For some horrible reason, I'm following Polygon on Twitter. Thanks to that mistake, I just came across this brief article about social interaction among us "video gamers" and how we aren't the "antisocial misfits, basement-dwellers and loners" that outsiders supposedly think we are. The headline and the first two paragraphs strongly contest the stereotype against avid video game players. Loners, we're told, are actually the outliers, going against the trend.
Great, right? Sure does sound great. But it's not great, and they're not even convincingly making the case that it's true.
The article — titled Research: Loners are the exception, not the rule, among video gamers — describes a study in which researchers from North Carolina State University, in collaboration with others at York University and the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, observed thousands of video game players and surveyed hundreds more. The results of this study are published in a paper titled Public Displays of Play: Studying Online Games in Physical Settings.
Let's stop there.
Here's what you should be asking yourself: "Online games specifically? Physical settings in particular? Are we really using this study alone to make claims about 'gamers' in general?" Unfortunately. According to Polygon, the findings of the study are based on observations and surveys of MMORPG players at various "public gaming events." If either Polygon or the researchers themselves really do intend to draw conclusions about all consumers of video games based on this information, they're making just about as much sense as some guy who uses limited anecdotal evidence to argue that we are all basement-dwelling antisocial freaks.
It should be no surprise to anyone that the subjects of this study — the fans of massively multiplayer online games who meet up with other fans in person to participate in highly social activities — are highly social. Nobody would suspect they are "loners" of any kind. In other words, this isn't the shocking and counter-intuitive finding that Polygon wants it to be. It's the same kind of obvious, common-sense-confirming, almost insignificant finding that usually comes from sociological studies and experiments.
I'll admit right now that I have neither the time nor the patience to read the study in full, so I'm not sure if this not-so-amazing revelation — that the most socially active type of "gamer" you can imagine is by no means antisocial — is really the only point that the researchers wanted to make. On the other hand, I'm not sure if they really meant to draw outrageous conclusions about all "gamers" either. Judging by the title of the research paper and the abstract, I can only suspect that the conspicuous generalization of the study's findings to all "gamers" was Polygon's own invention.
In a way, I do admire what Polygon is trying to do with his article. They're trying to break down the worst negative stereotypes about "gamers" and to make video games a more socially acceptable hobby by exposing the fallacy of the antisocial, basement-dwelling, lonely game enthusiast. However, the article succeeds only in telling me (erroneously by the way) that I'm not representative of the "gamer" demographic because, in some ways, I am a loner. I'm not a creepy loner with no friends, but I do most often play video games alone. A lot of people who make a hobby out of video games are loners, and there's nothing wrong with that. We're not necessarily antisocial and I'd wager that very few of us actually dwell in basements, but it's not crazy to assume that a large percentage of people who might properly be called "gamers" enjoy playing video games at home by themselves and are less socially active, in the traditional sense, than people who prefer football. I'd conduct my own research if I had nothing better to do.
By making sweeping generalizations about "video gamers" based on the results of a study with no consideration of single-player or otherwise non-MMO games (i.e., almost everything) and no consideration of people who only play at home (i.e., almost everyone), Polygon is saying that those convention-going MMO fans are the only "gamers" who count. That's not really fair.
Furthermore, while I do, again, appreciate the effort to promote video games as a more socially acceptable pastime, I'd rather they didn't. Video games are already in a long transition from dorky to mainstream — in fact, that transition is almost complete — and while this does have benefits, it also causes problems. We've all seen what happens when developers and publishers of video games pander to the same demographic that used to shun video game enthusiasts as losers and nerds. People who actually like video games for reasons other than its new-found status as a trendy thing to do — people who, if you'll pardon the hipsterism, actually liked video games before they were cool — are now shunned by the video game industry, which is more interested in marketing to the casual "I've never played a video game before and I hate a good challenge" crowd.
So no, screw Polygon.
While I'm certain that most video game enthusiasts are far more socially active (and generally more "normal") than the antisocial loser stereotype, I'm also certain that this stereotype is outdated and no one actually believes it anymore. We no longer need use dubious interpretations of potentially biased studies, completely disregarding the majority of actual video game hobbyists, in order to remind people that we're people too.
Showing posts with label gamer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gamer. Show all posts
Saturday, March 29, 2014
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
"I'm Not a Gamer"
If you've watched TV in the past month, you might have noticed some odd Nintendo 3DS commercials.
