Hey friends, my name is Tickipie and this is my website. Let’s start off with the cold hard facts about me. I’m 31 years old, German, and I have been a gamer for as long as I can remember. Of course, I have gone through ups and downs in terms of the time I spend with video games over the years but the headline calling me a recovering WoW addict is not exaggerated. I will tell you all about who I am as a person and cover my entire gaming journey in the following paragraphs so strap in.
The Nanny introduced me to the PS1
My gaming road started sometime back in the late nineties when my parents decided that working full-time while raising two kids was becoming near impossible which resulted in them hiring a nanny for my brother and me. Little did they know, the nanny knew precisely how to keep a young boy from being too much trouble and regularly brought her PlayStation over so I was busy in the afternoons after school and she could do whatever she did. Of course, I didn’t get to see any of her actual tasks. I had more important things to do from now on.
These more important things? Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2, Tekken, Tomb Raider, Gran Turismo, and Crash Bandicoot. I’m sure there were other games but these are the ones I remember most vividly. I was hooked. As you can see, my very early gaming adventures didn’t care for genres but I knew right from the get-go that this was my form of entertainment.
What followed was me begging my parents to buy me a PlayStation, Game Boy, PlayStation 2, and Game Boy Color. You see where this is going …
Transition to PC Gaming
I can’t remember when exactly I made the switch to PC gaming but I know that I was introduced to its possibilities by a friend from school. From that point on I was hogging the family PC and the dial-up internet connection like my life depended on it. For some time I was in love with trading simulators like The Patrician and Port Royale. I was a weird kid.
Next up was my shooter phase combined with LAN parties. Counter Strike, Call of Duty, Call of Duty 2, I couldn’t get enough of them and it was the same for my friends. At this point, I did have my own PC and we routinely made our parents drive the entire thing together with the heavy-ass CRT screens and all peripherals to someone’s house to game all night, drink ungodly amounts of cola and eat nothing but pizza and potato chips. It was glorious. Best of all, I was decent enough at these games to stomp my friends most of the time. If you’re being a hopeless nerd, you might as well be the best nerd in your group of friends, right?
The Abyss
What comes next took the better part of 10 years. I started playing World of Warcraft about 1 year after its release in Germany – it must have been around 2006 – and continued playing through most of the expansions. WoW was my life back then. I got home from school, ate lunch, logged into the game, and logged out when it was already way past the time I should have reasonably gone to bed. As was the case for most of the people I hung out with in the game, my playtime was soon measured in days and not in hours. And we are not talking like 5 days, more like 200? That’s probably still way underestimated but some of the details are a little fuzzy. I spent a lot of time just idling in Ironforge.
Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed myself back then and I made some great friends, a few of which I’m still in contact with to this day. But looking back, it is absolutely safe to say that I was addicted to WoW. I can’t even say if it was the game itself or the people in my guild, but something kept me in there for most of the day, each and every single day. Sometimes I still get the MMO itch, but I mostly try to ignore it nowadays.
By the way, my WoW days are also where both my name and my logo come from. After starting out as a Gnome Warlock called Rashano, I really found my stride as the Tauren Shaman Ticki, later Tickipie. I’m still somewhat proud to say that for some time, me and my arena team were the best team on the entire server. PVP was my jam.
I can’t say that I didn’t enjoy this time, but I also let myself be completely consumed by video games in general and especially WoW. And honestly, I struggled. These years are marked by missed opportunities, the fact that I had to repeat a grade in school, and that time went by me way too fast. The worst thing about all of this? I got my little brother into WoW as well.
Dota 2, Football Manager, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009)
A weird mix of games, right? But my Steam account is from 2008 and these are my most played games according to Steam. For Dota 2 it’s showing me a playtime of 791 hours, for all the Football Manager games I’m at about 1050 hours, and for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009) it shows me 203 hours. It’s very likely that a few other games are up there as well but I haven’t played those on Steam. The Battlefield games come to mind.
I think I have always enjoyed a variety of different genres and playstyles but especially during my teenage years and very early 20s, most of them had a competitive side to them. I guess I always wanted to see how good I really am?
The Present
Today I own a gaming PC where I clearly indulge in gaming the most, a PS4, and my girlfriend owns a Switch she would let me borrow if I had any interest in it. The games I play are still extremely varied and range from strategy games in the widest sense to RPGs, city and colony builders, and even the occasional multiplayer shooter with friends. I definitely play a lot more indie games these days than I ever did before.
So while you mostly get to see strategy and colony builder me on stream and in my videos, there are many other genres I enjoy. However, I would imagine the website will stick with strategy games for a while. Maybe there will come a point where I diversify the posts on here, but maybe that point won’t come. We’ll find out together!
Any interests besides gaming?
This is the fun part where I get to tell you all the other things I used to do regularly and about all the hobbies I’m carrying with me to this day. I’m a huge soccer fan and have been playing for about 20 years. I decided to quit a few years ago due to moving to a new city and time constraints from a new job, but I’m still toying with the idea of looking for a local club and kicking a ball around a few times a week. While we are on the topic of sports, I’m also a big football fan. I fully embraced 49ers fandom when they started their rebuild in 2017.
Other than that, I’m an avid reader of mostly fantasy and science fiction and watch way too many movies and TV shows. Did I mention that I love dogs? I absolutely love dogs!
So that’s me and that’s my story so far. If you’ve made it this far, bravo! I’m counting you among my friends from now on. If there’s anything that piqued your interest, just hit me up on socials or during the stream. The door is always open.
