I started gaming when I was 4 years old. By the time I started school I was a pro at the first 20 or so levels of Lemmings on my Dad's Acorn computer.
Half-Life was the turning point. I played it and finished it 5 times and then moved to LAN gaming. Me, MNutz, my dad and my friend played Half-Life, Team fortress and sometimes Co-op played through Quake. I watched MNuTz make a few maps in Hammer and played against him on his EPIC circle map over the LAN for months on end. Then i read an article in PCGamer on developing simple maps including a brief section on scripting.
I got a PS2 and then lost my faith in consoles.
Mapping became my main hobby until I started college and finally got a net connection at home. I found TWHL on day one and since then I have worked on HL1 maps and mods like it's a religion.
I got a DS and once again lost my faith in consoles.
Now, I sit here in my own house, 2 weeks away from my 21st Birthday. I have been gaming for nearly 17 years.
Do I think I've wasted my life so far?
HELL NO!!!
After focusing on playing lemmings for almost a year I picked up Zool. A game which (even to this day) I never completed and probably never will. Then came starfighter 3000. This game was the first 3d Game i ever played and I fucking loved it! The feeling of freedom in its "massive environments" was overwhelming. I could blow up anything i wanted with my laser cannon. I could fly out into space and destroy an enemy mothership. I could take on enemy fighters at their own runway. I could (and did) play for hours on end without getting bored. After a while I got my first console. The 16-BIT Sega Mega-Drive. The chunky game cartridges which stored hours and hours of gameplay were a new addiction. I played Sonic the Hedgehog solidly through the christmas holidays. Every weekend I would rent a new game from the video store in town. Several years later I got a Playstation, and again was in awe at the graphics. I played Tomb Raider for a few weeks before I discovered Abe's Odysee which I played non-stop until I was done. Bang! Perfect timing. 1 week later Abe's Exodus was released and I slipped through another few months, gamepad in hand. Final Fantasy 7 was released and although I never purchased a copy of it myself I managed to play it from the beginning at least 10 times. I wasted several years on FF7 which is another game that I am yet to complete. Metal Gear Solid was another classic but lacked the replay value of most of my other games. Eventually I got my own PC and Half-Life was released shortly after that. My dad had owned a PC for several years already but despite spending hours on Duke Nukem 3D and Transport Tycoon trying to make more money than a friend who lived down the street, i rarely used it. Quake came and went and I played it through and finished the lot on my dads PC.