On the Christian Gamers Guild e-list, there has been a thread discussing recapturing the gaming experiences of our youth. One participant mentioned that he will every year or so get together with his old gaming group for a day of nostalgic gaming (i.e. a day ignoring more adult responsibilities).
I’ll admit that I’ve had similar thoughts on occasion, but have been blocked by the simple logistical issue of the fact that, between the two long-term gaming groups I’ve been involved with, I have friends in (at least) Colorado, New Mexico, Illinois, both peninsulas of Michigan and (I think still) northern Virginia – oddly many of whom I’m in touch with via various social networks. Of course I’m in southern California with just my family (and new friends), of course.
But, I also keep wondering if there would be a way do this by telepresence. We are still a long way from the kind of telepresence described in the book I just finished yesterday (The Naked Sun) which would be almost ideal.
But, I’m thinking that we aren’t quite there yet without specialized – that is expensive – networking setups. We are close to the point that there are either free servers or pier to pier setups that will allow for multiple voice and video connections at one time, but I think most of the ones that really do this are still pay-to-use for businesses.
Still it would be fun to schedule some day when one – or both (that would be interesting) – of these groups could get together by video conference for a day-long gaming session.
Maybe in a year or two when multi-party video conferencing is commonplace.