Squid Division

A Rudimentary Poll: PC or Consoles and your gaming background

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I am almost entirely a console gamer. The only recent games I have played on PC were Kingdom of Loathing and Crysis: Warhead. I am not fond of PC playing, regardless of the responsiveness of mouse and keyboard, I much prefer the laid back nature of console playing (I sit at a desk and computer all day, the last thing I want to do when I get home is repeat that experience).

I have my PC set up to plug into my TV so I can sit on my couch and game. The couch probably isn't as conducive to PC gaming as it is console gaming, but it's not too shabby. I do use a trackball mouse, though, so I guess if you use a standard mouse (and really I'm probably the only crazy person who doesn't) couch gaming would be more difficult. I also have a monitor hiding on a desk behind my TV so if my wife is watching her stories I can still play games. It's nice.

Edited by MysteriousLeg

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I have my PC set up to plug into my TV so I can sit on my couch and game. The couch probably isn't as conducive to PC gaming as it is console gaming, but it's not too shabby. I do use a trackball mouse, though, so I guess if you use a standard mouse (and really I'm probably the only crazy person who doesn't) a couch gaming would be more difficult. I also have a monitor hiding on a desk behind my TV so if my wife is watching her stories I can still play games. It's nice.

I have a similar setup. I have my PC outputting to my HDTV, although rather than a trackball mouse I just use a regular mouse that sits on a little table, so as I'm using it I'm still resting my arm.

For strategy games and certain other games, I switch the video output to a computer monitor so I can sit up close, but I think in the near future I'm going to just completely dedicate my desktop computer to my HDTV, and hook up my m11x laptop to the monitor for those other kinds of games, which usually have lower levels of graphical insanity.

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There's also the ability to play multiplatform games with a controller as well. Some games, especially Fallout 3 or console ports, work flawlessly with the controller.

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There's also the ability to play multiplatform games with a controller as well. Some games, especially Fallout 3 or console ports, work flawlessly with the controller.

Yeah, I have a 360 controller plugged in there just in case. The only game I've used it for recently though is Assassin's Creed 2, because it seriously has essentially no UI support at all for mouse and keyboard. Except in really extreme cases like that, though, I play everything with mouse and keyboard.

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There's also the ability to play multiplatform games with a controller as well. Some games, especially Fallout 3 or console ports, work flawlessly with the controller.

Yeah, I'm playing through Just Cause 2 and the GTA Episodes on the PC right now with a 360 controller. I'm pretty sure that it would be impossible to actually beat Just Cause 2 with a mouse and keyboard.

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Yeah, I'm playing through Just Cause 2 and the GTA Episodes on the PC right now with a 360 controller. I'm pretty sure that it would be impossible to actually beat Just Cause 2 with a mouse and keyboard.

Really? I'm doing fine with it. I'm ranking up head shots like there's no tomorrow.

Although, I'm also quite excellent in dieing by crashing cars/motors/planes/helicopters into things.

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It's always been about 50/50 for me. I grew up on the NES but did plenty of PC gaming as well. That ratio remains more or less the same - what's changed over the years is the amount of time I devote to games altogether, rather than between platforms. I was as hardcore as they came during my pre-adolescent years, but these days most gamers probably wouldn't consider me very far north of casual. But yeah no, it was always about an even split for me I'd say.

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I have my PC set up to plug into my TV so I can sit on my couch and game. The couch probably isn't as conducive to PC gaming as it is console gaming, but it's not too shabby. I do use a trackball mouse, though, so I guess if you use a standard mouse (and really I'm probably the only crazy person who doesn't) couch gaming would be more difficult. I also have a monitor hiding on a desk behind my TV so if my wife is watching her stories I can still play games. It's nice.

Yeah, I just don't find using a mouse and keyboard relaxing. The other thing I mentioned about HoMM3, well I do a lot of writing on my Laptop and if I had distractions like that 2 clicks away I am afraid that I would never get any work done.