In each one, a celebrity talks about a video game and then says, "I'm not a gamer; with my 3DS, I'm a _____." (The blank, of course, is filled with some other title relating to a hobby, career, or activity.) The goal here is obviously to sidestep any negative connotations associated with the word "gamer" and, more importantly, to attract those potential customers who don't call themselves gamers but who might enjoy a casual game once in a while. They want everyone to know that 3DS games are not just for video game enthusiasts; they're for everyone. It's also pretty clear that they're marketing to girls.
Both of these things are fine.
Do I like the commercials? Well, not really. Celebrity endorsements are meaningless to me, even when I like the celebrity, and in these cases, I can't say that I do. (Prior to looking them up for the sake of writing this post, I had never heard of Gabrielle Douglas, Dianna Agron, or Sarah Hyland. I'm sorry, but I don't care about the Olympics or gymnastics in general, and I don't watch Glee or Modern Family.) On top of that, the games they're advertising look pretty stupid. Even so, I appreciate what they're trying to do.
Not everyone does, though. The commercials have, predictably enough, provoked a minor backlash from those who are somehow offended by Nintendo's supposed abandonment of the word "gamer" and all those who self-identify as such. Browse the YouTube comments if you need an example. Why, they ask, does Nintendo think "gamer" is a dirty word? Why are they intentionally targeting everyone except gamers with their game-related ads? And if these girls are playing video games, aren't they gamers too? Why deny it? Why go out of their way to deny it?
The people behind these seemingly reasonable complaints are forgetting that "gamer" still is a dirty word to nearly everybody who isn't one. Even though we've seen, in recent years, a peculiar movement to redefine "gamer" such that the label applies to everyone who ever enjoyed a video game, most of us haven't forgotten that the original definition was considerably less inclusive. You don't become a "gamer" at the very moment you buy a handheld Nintendo console, and this is for the same reason that I don't call myself a "biker" just because I own a bike.
If you're correctly using the word "gamer" to describe yourself, it means you see video games as a legitimate hobby — you take them seriously, you spend a lot of time on them, and playing them is a part of who you are. It's easy to see why this could be alienating to someone who, for example, might just want a 3DS for the casual puzzle games and the kid-friendly platformers, or someone who likes to play iPhone games on a long bus ride but doesn't know (or care to know) the difference between an Xbox and a GameCube. This person isn't likely to buy anything marketed specifically to gamers, and Nintendo had only good intentions in their attempt to distance their product from such troublesome vocabulary. Did they have to do it explicitly? Probably not. But they successfully sent the intended message — that you don't have to be a "gamer" to play a Nintendo game.
It's easy to argue that everyone who plays games is a gamer but, if you don't take "gaming" seriously, what's the purpose of the label? I know how to bake cookies, but I don't mention in my Facebook profile that I'm a baker. Likewise, you don't need to call yourself a gamer just because you've played Angry Birds on your smartphone. Oh, you have an Xbox? I'm not impressed. Not even playing Call of Duty: Black Ops makes you a gamer. Not even Minecraft. And it's not even a matter of contrasting these (almost sickeningly) mainstream games with material which some might find to be a little more sophisticated. It's about devotion to a hobby. If you have as much passion for games as a devoted, IMDb-addicted movie buff has for movies, you can call yourself a gamer without sounding like a complete douchebag.
Personally, I don't even like using the word outside of discussions of the word itself, and I don't identify myself as a gamer despite the fact that I've been maintaining a gaming blog for nearly five months. In my own opinion, the word just sounds completely idiotic. The word "game" never needed to become a verb.
Unfortunately, this idiotic word is becoming absurdly overused by people who play only one or two games casually but nevertheless attempt to adopt the label so they can be part of some non-existent "nerd culture." There's another term which, by the way, doesn't need to exist. I'm not sure exactly when people decided that "nerd" was the new "cool" but it needs to stop. The so-called nerd/geek culture is composed almost entirely of fake nerds and fake geeks — a bunch of hipsters who choose to identify as nerds and geeks just because they want to be different, and they go on and on about how proud they are of their nerdiness and geekiness but they don't actually have any nerdy or geeky interests aside from their manufactured nerd/geek pride and a vague interest in "science" (which, to them, probably means spaceships and dinosaurs).
