Games and Gaming

Thoughts on gaming and the future of [CHG] through the eyes of [CHG]CyberCS.

Over the years I have been interested in playing video games. Some of my first all time favorite games include “Total Annihilation”, “WarCraft 2″, “Duke Nukem”, “Doom”, “StarCraft”, and a few others.

The main game I got involved with was a free game that the US Army released on July 4th 2002 called America’s Army. For the past 6.5-7 years I have been a member of Canadian Honour Guards. I joined this team/clan back in 2002 when it was first called Canadian Elite Force -=CEF=-. After about 8 months or so with CEF the teams leadership went by the wayside, so the majority of us regrouped and created [CHG]. One of our main objectives was to make sure we have fun. We drafted a Code of Conduct that we all agreed to uphold and follow. This made us one of the most respected teams in the AA community. Over the years we grew to well over 100 members, we always had a full game server and TS. I have to admit that those days were fun, but also very challenging. We had a few bad apples we had to address.

About 2 years in we started to create alliances with other Canadian teams. We started to discuss the possibility in creating a super alliance. We came up with C2C – Canadian’s Coast2Coast. What C2C’s main mandate was to achieve a monthly fight night with all the allied teams. We would all meet on one teamspeak server to play together on one or more game servers. This went well for about a year until AA started to change (I’m still unclear if it was for the better or the worse). After about a year C2C closed it’s doors.

With the doors closed over at C2C it didn’t mean we didn’t have our alliances with other Canadian teams or stopped playing AA. We continued playing AA throughout the release of Special Forces edition and the launch of user created maps. But one thing was certain, AA 2 was dying.

There was lots of talk about AA3 and the endless possibilities that would come with it. Like usual there was a lot of hype, but no concrete evidence that AA3 was coming. Well this summer AA3 was finally released. Right off the bat, just like every AA release there were problems. Most of the usual problems were avoided by utilizing Steam. Steam is a gaming delivery and gaming community. It allows the Army to send updates via Steam and Steam will automatically download and install the updates on your computer. My initial experience with AA3 wasn’t that bad. It was difficult to get used too since it was a completely different game. Most of you know and understand why I have been a little absent due to my personal family life, and that goes for most of [CHG].

[CHG] has always overcome difficulties and growing pains. We knew years ago that if/when AA discontinued or changed that we would have to look at different avenues. Some games that some members have tried and enjoy are: World of Warcraft, IL2, Battlefield 2, Call of Duty, Company of Heroes, ARMA, Ghost Recon, and recently released Operation Flashpoint 2 aka: OFP Dragon Rising. Will [CHG] officially branch out to any of these games? I don’t know. AA3 is still fairly new and there’s lots of room for improvement. I know for sure I can’t wait to get back into the gaming mode, but for me I may have to wait until early 2010, before I can start up fully.

Why did I write this story? Well, I wanted to ensure all [CHG] that I have not gone anywhere and will be online soon enough, and that [CHG] will become more active than ever before.  The second reason for this story, is because I wanted to encourage all [CHG] members to think of their gaming experiences and email them to me (admin @ canadianhonourguards.ca – no spaces), I will post them here to share it with all.

Happy writing!