I re-read my post and the last sentence seems a little stand-offish. To justify it, gaming for me is a rather consuming hobby as it is. The last thing I want is for my last bastion of defence against me spending even more time gaming, to be overrun.

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Really? I'm doing fine with it. I'm ranking up head shots like there's no tomorrow.

Although, I'm also quite excellent in dieing by crashing cars/motors/planes/helicopters into things.

Hmm, maybe I'll give it another try. It was the helicopter controls that really threw me for loops, I felt like I was playing hand twister to get off the ground, or descend, or bank. Also, before I bought my PC I had put about 50 hours into the game across the 360 and PS3, so the controller just feels "right."

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I've played everything on a monitor in whatever student room for the last few years. I was only able to use a PS3 after getting a new monitor that supported HDCP DVI, it doesn't do VGA like the 360. I couldn't use a Wii even if I wanted to. The Dreamcast beats the Wii on video output options...

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I'm with Shawn Elliott on the "comfy couch" fallacy. My computer chair is pretty damn comfortable, and my couch is only more comfortable when I'm lying down. And unless I'm playing something completely uninvolved I tend to sit up while playing console games. Plus, the logistics of playing a game in a common room, dominating the TV, exposing everyone to your questionable tastes and explosive soundtracks make the PC a much more comfortable platform in many other ways.

There are certain games I still feel are made for consoles. Social games like SMB Wii and guitar hero or 3rd person games like Tony Hawk that are designed so completely to be played with a controller. But if I'm given a choice, a game is not just a sloppy port, I'm going to play it on my PC.

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Yeah, I'm playing through Just Cause 2 and the GTA Episodes on the PC right now with a 360 controller. I'm pretty sure that it would be impossible to actually beat Just Cause 2 with a mouse and keyboard.

I beat The Ballad of Gay Tony with mouse and keyboard, and what I did play of Just Cause 2 was also with M/K.

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I beat The Ballad of Gay Tony with mouse and keyboard, and what I did play of Just Cause 2 was also with M/K.

I beat GTA:3 at least twice with mouse and keyboard, but haven't quite felt it going back. As with Just Cause 2, I think that once I've played through a game with a controller it's hard for me to re-wire my brain to a different control scheme.

I played about an hour of Just Cause 2 with mouse and keyboard today, it was nice on foot but I did have troubles with piloting aircraft.

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Yes, the aircraft controls are a bit tricky with the keyboard because there isn't really a scale, just the binary key pressed, or not. Maybe they should have used a similar control scheme as with the helicopter, i.e. use the mouse for steering.

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Gta 4 and Just Cause 2 pretty much just control like a fps...it's fine. However helicopter piloting in gta can go straight to hell.

Oh and for the topic at hand. I started with atari/Pc. I remember my dad teaching me dos commands so I could run games on my own. I mostly just crashed a plane a lot in the first microsoft flight simulator. I was mainly PC, though we did have an NES and sega genesis. As much as I liked the consoles, the PC just had more entertaining stuff. Nothing could touch X-Wing/Tie Fighter/Mechwarrior.

Edited by Brannigan

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In an effort to get this back on track..

By all means keep up the answers to the original question! I'm surprised people have taken such a liking to this thread.

Side-thread

Have the type of games you play changed?

For me, kind of, but not really.

I love Goldeneye and Perfect Dark, and I still like FPS. What's changed is that I play them on the PC sometimes. The only FPS that I can remember playing on the PC is the PC Gamer Demo for Jedi Knight II: Dark Forces (I think that's it). It was fun, but it was still kinda weird for me to use mouse/keyboard (if it even used a mouse). I'm still console centric when it comes to FPS, as they tend to be multiplayer games over other genres. This is undoubtedly due to the fact that I didn't grow into FPSs on the PC, so I'm not as attuned to the mouse and keyboard as I am to a controller. For singleplayer it's no problem, but for multiplayer it means I get consistently murderated.