A nerd is, in as few words as I can manage, a person with relatively obscure interests that take precedence over the desire for social acceptance. It's not something you can become by dressing a certain way. It's not a label you can adopt by choice. Playing a video game or reading a book or watching a science-fiction movie does not make you a nerd. Wearing glasses does not make you a nerd. Doing your homework and getting good grades does not make you a nerd. If you've ever written or spoken aloud the phrase "I'm such a nerd," you're almost certainly not a nerd. If you're popular, you might have been a nerd many years ago, but you're not one now. If you ever made fun of the nerdy kid in high school, you're not a nerd. Likewise, if you ever made fun of the gamer kid in high school, you are not and never will be a gamer. So please stop saying you are.
To get back on topic for a moment before I wrap this up, I'd like to point out that Nintendo shouldn't be trying to market to hardcore gamers anymore, anyway. It's pretty obvious that Nintendo has built up a reputation as a creator of family-friendly consoles and a publisher of kid-friendly or otherwise casual games. Perhaps they've done this at the expense of the hardcore audience, and maybe that was a mistake, but right now I think they're better off trying to maintain the audience they have, rather than attempting to steal hardcore gamers away from Xbox and Playstation. If this means advertising the 3DS as a console for non-gamers, so be it. The people who were somehow offended by these "I'm not a gamer" commercials probably weren't Nintendo fans anyway.
In each one, a celebrity talks about a video game and then says, "I'm not a gamer; with my 3DS, I'm a _____." (The blank, of course, is filled with some other title relating to a hobby, career, or activity.) The goal here is obviously to sidestep any negative connotations associated with the word "gamer" and, more importantly, to attract those potential customers who don't call themselves gamers but who might enjoy a casual game once in a while. They want everyone to know that 3DS games are not just for video game enthusiasts; they're for everyone. It's also pretty clear that they're marketing to girls.
Both of these things are fine.
Do I like the commercials? Well, not really. Celebrity endorsements are meaningless to me, even when I like the celebrity, and in these cases, I can't say that I do. (Prior to looking them up for the sake of writing this post, I had never heard of Gabrielle Douglas, Dianna Agron, or Sarah Hyland. I'm sorry, but I don't care about the Olympics or gymnastics in general, and I don't watch Glee or Modern Family.) On top of that, the games they're advertising look pretty stupid. Even so, I appreciate what they're trying to do.
Not everyone does, though. The commercials have, predictably enough, provoked a minor backlash from those who are somehow offended by Nintendo's supposed abandonment of the word "gamer" and all those who self-identify as such. Browse the YouTube comments if you need an example. Why, they ask, does Nintendo think "gamer" is a dirty word? Why are they intentionally targeting everyone except gamers with their game-related ads? And if these girls are playing video games, aren't they gamers too? Why deny it? Why go out of their way to deny it?
The people behind these seemingly reasonable complaints are forgetting that "gamer" still is a dirty word to nearly everybody who isn't one. Even though we've seen, in recent years, a peculiar movement to redefine "gamer" such that the label applies to everyone who ever enjoyed a video game, most of us haven't forgotten that the original definition was considerably less inclusive. You don't become a "gamer" at the very moment you buy a handheld Nintendo console, and this is for the same reason that I don't call myself a "biker" just because I own a bike.
If you're correctly using the word "gamer" to describe yourself, it means you see video games as a legitimate hobby — you take them seriously, you spend a lot of time on them, and playing them is a part of who you are. It's easy to see why this could be alienating to someone who, for example, might just want a 3DS for the casual puzzle games and the kid-friendly platformers, or someone who likes to play iPhone games on a long bus ride but doesn't know (or care to know) the difference between an Xbox and a GameCube. This person isn't likely to buy anything marketed specifically to gamers, and Nintendo had only good intentions in their attempt to distance their product from such troublesome vocabulary. Did they have to do it explicitly? Probably not. But they successfully sent the intended message — that you don't have to be a "gamer" to play a Nintendo game.
It's easy to argue that everyone who plays games is a gamer but, if you don't take "gaming" seriously, what's the purpose of the label? I know how to bake cookies, but I don't mention in my Facebook profile that I'm a baker. Likewise, you don't need to call yourself a gamer just because you've played Angry Birds on your smartphone. Oh, you have an Xbox? I'm not impressed. Not even playing Call of Duty: Black Ops makes you a gamer. Not even Minecraft. And it's not even a matter of contrasting these (almost sickeningly) mainstream games with material which some might find to be a little more sophisticated. It's about devotion to a hobby. If you have as much passion for games as a devoted, IMDb-addicted movie buff has for movies, you can call yourself a gamer without sounding like a complete douchebag.
