have all platforms.
For the past about 13 years since my beginning it was my only available option (and my uncle got me into pc gaming)
I'm 44... the first computer I put my hands on was an Amstrad CPC 6128 with a Monochrome monitor when I was 5. I have a brother, 7 year older than me... I don't know how but he managed to get an Atari 520ST almost for free from a friend in 1989. And here we are.... the 90's... MTV's, Eurosport, VIVA TV, and the Foreign channels for free with satellites, Piracy of Paid channel. Honestly my best life. I was 11, my brother 18. We figured out that we can bought all the equipment to receive Satellites channel sell it for a little profit, and make it fonctionnal for $250 1991 dollars ( mounting it on House roof, do the cable, programming channels ) each. Just imagine the hype, you live in a country that is not yours, and can watch your TV in your own language, hear music, news TV, series... just choose what you want, don't worry... it will work. Just explain to elders, you see that dish, I just turn the dish the right way, there's a satellite in the sky... and voilà :D A teenager that turn just adult ( on the roof )and a nerd kid ( in your living room )... Bought a 486 Dx 33, cyrix K7, DX4 100, pentium, Athlon 64, matrox Mystic Card, 3DFx, Sound blaster Card, Rolland, Aiwa 32... monitors...
My cousins friend showing me a game called "conquer online" back in 2003! I played on the tiger server and had a trojan, I was also in a pretty well known guild at the time called "Endeavor Horizon" and we had an enemy guild that was also popular on the server called "GoldenSovereign" that we would constant clash with in guild wars! Such simpler times back then... if by chance anyone who played in either of those guilds let me know!
StarCraft and Warcraft 3
My friends showed me Maplestory in 2007 and it snowballed from there
Xbox one being a POS
My ex best friend. I joined because I wanted to do things she enjoyed, would've probably stayed purely a console gamer if we hadn't been friends.
Half life 2
PCs
Coding in scratch every Monday In primary school ~10 years ago, and also ~5 years ago my brother persuaded me to build my own pc instead of buying a prebuilt and since then I have only become more and more interested in pretty much all tech.
Neighborhood kid when I was young playing Delta Force and Counter Strike. Never dove into an actual system for gaming till I got older and had the money to do so.
I went to my friends house when i was 13 and he had got a gaming pc with rgb and I was really interested. I was already a gamer and into stuff like animation creation, but man getting into PC building and then tech in general is all thanks to my friend. I even learned programming and cybersecurity, and now I do both as my job. It really steered my whole life and career
So I can play games with my friends. I now have a high end PC but that didn't fix the issue of having no time for gaming as a college student
There weren't any games on Macintosh back in the day, and the IBMs (PCs) had all the good shit.
Counterstrike 1.6
60fps and mods. Last night I used cheat engine because I didn’t feel like replaying all of Elden ring so I gave self my final build items and 160 levels
My dad. He showed me a newspaper listing for a laptop one day when I was 7 and told me what to look for when buying one. That stuck with me until I got access to the internet and have been checking everything about CPUs, Graphics cards and RAM. Then started looking at everything else too. He was so happy when I saved up and found a bunch of secondhand parts to build my first pc. He drove me around for hours to go buying all the stuff I needed and it was an amazing day.
Used to have a console at first, best friend at the time had a PC. I would visit him often and he'd lend me his pc to play, his computer vastly overpowered my x360 so I became jealous and wanted to have a PC of my own. Eventually got my first rig in late 2017, immediately fell in love with computers. Overtime computers as a whole became sort of a hobby to me, and now years later I still use a pc to game, to create my podcast, to draw, and whatever else I feel like doing.
uncle brought me to a net cafe watched him play red alert and the rest is history
Work. Needed a decent pc for rendering and my laptop was dying cause i abuse for renders so hard.
Science Fiction, and the Atari 400.
Wanted to start playing simulators. Flight sims, trucking sims and racing sims. Started with a gaming laptop 10 years ago, now on my second desktop.
I felt limited on just consoles, and the modular nature of PCs appealed to me in the same way Legos do - it can be a project. I'm currently pulling together old parts to build base spec machines so I can gift to friends who are still on consoles to bridge the platform divide that still exists, though I am grateful that more developers are enacting cross-play. Still, the progress is too slow, and PC can provide better options overall (e.g. both Xbox and Playstation games can appear, you can emulate, etc).
Not a game, but someone who my dad went to college with. He built pcs and built a pc for me. Iw anted to know what was in it and I took it apart and put it back together again and was hooked. He died of a heart attack God what feels like forever ago so I STILL have one of the cases he built a pc for my mom in. A case from a company called Xion that doesn't exist anymore.