Other genres have also stayed the same; strategy, RPG, racing. But types of games within these genres have changed. I've gone for RTS to turn-based, JRPG to Western, and Mario Kart to Forza.

The one that has changed is sports games. I used to be a BIG wrestling fan, so I was a BIG wrestling game fan. WWF Attitude and WWF No Mercy were some of my favorite games for N64. As the games got worse and my interest waned, those dropped off altogether. Eventually I gained an interest in American football and got a few Maddens. This culminated in my recent discovery of hockey; and thus NHL09.

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I'm still console centric when it comes to FPS, as they tend to be multiplayer games over other genres. This is undoubtedly due to the fact that I didn't grow into FPSs on the PC, so I'm not as attuned to the mouse and keyboard as I am to a controller. For singleplayer it's no problem, but for multiplayer it means I get consistently murderated.
The other factor is that, controls aside, people on the PC tend to be better. There are exceptions with things like Halo match making, but the console shooter environment has always been about randomly being paired up with morons who only play with other morons. If you go to youtube and search for kill streak video on a console game like MW2, you're bound to find some average dude mowing down people that are basically running into walls looking at their feet. On the PC you may stumble into a server of people with only 2 months of experience with whatever new game you're playing, but 15 years of Counter-Strike and Quake under their belt. The solution is TF2, where class diversity evens out the learning curve, while skilled players are still rewarded.

Back to the original question. I guess the first games I played were on PC, but they were a bit too advanced for me to really grasp. I remember playing Test Drive and Hack on my dad's computer, and really old stuff on my Uncle's Mac. I played a bit of Atari, and a lot of NES at friends houses, but I was one of the only kids who didn't get one for Christmas as my parents were recently divorced and I guess dirt poor. It became a bit of a trend for me that I would play console games at friends houses, and PC games at home. I spent probably half the year probably at my cousin's house, and I probably ended up playing those games as much as anybody.

But like Chris, we were always able to afford a PC that was going out of style and my dad needed one for running his business. It wasn't till university that I bought a graphics card and later built a gaming PC from the ground up, and the way I've slowly upgraded since has always made it an inexpensive hobby.

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I re-read my post and the last sentence seems a little stand-offish. To justify it, gaming for me is a rather consuming hobby as it is. The last thing I want is for my last bastion of defence against me spending even more time gaming, to be overrun.

You don't need to justify or qualify anything of the sort on this forum!

How you manage your time is your business, and I'm sure a lot of us are intimately acquainted with how gaming to the exclusion of other important life activities can be a huge detriment.

I once failed at something important seriously enough due to excess gaming that I unplugged everything in the house in an rage, scrawling a sort of ad-hoc warning logo I made up on the spot onto a series of post-its and slapping them on everything electronic in sight... It was a skull-like symbol with a stylized arrow for an eye pointing downward to signify where I'd fall if I didn't control myself. Look up and to the left a little bit... The meaning may have sort of evolved over time, but I'm still making use of that "downfall" logo.

As for operation side-thread: Type of game tending history, I'll have to think a bit and post again after reading a few more of your replies in this really stellar thread!

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PC for me as well. Like most kids, I had a NES, SNES, and Genesis, but those were games I was playing when I was 8-10. My first big delve into the gaming world was with X-Wing and Star Wars Chess. Then after meeting a kid who had an older brother that was into PC games, I had a flood of excellent titles. X-Com, Civ, Privateer, Tie Fighter, Doom, Sim City 2000 (I think, same time-frame, right?), and Warcraft. It boggles my mind that I was able to wade deep into these games at the tender age of 12.

