When Gaming Became a Hobby

by Gino Marinaro

People sometimes ask me how I got into gaming. When I think about it, what they’re really asking is how it became a hobby. Well, it’s not a long story, but here it is.

I grew up in Babbitt, MN, a small mining community on the Iron Range. There’s no passing through Babbitt. If you do, you go to the mine. Like any other kid, I was active, played sports, had friends, played games. Maybe played more games than most other kids.

About the most complex game I played at that time was “Risk.” When you get right down to it, it’s really a pretty basic game. One unit type, not a lot of strategy, a lot of dice rolling. I played some of the Strat-O-Matic Sports games. I found those rather interesting. They did a great job of capturing the strategies involved in sports.

After graduating from high school, I stayed in Babbitt and attended Vermilion Community College in Ely. Some of my friends moved away to attend larger universities. The following summer, a couple of my friends, Rob and Randi, came home from UND for the season. One evening, we got together, and they introduced me to Dungeons & Dragons! That was the day that gaming changed from being kid stuff and became a hobby! The imagination, complexities, intricate decisions really spoke to me. Before that, I really thought that gaming was a thing that, outside of Cribbage and other traditional card games, was going to fade away as I got older. Not remotely!

That fall, I enrolled in St. Cloud State University. There, I found the Games Club! A club devoted to playing games? There, I found not just role-playing games like D&D, but a whole host of other rather advanced board games. Civilization, Titan, Third Reich, and countless more. Then I knew that gaming wasn’t just a hobby, but a hobby that I’d likely have for the rest of my life.