I am Dmitry Portnoy, currently a sophomore Computer Science major at Carnegie Mellon University. I am interesting in being a game developer and I created this site to share past games I have worked on and projects I will undertake in the future.
I used to love strategy games. I used to play Age of Empires, Starcraft, Civ 2, Warcraft 3, Red Alert 2, etc. I originally concentrated on the single player aspect, aspecially campaigns. I'm not sure, but I think it was the story element that drew me to the campaigns rather than random matches against comps, even though it was barely existent in Age of Empires at least. Also, I remember thinking that the Starcraft AI was incredibly difficult to beat. There wasn't even a real campaign in Civ 2, but that game was just too amazing. Anyway, I moved into multiplayer games when I discovered Starcraft Battlenet. I played ladder for a bit, but I vastly preferred interesting custom maps. My favorite, by far, was Helms Deep, but I also remember playing Evolves, not because it was terribly strategic or creative, but I simply couldn't pass up the opportunity to send literally a hundred or so battlecruisers into combat.
I had played Diablo 2 before getting hooked on Battlenet, but I decided to start a Bnet character at some point. I had originally played a pally in Singleplayer, but got pretty sick of him since he couldn't kill things very well. Not sure if it was my lack of skill or a fault of the class, but after doing a bit of research, I started a feral druid on bnet and had a lot more fun. He got deleted after I forgot about him and I started another druid several months ago. I'd have to say that Diablo 2 is probably my favorite game and is one of the few that hasn't gotten old or boring even after several years of me playing it. I should write a few paragraphs about Diablo 2 classes sometime, just for fun.
When Warcraft 3 came out I bought it, beat the campaign, and got hooked on its Battlenet. Ironically, I still haven't beaten the Frozen Throne campaign, even though I beat a couple missions every few months. I played Hero Wars for the longest time, but eventually realized how unbalanced it was, so I switched to Dota. Before I started playing wc3 maps, I remember my friends used to talk about Dota a lot, and I used to be confused about it. I really only log on to Warcraft 3 to play Dota now and I haven't even done that in the last few months.
I started getting a lot more into MMOs sometime in high school. The first one I played was Kingdom of Loathing and I played that for a few years. I ended up dropping it simply because not much new content was coming in and the gameplay was turning into daily script runs of Kolmafia anyway. I also tried out Ogame a couple times. It's certainly an interesting concept, but if there was ever a game that could literally take up every second of every day, that would be it. I log off for an hour, I risk getting my entire fleet killed. Finally, the latest MMO that tried was, you guessed it, WoW. Long story short, I quit that too, although it has certainly taught me many game design lessons, some good, some not so good.
That pretty much brings me to the present, but I want to mention some other games that I have enjoyed over the years and some that I am currently playing. Heroes of Might and Magic has been one of my favorite games for many years. I beat the first one, got tired of some mission towards the end of the second one, and have started the campaign for the third games several times (as a result of losing my saved games). I am still excited to finish the Restoration of Erathia campaign and play the expansion campaigns as well. I have HMM IV as well, but I'm kind of a completionist, so I'd rather play III first. I also recently played through Dungeon Siege I and started the expansion. I can't say I particularly enjoyed the title (too much mindless hack and slash and not enough story), so I'm not sure if I'll bother finishing the expansion. A few weeks ago, I got the Orange Box and have enjoyed a few hours of HL and HL 2. On that topic, I played Portal and loved it. It was a breath of fresh air and was actually what prompted me to get the Orange Box. I was also introduced to Fire Emblem by a friend and I'm currently in the middle of FE 8.
I think that covers most of the games I have played for at least a reasonable amount of time. I don't go through games all that quickly, as you can see, but I do enjoy them. I was mostly writing this history for myself, but it's there for anyone who's curious about my experiences.