Personally, I don't even like using the word outside of discussions of the word itself, and I don't identify myself as a gamer despite the fact that I've been maintaining a gaming blog for nearly five months. In my own opinion, the word just sounds completely idiotic. The word "game" never needed to become a verb.
Unfortunately, this idiotic word is becoming absurdly overused by people who play only one or two games casually but nevertheless attempt to adopt the label so they can be part of some non-existent "nerd culture." There's another term which, by the way, doesn't need to exist. I'm not sure exactly when people decided that "nerd" was the new "cool" but it needs to stop. The so-called nerd/geek culture is composed almost entirely of fake nerds and fake geeks — a bunch of hipsters who choose to identify as nerds and geeks just because they want to be different, and they go on and on about how proud they are of their nerdiness and geekiness but they don't actually have any nerdy or geeky interests aside from their manufactured nerd/geek pride and a vague interest in "science" (which, to them, probably means spaceships and dinosaurs).
A nerd is, in as few words as I can manage, a person with relatively obscure interests that take precedence over the desire for social acceptance. It's not something you can become by dressing a certain way. It's not a label you can adopt by choice. Playing a video game or reading a book or watching a science-fiction movie does not make you a nerd. Wearing glasses does not make you a nerd. Doing your homework and getting good grades does not make you a nerd. If you've ever written or spoken aloud the phrase "I'm such a nerd," you're almost certainly not a nerd. If you're popular, you might have been a nerd many years ago, but you're not one now. If you ever made fun of the nerdy kid in high school, you're not a nerd. Likewise, if you ever made fun of the gamer kid in high school, you are not and never will be a gamer. So please stop saying you are.
To get back on topic for a moment before I wrap this up, I'd like to point out that Nintendo shouldn't be trying to market to hardcore gamers anymore, anyway. It's pretty obvious that Nintendo has built up a reputation as a creator of family-friendly consoles and a publisher of kid-friendly or otherwise casual games. Perhaps they've done this at the expense of the hardcore audience, and maybe that was a mistake, but right now I think they're better off trying to maintain the audience they have, rather than attempting to steal hardcore gamers away from Xbox and Playstation. If this means advertising the 3DS as a console for non-gamers, so be it. The people who were somehow offended by these "I'm not a gamer" commercials probably weren't Nintendo fans anyway.
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Five Great Games I'll Never Play
So many video games have been made over the past few decades that no single person could ever hope to play them all from beginning to end. This isn't an exaggeration; it's pretty clear that there just aren't enough hours in a lifetime, especially when you consider that a third of a life is spent sleeping while another third is typically spent on other irritating obligations such as a full time job. I'll let you do the rest of the math, since I'm not exactly sure how to estimate the average length of a video game or the total number of video games ever published, but I'm certain that you'd have to dedicate your life to video games in order to experience everything this medium has to offer.
Of course, no single person would really want to play all these games, either, since no one likes every genre and a lot of games are just crap. The list gets a lot shorter when you limit yourself to games which are generally considered to be worth playing, and there's an even shorter list of games that are so highly regarded and well known that they're almost considered mandatory.
I have to admit, however, that I've missed out on a lot of supposedly great classics. I grew up with Super Mario Bros. and Doom, and I've played my fair share of Zelda games, but there are a number of immensely popular games that I've never played, and most likely never will. For your reading pleasure, I present the first five such video game franchises that came to mind, listed in reverse order for dramatic effect.
I grew up with two brothers, and at some point my mother must have lost her mind, because by the time the Sega Dreamcast came out, we each had our own console. Of course, though we weren't sharing them like we did with the old SNES, it would have been silly to keep more than one of the same console in the house, so after my older brother got his own PlayStation, I got a Nintendo 64. He got Metal Gear Solid, and I got Ocarina of Time. Fair enough, right?
I watched him play the game for a while. It was pretty entertaining to watch, although I couldn't tell if it was really fun to play because he was the kind of person who would constantly get mad as hell at any game that presented any sort of challenge, which is probably why he hardly plays video games at all anymore. (That, and having a life.) I was really only interested in the story, even if it was hard to follow, but I never had a chance to play through the game myself.