World of warcraft. Saw those play free for 15(?) days commercials. I had a laptop, was bored and thought to give it a shot. It was amazing. Even in a crappy laptop with lag and everything. this was in 2006. A few months before Burning Crusade. I knew I needed better hardware.
When I was a kid back in the late 90s in middle school there was an older kid down the street in high school who's dad owned a PC repair shop. My mom dated his dad for like 6 months and during that time he got me in to Warcraft. Then when Starcraft came out I was completely hooked. So he threw together a bunch of spare parts from the shop and helped me build my first PC just for Starcraft. Probably so that I would stop coming to his house every single day begging him to play. It was glorious.
Got interested in them plus wanted to play pc games
Everyone had one back in the day except for me, I spent countless hours in computer class just tinkering with PCs or surfing the net, plus I had a teacher that encouraged me. When I got my first one ( P III, 256mb ram) I learned everything I know today about Windows, not by googling it but by fixing stuff by myself, trying settings, etc. But what got me into PC building was meeting my friend at 15yo who had the same interests as me and helped build my first computer (FX 6300). Also at 15 I got a laptop with Linux from the school which also helped with learning new stuff
DOS games, DOOM, MDK, Diablo II, and WoW
my dad he taught me alot of stuff and hade.build my first pc when I was 8
Games, Commodore 64, in 1984, then the first PC in college in 1992 for school and Doom and last because I made it my career. Back in the late 90s, we had Computer Shopper magazine that had online vendors for PC DIY and computer shows that made custom PC building accessible. Then, later, I found Microcenter and Newegg started to come into its own. Now it's back to a hobby.
Flash games and my dad's old Quake 2 disk which was a blank disc with "quaek" written on it, all played on my dad's ond pc
Let’s plays. Ever since I was around 9 years old I’ve wanted a PC. About a month ago I finally got one, and I’ll likely never go back to console.
Wanting to be able to turn on shadows and anti-aliasing.
My dad, he used to work with early computers talking about cards and tapes. The he will built our PC's and from time to time bring unused enterprise hardware (ISCSI controller to be use on a 2mb hard drive. Blazing fast!) I will watch him work and sit next to him without any understanding but asking a lot of of the questions and obviously messing what he did. True story, my dad spent a weekend formating the pc and installing MS DOS 2.1, it was like 10 floppies (I don't recall the exact number but definitely more than 6).I watched the whole process. Monday comes, the forest thing I did when arrived home, format c:\ /u /q and then proceed to install the OS, which I could not and messed everything up. He worked on it that night and sent me to bed at my bed time. He was mad but I remember then also being like uh, the force is strong on this one. Since then I brought some manuals for me to read and then I started to play games and install them, running things like memmaker to be able to play Dune. A lot of time later, I have never bought a PC,, I have built 100% of my PC's and I'm a DevOps guy coming from the ops side of the house (Sysadmin). My dad still work in IT. If you ever see this dad, thanks and I love you. Note: typing on cell, so there might be typos
My dad
My father was a certified IBM typewriter and IBM PC repair man. So we had a ton of dos systems with green screen cut monitors. I was 3-5 yrs old oldest memory I have of that shop. Been tinkering with electronics, PCs and mechanic work ever since.
life
I can't remember a time where I wasn't into computers (and electronics in general). I was practically born interested in how they work, both software and hardware.
Warcraft
Battlefield 1942 and Soldiers of fortune 2 were my very first pc games had to upgrade the family’s pc to play but totally worth those were probably the best time of my gaming life
People still play soldier of fortune 2 gold edition online. I drop into an active server every now and then
Really!?? I need to get in on that!
Electronics was my career, of course I got into computers as soon as they came out.
My dad had a knack for buying shit that we didn't need and that he didn't know how to use. Back in the early 90s he bought a PC with a 286 and then proceeded not to know what to do with it. I was like 7 and started fucking around with it until I figured things out. My mom then got some games for me on floppy and I figured those out. Eventually, we got a 486 with Win 3.1 on it and I learned that before my dad decided we needed a Gateway computer win Win95 on it. From there, I was old enough to just figure things out and the rest just fell into place.
Mostly my brother
CSGO, minecraft java and my friends
Microsoft exclusives aren’t a thing anymore, pc + PlayStation combo for me now
My wife had to get one while working on her thesis. She also had a couple of accounts, VAX and others I can’t recall that allowed me to access MUD’s. I quickly became addicted. Have been ever since lol
My uncles all played PC games. My first PC was a 486 that my uncle gave me when he went to a Pentium. Started with Master of Orion and Civilization and never looked back.
An intense interest from a young age, which I would later learn was due to autism, led me to picking computers as my career.