Right after this, I moved from Arizona (back to) the northwest in the middle of the school year. As a result, I delved deep into games and online gaming. Quake and the Team Fortress mod for Quake is where I was introduced to online FPS's. For the next 5 or so years, I didn't own a single console. It was all PC games all the time. At that point, I also got into MUDs big time which helped develop my typing skills to what they are today. My biggest obsession/dedication to a game was during my freshman/sophmore years of high school with Tribes and Counterstrike. To this day, Tribes is still my #1 game of all time ever, and it breaks my heart that people didn't play Vengeance more.

I dipped in and out of consoles during my high school/college years, mostly playing racers, sports games, and Halo with buddies. Console gaming was always more of a social occasion than it was a serious gaming thing for me. When I wanted a gaming experience, it was to be found on the PC. Fortunately for me, I have a great group of friends that have built up since my Jr. High years that still play games together on vent close to every night. I'd say I'm about 90/10 on my PC/Console ratio.

*edit*

After reading some of the other posts, I'll say that my family didn't have a lot of money growing up. My introduction to PC games was on my mom's Pentium 90 which she purchased to do medical billing out of the house. Playing Quake and the like was all on a 486DX-10 running Win 95. As gaming was my only semi-expensive hobby, my folks would buy me a new computer about every 3 years for Christmas.

I was also the first neighborhood in the first city to ever get cable internet back in '98 or '99, again to support my mom's growing medical billing business. It was called @home at the time which would eventually become Comcast. Having an unlocked cable internet connection, and being one of maybe 5 computers on the network, the world opened up to online gaming possibilities. I'm talking like 20-30 ping to most FPS servers, and a 4MB download rate. Oh those were the days....

Edited by Michalius

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Yeah, I'm playing through Just Cause 2 and the GTA Episodes on the PC right now with a 360 controller. I'm pretty sure that it would be impossible to actually beat Just Cause 2 with a mouse and keyboard.

Meh, I completed it in 28 hours without any trouble. Anyway:

I started on gaming in a similar way to most people here when my dad got a 286 for his work. I played a lot of Lemmings and Hugo's House of Horrors on that thing for a while. I think I was about 3, and the text parser for Hugo helped me work out vocabulary and spelling long before elementary school did. Lemmings helped me work out planning skills as well. My mum tried to buy only games that she could see having developmental benefits to me. My dad was born in 1935, so he never really caught on to using the computer for anything besides word processing and solitaire, but my mum helped me work stuff out. Either way, I started really getting into games at my babysitter's house the next year. She had two teenaged daughters with an NES, and every day after kindergarten until my mom got out of classes (at the time, she was getting her Master's of Social Work) I would sit there and watch them play Battletoads, totally fascinated. I decided that I must have a Nintendo for my fifth birthday. I begged for months, and when December of 1992 rolled around I got an SNES as a combination birthday/Christmas present. It came bundled with Super Mario World and Super Mario All Stars, and that was all I needed until my a year later, when I got Donkey Kong Country 2 and Mario Kart. Those games, and eventually a Power Rangers licensed beat 'em up, were all the game that I had until 1998. I still played some things on PC, mostly adventure games as the old computers that my dad could pick up could actually run them, but I was a Nintendo kid. I later got a Virtual Boy, also as a combination birthday/Christmas present (9th birthday this time) but never had a game aside from the bundled Mario Tennis game.

In 1998, my father had a heart attack and died. My mum was still finishing her studies (PhD in Social Work at this point) and had to raise my sister and I on the money that she was making as a TA at the University. I was 10, and had nothing to do other than retreat into my games. Some people in the neighbourhood (small, close-knit town) pooled some money and got my sister and I an N64 for Christmas that year, which came right after my 11th birthday. My Godmother got me Ocarina of Time, and my sister got Diddy Kong Racing. We played those two games exclusively for years, except for sometimes borrowing Goldeneye or something from a friend.