Every time a new Metal Gear game is released, I think, "wow, that looks pretty cool, I should play it." But with a story-driven series like Metal Gear, I could never bring myself to play the latest installment without playing through all the ones that came before it (useless non-canonical spin-offs, if any exist, excluded). At this point, I'm so many games behind that I don't think I could possibly catch up. Even if I wanted to try, doing so would be quite an investment, since I don't even own a PlayStation 3. (The alternative is to watch a few dozen hours of "Let's Play" videos on YouTube, which would be fine, since the later Metal Gear games have such a high cutscene-to-gameplay ratio that they're practically movies anyway.)
I have my doubts about whether it's possible to enjoy Final Fantasy without liking anime, and my history with anime was short and complicated. I thought Japanese animation was awesome when I watched Princess Mononoke and Cowboy Bebop and Fullmetal Alchemist, but when I saw what typical modern anime was like, I was filled with shame and disgust.
Okay, so maybe it isn't quite fair to say that this has anything to do with Final Fantasy, but there's also the fact that I'm sickened by turn-based combat.
The Final Fantasy franchise is so famous and influential that I almost feel like I can't call myself a gamer without having played at least a couple of games in the series. Then again, I don't call myself a gamer because "gamer" is a stupid word, and on the few occasions when I actually watched my Playstation-owning older brother play Final Fantasy VII, I was bored to tears.
And don't get me started on the character design.
I never liked MMORPGs, and I've always refused to play anything that requires a monthly subscription fee (which is why I don't own an Xbox 360). It's probably no surprise, therefore, that I never bothered to play World of Warcraft, and that I fully intend to die without ever having played it, especially now that the newest expansion looks like an homage to Kung Fu Panda, or a strange attempt to grab the attention of the furry crowd, or both. (Okay, so the Warcraft franchise never took itself that seriously, but really, this is too much.)
I wouldn't say that World of Warcraft is a classic; it's not quite old enough for that. But it is — or was, during the height of its popularity — extremely important in the gaming world. I am, though, a bit surprised that the game ever became as popular as it did, considering its connection to a series of RTS games that the vast majority of WoW subscribers have almost certainly never played. Brand recognition wasn't a factor, for them; the game must have earned its popularity by being fun, or something. I can't say I understand it, but WoW just managed to nail the perfect combination of whatever things make MMORPGs fun for those who don't despise them.
Counter-Strike, the popular Half-Life modification turned stand-alone game, seems like a pretty big deal. However, at the time of its release, I hadn't graduated from console games to PC games, and the only "modern" shooters I can remember having played at length are GoldenEye 007 and its spiritual successor Perfect Dark. I never even played a first-person shooter online until my brother bought an Xbox and a copy of Halo and needed a fourth player to beat some racist kids at CTF via GameSpy Arcade.
Also, I'm ashamed to admit it, but it wasn't until 2005 (when I bought the PC version of F.E.A.R.) that I realized how much easier it is to play first-person shooters with a keyboard and mouse. The downside is that I haven't been able to go back to console shooters ever since. Awkwardly aiming with my thumbs just feels so wrong, and I don't understand how I ever managed to enjoy it.
The result of all this is that I missed out on a lot of competitive online shooters, Counter-Strike included. After the most recent winter sale on Steam, I did end up with a free copy of Counter-Strike: Source in my inventory, but I'm probably going to send it to someone else instead of playing it myself. I'm sure the game is fun, and that it rightfully earned its place in gaming history, but it's... well, it's old.
Don't get me wrong; I can appreciate old games. But Counter-Strike is a competitive and exclusively online multiplayer game. Forget the fact that I prefer single-player games and care little for competitive FPS — when I say that Counter-Strike is old, I mean that its online community, while still active, is almost entirely composed of people who have been playing for hundreds (if not thousands) of hours and already know exactly what they're doing. Considering this and the game's competitive nature, I suspect the players in the average Counter-Strike server would be less welcoming to newcomers than the other guys playing another game that came out last month.
