A recent post on Facebook announced the imminent closing of iPlay's only remaining location in Ottawa. As per the post, iPlay had been offering LAN gaming services for 11 years, with their original location being on Iber Rd in Stittsville. The current location has been within the Kanata Sensplex for years. The announcement by iPlay's owner/operator 'Dave' pretty much put the blame squarely on the universal shift to online gaming.
iPlay had a second location in Orleans which closed in 2009 due the issues with the original investor withdrawing their capital. The closing of this location had a huge impact on the amount of group gaming done by my friends and associates at the time as we had been taking part in many of the tournaments being run by the owner Brian. Ever since iPlay Orleans' closure it has been increasingly difficult to arrange any time of group gaming session, regardless if it's in person or online. Now, I don't blame that entirely on the lack of an iPlay as people have families and careers to consider now, but at the same time, iPlay provided the computers and the space at a moment's notice.
In all honesty I'm surprised that the location in Kanata has stayed open as long as it has. The last time I was there was about a year ago, and although it was a fun time, we were the only people there with about 60% of the computers vacant. Speaking of the computers, it looked like quite a few of them with in various stages of disrepair, and the ones that did run were running so slowly it was a pain to get everybody loaded and playing at the same time. It was like playing with the ghost of good times past and was kind of disappointing in itself.
For all of the shortcomings, iPlay was still a pretty awesome place. I remember playing C&C Renegades and WarCraft 3 at the location on Iber Rd (hey Craz, remember how we were supposed to be allies? I still hold that against you!). I remember the smell of the rubber floors, Domino's pizza and the warm electronics in the Orleans location. The decor itself put you in a mood to play, and the reasonably priced and seemingly endless supply of chips, pop and chocolate bars made sure you could keep going during an extended gaming session.
One memory that really stands out in my mind would have been the 2007 - 2008 New Year's Eve overnighter that Troglem, Taleth and I took part in. Call of Duty 4 had only come out in November of 2007 and was revolutionary at the time. I remember having to walk to a nearby gas station in the wee hours of the morning to get Advil and Tim Horton's coffee to keep going. I remember Troglem searching for good servers at 7am while Taleth and I watched with bleary eyes from the nearby couch. It was honestly one of the best New Year's I have ever had.
As Dave mentioned in his post, the general shift has been away from playing games in person to playing games at home, alone, while chatting over whatever chat service you and your friends favour. This may not be true for the 30-somethings who seem to be turning back to board games for their social gaming fix, but it definitely seems to apply to the younger generations.
I guess the point of this wall of text was to say goodbye to yet another remnant of our youth. As much as it is sad to see places like this fall off the map, realistically I was in no position to support a place like this any longer. Support for something like this has to come from the masses, which would be the youths of today. These youth don't have careers or family life to deal with, and generally have an abundance of 'down' time to use as they please. Despite this, given the fact you need to physically attend a location, and given how easy it is to just play online from home, it's not surprising that the support just wasn't there.
In closing I'll say, 'So long iPlay. It's been a good run, but it's time for us to say goodbye.'
No comments:
Post a Comment