In 2001, my mum finished her studies and was hired teaching at the University of Calgary, so we moved out West. She got a computer from work, which was the first time I'd seen something newer than a 486. I instantly became a PC gamer. Starcraft and Diablo 2 were my big ones, but I finally got Half Life around the same time and started getting into FPSes. Got Quake 3 and the like pirated (I now regret those days, and have tried to make up for them) and played a lot of games for almost no money. Saved some cash and got a Gamecube around the same time, but never played much aside from Zelda and Metroid Prime.

Got a job when I was 16 and went console crazy now that I finally had some money to spend on it. Got a PS2 for Katamari and an Xbox just because. Had some fun with those, and given my SNES and N64 upbringing, have never minded console controls for games. Nowadays, I work full time and can afford all consoles and portables (if sometimes only just), but given the choice I'll always play on a PC first. It was where I diversified my gaming, where I discovered that companies other than Nintendo make games, and importantly was cheap enough (again, I repent for my piracy) that I could turn it from a diversion into a hobby.

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Side-thread

Have the type of games you play changed?

For me, kind of, but not really.

For me, as someone raised on platformers and adventures. I've had a hard time branching out. I'm still very shy of strategy games, sports games, and FPS stuff. It's not like I would be bad at these games or have a hard time aiming or making a strategy if playing or something, I've just never had that moment where I say to myself, "Man this is fun gameplay, I want more like this!"

I still feel like I just want more good adventures or more puzzle platformer in the vein types like Oddworld or Another World. Any kind of hybrid games of some of said genres are fine too. It's nice the story setup methods from adventure games have branched out to other games since, as it helps me branch out, but more often than not, I'm still having to force myself to complete games from other genres I'm not used to.

There was a point where I was playing a lot of various Worms games for years with friends in middle school online, but I could still not bring myself to get into Starcraft with them at the same time. After that, we all went to different high schools and there was a year or two where I resolved that I would only own or play games I knew I could complete, shunning things with twitch gameplay or remembering hard button combinations that would somehow allow me to do some trial and error task over and over. Somehow I was rationalizing that I want to own game I'll replay when I'm 50 or 60, and if I'm that old I'll never be able to beat that shit. It's still an odd fear of mine, but I think since then I've just delved into more action and timing games that require harder and harder precision in the last 9 years or so.

I don't know if PC and consoles has much to do with this though.

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Have the type of games you play changed?

Another "sort of."

Partly because the types of games available (e.g. they don't make so many point and click adventures nowadays).

Partly because of changing priorities. For instance, I used to have way more free time and not so much in the way of discretionary funds, so jrpgs accounted for much more of my gaming time, but while I still like rpgs, I'm more favorably disposed to a 10 hour game nowadays and I'm certainly much more likely to cut my losses and bail on something like Final Fantasy 13 without finishing it.

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Side-thread

Have the type of games you play changed?

Lets see, started out really getting into Privateer, X-Wing/Tie Fighter, Civ, Warcraft/II, Quake, and MUDs.

Most played games of the past two years were Hearts of Iron 3, Civ 4, Dawn of War II, APB, Champions Online, Modern Warfare 2 (friends gifted it to me on Steam because I was boycotting), Mount and Blade/Warbands, and Fry Cry 2.

HoI3 + Civ 4 = Civ/X-Com

~APB, CO = MUDs

MW2, ~APB = Quake

The only thing missing is a good space sim, but that has a lot more to do with there being a lack of them. I will say that I no longer own a joystick, and that used to be one of the peripherals that I saved up random job $ for, and lusted after the newest tech.

I do stick by the claim that no MMO has ever come even close to the amazing gameplay and immersive world of my favorite MUD, Dark and Shattered Lands. A good buddy of mine still plays it, and I get the itch every year or so and jump back in for a few weeks.

I think the reason why I've shied away from the action-adventure/platforming type genres is that I played PC Games primarily growing up, so I never really experienced the genre or learned the ropes. I must be an odd duck if playing through Uncharted is like pulling teeth, but messing with sliders for 4 hours in Hearts of Iron tickles me.