Starting Counter-Strike or Counter-Strike: Source now would probably be like joining a random DotA server with no prior knowledge of how the ARTS genre works. (In case you're not getting the joke here, I'll just point out that ARTS players are widely known for being obnoxious jerks who talk trash more than they actually play and who frequently ban people from their servers not for cheating but simply for being insufficiently skilled at the game in question. I even considered putting DotA on this list, as well, since I have no interest in ever playing a game in which being a newbie is a bannable offense, but then I'd have to admit that DotA is "great" in some way, and I cannot.)
If I wanted to break into the Counter-Strike scene, I'd probably be better off buying Global Offensive... but, again, I still prefer single-player games and care little for competitive FPS. Haters gonna hate, I guess.
My first video game console was a Nintendo Entertainment System. (I was actually born just a few years after the console came out and, by the time I played it, the Super Nintendo had already been released in North America, but my parents were thrifty. I'm sure they saved some money by getting an old console, and I was too young to know I was playing with outdated technology, so everyone was happy.) Although I did, eventually, inherit a Sega Genesis from a member of my extended family, this wasn't until years later, and I only ever played the games that I got with the console. Sonic the Hedgehog wasn't one of them.
At this point, I could have gone and bought the game or one of its sequels, but I wasn't interested in collecting old games at the time, and I had no feelings of nostalgia for the spiky Sega mascot. Running fast never seemed like a very cool super-power anyway. To this day, I've never played a Sonic game, with the exception of Sonic Adventure, and that was only for a few dull minutes.
I can't really say I have anything against the Sonic games, since I've never played them. I am, though, a little freaked out by the fanbase with which I'd be associating myself if I actually decided to put the Sonic series on my to-do list. At some point over the past 21 years, the Sonic franchise began to accumulate one of the worst followings in all of video game history.
It's almost difficult to describe what makes Sonic fans so horrifying. While the most hardcore fans of any video game series tend to be a bit kooky, Sonic fans set themselves apart from the rest with some of the worst fan-art and fan-fiction ever created — loads of it — complete with innumerable attempts at "original characters" which essentially amount to badly drawn re-colorings of the original Sonic design. I learned to avoid sites like deviantART because of this stuff.
Almost all fan-art is horrible, and fan-fiction of all kinds is so uniformly bad that I wish copyright holders (particularly of Twilight, Harry Potter, Sonic and every anime) would try a bit harder to crack down on unauthorized use of their intellectual property. At the very least, perhaps this would put an end to the delusion that fan-art is actual art and that a work of fan-fiction will ever be recognized as actual literature. (Please don't use Fifty Shades of Grey as a counter-example; erotic fiction is trash, and by the time it was published, the novel had no doubt shed all connection to Twilight, which is also trash.) Anyone who uploads poorly drawn cartoons of "[insert name here] the Hedgehog" to deviantART, or writes erotic fan-fiction based on Sonic or any other video game involving anthropomorphic animals, deserves to be sued into bankruptcy.
I know that playing the game would not mean participating in this foolishness, but I just can't do it. Playing Sonic the Hedgehog after witnessing what goes on in the terrifying underworld of Sonic fandom would be like watching Signs after seeing a video of Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix viciously beating a small child to death with a couple of crowbars. (Disclaimer: this never actually happened.)
Of course, no single person would really want to play all these games, either, since no one likes every genre and a lot of games are just crap. The list gets a lot shorter when you limit yourself to games which are generally considered to be worth playing, and there's an even shorter list of games that are so highly regarded and well known that they're almost considered mandatory.
I have to admit, however, that I've missed out on a lot of supposedly great classics. I grew up with Super Mario Bros. and Doom, and I've played my fair share of Zelda games, but there are a number of immensely popular games that I've never played, and most likely never will. For your reading pleasure, I present the first five such video game franchises that came to mind, listed in reverse order for dramatic effect.
5: Metal Gear Solid
I watched him play the game for a while. It was pretty entertaining to watch, although I couldn't tell if it was really fun to play because he was the kind of person who would constantly get mad as hell at any game that presented any sort of challenge, which is probably why he hardly plays video games at all anymore. (That, and having a life.) I was really only interested in the story, even if it was hard to follow, but I never had a chance to play through the game myself.
Every time a new Metal Gear game is released, I think, "wow, that looks pretty cool, I should play it." But with a story-driven series like Metal Gear, I could never bring myself to play the latest installment without playing through all the ones that came before it (useless non-canonical spin-offs, if any exist, excluded). At this point, I'm so many games behind that I don't think I could possibly catch up. Even if I wanted to try, doing so would be quite an investment, since I don't even own a PlayStation 3. (The alternative is to watch a few dozen hours of "Let's Play" videos on YouTube, which would be fine, since the later Metal Gear games have such a high cutscene-to-gameplay ratio that they're practically movies anyway.)