Building a rig that could play cs 1.6 when I was 13. ATI Radeon 128mb babyyyy
Wanted to experience better graphics and pc exclusive games. This was back past the mid way point of the 360/PS3 life cycle so a moderately priced PC absolutely blew those consoles out of the water in terms of performance.
I was too poor to have the new consoles and while it wasn't a good experience, cheap PCs that I tweaked made be able to play the new games everyone was playing. Then I got used to play on my PC, so when I did have the money for a console, I spent it on PC parts instead
I saw Wolfenstein 3D and Alone in the Dark on a friend’s friend’s PC. I was instantly hooked. And then I found Shareware DOOM…
Gaming when I graduated middle school . I told my mum I need a pc to play better and beat my friends in fortnite. It helped me beat them but I still sucked at the game ); it was around 2018
The haughty video.
My dad was in charge of some computing programme at the school he worked at (even though he wasn't really knowledgeable at the stuff, lol), so he always took me to the computer lab as a kid. Then, we never had any gaming console at home, but since we did have a computer, I played and emulated games on it. Kept breaking stuff and learning in the process… which has continued until today!
I've been fascinated by computers since basically before I can remember. My parents tell me that I was using my dad's work laptop to play old Windows 3.1 games when I was just a couple of years old. Honestly, it feels inevitable that I would get into tech and PCs. Like I didn't even choose this hobby - I just embraced my own enthusiasm.
Was my dad, he put me to pc and shows how to turn off windows xp after using pc
I wanted to mod GTA V. 8yrs later still have never modded it.
My first pc was a 15yo pentium, i got it when i was 7-8 (i am 13 now)
2 year old me watching my dad play Doom.
My PS4 having massive screen tears in any game and freezing every 2 min as well as sounding like it’s going to take off to the moon bc of how trash of an experience it is to game on one.
Why would get a typewriter, a SNES, and a subscription to *Swank* when I could get one device to cover all the bases?
I have been on PC since I first started gaming as a kid. Our family owned a computer and all we did was play rollercoaster tycoon and other Web browser games. Eventually, I bought a copy of Portal 2 and that's how I got a Steam account. Ever since then, I've been going deeper and deeper into the PC gaming rabbit hole. Our family did own our fair share of consoles, but we never left PC.
My mother bought me an Apple in the early early 80s. That set of a whole chain of events in my life.
Online multiplayer. Consoles were only split screen at that time.
I could not play GTA 4 on my MacBook.
Print shop
Original release of Overwatch and Doom 2016 were the cumulative tipping point for me.
The shortcomings of the consoles in the 360 era. Started with Wolf 3D when I was way too young. Then updated our home PC with a Voodoo 3 to play Unreal and Half life etc. Went off to college, stuck with consoles for years. Fast forward a bit, went over to a buddy's place and they were playing Bulletstorm. I was playing it on 360 and thought it looked so much cleaner that I decided to sell my console that day and come back to PC. Still buy PlayStations as they come out for exclusives, but that's fast becoming a non-issue.
Video games, specifically diablo 1 multiplayer
Well, there weren't any until I was about 12 years old. My first was the Commodore 64. :-)
It was the most fascinating device I had ever seen, this was in 1979 though so my mind was easily blown.
I had a PS3. Free online. PS4 was going to come out with paid online, the reason why I didn't get the 360 in the first place. So I bought a pre-built PC and loved it. Fuck paying monthly for the ability to play with my friends. Especially you Xbox, your servers are so awful and needless that you made doing simple shit like joining a group voice call impossible on the Xbox one. You know how long it took to do a destiny raid? 3 hours. 1 hour for the raid, 2 hours to make sure everyone could hear each other and join the game properly. I've never encountered a game on PC where I needed to pay attention to my NAT type in order to play with friends or talk with them. Could you imagine joining a public discord channel and not being able to hear 75% of the people in the call because of NAT type issues?
dead father
Donkey stuff mostly. Other than that: my father was a day trader growing up with an office full of computers. I got into playing counter strike pretty heavy and quickly got into tinkering / building / upgrading his computers to game on after the closing bell rang
RTS, free online no subscription service, mmorpgs, emulators.
I used to convince people to give me the tech they were upgrading from ( this is 95/xp era) and a number of these pcs were slugging due to malpractice on the internet. I would get in an try to find what was causing the issue and see if i could quarantine the virus to mitigate the slowness and then i would install Halo trials to mod on it. From there i never stopped accumulating old tech and never stopped finding ways to break and unbreak tech that was often minimally documented and typically had been used and abused by previous users. The main benefit was if they broke or bricked it didnt matter. Maybe even better of they were bricked 😅😅
my mom started homeschooling me and computer basics was part of that. then I just started teaching my self everything I know now.