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Some of my earliest memories are of video games. I have memories of playing the Intellivision as far back as I can imagine. Since it came out in 79 and I was born in 1983, I guess I've been playing video games since I was a baby. The Dungeons and Dragons game on Intellivision used to scare the crap out of me. The loud, jarring sounds in that game along with the extremely limited visibility made for many startling encounters with monsters. I still hold that the gameplay mechanics of this game made it scarier than it would seem for a 2-bit system.

A video of that game if you never played it:

In about 1988 or 1989 my brother and I got a Nintendo. We played all the classics, Zelda, Mario, Final Fantasy, Contra, Blaster Master, Castlevania, Excitebike and had other less known games such as Milon's Secret Castle (one of the hardest games I've ever played), Fester's Quest, Strider, Lifeforce and the list goes on and on.

My brother and I played the hell out of the Nintendo and have both since bought every Nintendo console that has come out (not including handheld units). On the SNES we played a lot of Final Fantasy IV & VI. And on the 64 I remember thinking the world of Mario 64 was so lush and full that I didn't even need bad guys to have a good time. I could just run around and explore the beautiful world forever.

In 1993 a friend of my brother's (who also happens to by Olympic gold medalist Joey Cheek :-D) got the Doom shareware on a computer. I remember thinking there was nothing like it. It wasn't long before we had our own 75 megahertz Hewlett-Packard and had beaten the Doom shareware (on a floppy disk) hundreds of times. It wasn't long before I saved up enough money from working at a grocery and mowing lawns that I got my own computer. Let the games begin!

Then I had my first multiplayer experience with Doom's not-so-user-friendly modem connection program. I played a lot of cooperative and a little deathmatch with my brother and his friends. I remember calling up his friends who I barely knew (my brother is 4 years older than me) and asking them to play with me. Nobody wanted to deathmatch anymore though, because I was the first of our group that began using the keyboard AND the mouse. The rest just relied on the keyboard. As a result, I was often the winner. Yay for right click strafing! :tup:

Then multiplayer games became much more common. I played a lot of Diablo and Starcraft (thanks Battlenet!) with friends and then I was finally, fully pulled into the world of PC gaming when my friend in high school introduced me to a game that would change my life. The game with the highest skill ceiling I've seen in any game to date (in my humble opinion!)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_Fortress_Classic

Team Fortress Classic. I played TFC for nearly 10 years, about 5 of those competitively. As a natural progression, I now play a lot TF2. Basically any Valve game, as I have a great appreciation for what they have done for cooperative gaming.

In conclusion, I used to be 100% console, and now am about 90% PC gamer.

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Have the type of games you play changed?

Sadly, yes.

Back when the PC was all I knew, and I wasn't keeping up with the nonstop hype of the video game internet cycle (hell, before there was such a thing), I played an amazingly broad variety of games roughly equally. I'd play adventure games, action games, shooters, strategy games, platformers, turn-based strategy, real-time strategy, RPGs of various types, simulations, space combat games, etc., all of which were available on the PC in abundance.

Now, just like everyone else (it seems), I seem to have funneled down to mainly playing first- and third-person action games of various types, because that's what the industry and the audience have decided is the rough category of games that is worth pursuing. They can include action and action/adventure and RPG or whatever, but the point is, you're controlling primarily one person from a fairly up-close perspective and working through a pretty clear narrative, with mechanics that largely consist of killing dudes.

It seems that that is the kind of game that is both easily marketed and described, and easily developed for a broad number of platforms, which means it gets all the support.

Thanks to that evolution, in my mind I can't help but see those games as the "default" form of video game, and then all the rest of the genres as the "other" types, even though I didn't used to make that distinction at all.

I still think my openness to genres is much wider than that of most gamers, and I definitely credit my PC gaming upbringing for that, but it bothers me that I no longer see the medium as such a smooth continuum, and that the industry itself can apparently no longer support that continuum particularly well.

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