Update: I must have psychic powers or something, because a new Metal Gear game was announced just after I wrote this stupid post. Too spooky.
4: Final Fantasy
Okay, so maybe it isn't quite fair to say that this has anything to do with Final Fantasy, but there's also the fact that I'm sickened by turn-based combat.
The Final Fantasy franchise is so famous and influential that I almost feel like I can't call myself a gamer without having played at least a couple of games in the series. Then again, I don't call myself a gamer because "gamer" is a stupid word, and on the few occasions when I actually watched my Playstation-owning older brother play Final Fantasy VII, I was bored to tears.
And don't get me started on the character design.
3: World of Warcraft
I wouldn't say that World of Warcraft is a classic; it's not quite old enough for that. But it is — or was, during the height of its popularity — extremely important in the gaming world. I am, though, a bit surprised that the game ever became as popular as it did, considering its connection to a series of RTS games that the vast majority of WoW subscribers have almost certainly never played. Brand recognition wasn't a factor, for them; the game must have earned its popularity by being fun, or something. I can't say I understand it, but WoW just managed to nail the perfect combination of whatever things make MMORPGs fun for those who don't despise them.
2: Counter-Strike
Also, I'm ashamed to admit it, but it wasn't until 2005 (when I bought the PC version of F.E.A.R.) that I realized how much easier it is to play first-person shooters with a keyboard and mouse. The downside is that I haven't been able to go back to console shooters ever since. Awkwardly aiming with my thumbs just feels so wrong, and I don't understand how I ever managed to enjoy it.
The result of all this is that I missed out on a lot of competitive online shooters, Counter-Strike included. After the most recent winter sale on Steam, I did end up with a free copy of Counter-Strike: Source in my inventory, but I'm probably going to send it to someone else instead of playing it myself. I'm sure the game is fun, and that it rightfully earned its place in gaming history, but it's... well, it's old.
Don't get me wrong; I can appreciate old games. But Counter-Strike is a competitive and exclusively online multiplayer game. Forget the fact that I prefer single-player games and care little for competitive FPS — when I say that Counter-Strike is old, I mean that its online community, while still active, is almost entirely composed of people who have been playing for hundreds (if not thousands) of hours and already know exactly what they're doing. Considering this and the game's competitive nature, I suspect the players in the average Counter-Strike server would be less welcoming to newcomers than the other guys playing another game that came out last month.
Starting Counter-Strike or Counter-Strike: Source now would probably be like joining a random DotA server with no prior knowledge of how the ARTS genre works. (In case you're not getting the joke here, I'll just point out that ARTS players are widely known for being obnoxious jerks who talk trash more than they actually play and who frequently ban people from their servers not for cheating but simply for being insufficiently skilled at the game in question. I even considered putting DotA on this list, as well, since I have no interest in ever playing a game in which being a newbie is a bannable offense, but then I'd have to admit that DotA is "great" in some way, and I cannot.)
If I wanted to break into the Counter-Strike scene, I'd probably be better off buying Global Offensive... but, again, I still prefer single-player games and care little for competitive FPS. Haters gonna hate, I guess.
1: Sonic the Hedgehog
At this point, I could have gone and bought the game or one of its sequels, but I wasn't interested in collecting old games at the time, and I had no feelings of nostalgia for the spiky Sega mascot. Running fast never seemed like a very cool super-power anyway. To this day, I've never played a Sonic game, with the exception of Sonic Adventure, and that was only for a few dull minutes.
I can't really say I have anything against the Sonic games, since I've never played them. I am, though, a little freaked out by the fanbase with which I'd be associating myself if I actually decided to put the Sonic series on my to-do list. At some point over the past 21 years, the Sonic franchise began to accumulate one of the worst followings in all of video game history.
It's almost difficult to describe what makes Sonic fans so horrifying. While the most hardcore fans of any video game series tend to be a bit kooky, Sonic fans set themselves apart from the rest with some of the worst fan-art and fan-fiction ever created — loads of it — complete with innumerable attempts at "original characters" which essentially amount to badly drawn re-colorings of the original Sonic design. I learned to avoid sites like deviantART because of this stuff.
Almost all fan-art is horrible, and fan-fiction of all kinds is so uniformly bad that I wish copyright holders (particularly of Twilight, Harry Potter, Sonic and every anime) would try a bit harder to crack down on unauthorized use of their intellectual property. At the very least, perhaps this would put an end to the delusion that fan-art is actual art and that a work of fan-fiction will ever be recognized as actual literature. (Please don't use Fifty Shades of Grey as a counter-example; erotic fiction is trash, and by the time it was published, the novel had no doubt shed all connection to Twilight, which is also trash.) Anyone who uploads poorly drawn cartoons of "[insert name here] the Hedgehog" to deviantART, or writes erotic fan-fiction based on Sonic or any other video game involving anthropomorphic animals, deserves to be sued into bankruptcy.
I know that playing the game would not mean participating in this foolishness, but I just can't do it. Playing Sonic the Hedgehog after witnessing what goes on in the terrifying underworld of Sonic fandom would be like watching Signs after seeing a video of Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix viciously beating a small child to death with a couple of crowbars. (Disclaimer: this never actually happened.)
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Why We're Wasting Our Lives
As a twenty-something, unemployed, grad-school-dropout "gamer" (a word of which I heavily disapprove but which everyone insists on using), I'd probably make a pretty good example of why video games are bad for society. For the moment, we're going to disregard the fact that most of my wasted time is spent on other distractions, like browsing the web and watching movies with my girlfriend, and that I spend far less time playing video games than I potentially could, because my failure as of yet to find a reasonably decent job has gotten me so depressed this week that I can't enjoy them as much as I used to. For the sake of argument, I'll make things simple and tell you that I just spent all day playing Killing Floor on my computer, because playing video games for hours on end is something I've been known to do. Now, knowing only that I'm unemployed and spend a portion of my (resultantly excessive) free time playing games, how do you feel about me?
If you're more than 40 years old, you almost certainly feel that I'm a lazy punk who should stop being a parasite and get a job so that I can contribute to society instead of wasting my life shooting zombies. In my defense, it wasn't my generation that ruined the economy while I was in college, and while I could be sending job applications to every McDonald's restaurant within a 50-mile radius (which doesn't even guarantee me a position), I can afford to hold out a bit longer for a job that won't make me suicidal; my fingers are crossed.
But I think there's a valid argument on the other end, too. It's not that I should "get a job" — calm down, I'm looking for one — but that I've spent too much of my life shooting zombies instead of building lasting relationships with living people... or something. The same goes for anyone who self-identifies as a "gamer" or any synonym thereof. Are we all wasting our lives on video games? Unless your job is directly related to developing, playing, selling, or writing about them, playing them really accomplishes nothing... I mean, aside from fun. And fun is worth something, right?
Television is commonly cited in response as being just as much of a time waster, if not more, but I'm not going to use this as any kind of counter-argument, because everyone already knows it. What's interesting is that excessive TV use isn't seen as an epidemic. It's hardly even seen as a waste of time. We just accept it, most likely because so many of us are guilty of it that it seems normal, whereas newer distractions like video games and the internet have yet to earn our collective trust. (A few times in my childhood, I was told that cartoons would rot my brain, but that was a long time ago, and I hadn't done my homework.) Why does television get a free pass? Few of the people who talk bad about video games would actually turn around and defend television in the same breath, but television is rarely the primary target of such attacks. If you have something against electronic/video/digital entertainment or the act of sitting on a couch, you turn straight to video games, because that's what all the kids are doing.
Obviously, television is a very mainstream distraction. Our parents watch TV, our grandparents watch TV... it's probably been about 80 years since anyone was considered "too old" for TV, if such a time ever existed. To be without a TV in the United States is almost taboo, and — let's be honest — the majority of home-owning people who don't have TVs are just weird. They're the kind of people who don't let their children eat candy on Halloween. Screw those people. There are also the hypocrites who claim they don't watch TV even though they're downloading entire seasons of the newest TV shows on their laptops, as if that doesn't count. Screw those people too. Almost everyone watches TV at least occasionally, so it's completely understandable that avid fans of popular television shows are almost never seen as unhealthy degenerates by society. When I watched three episodes of Breaking Bad in a row at my mother's house, she didn't tell me to get a life; she went on Netflix and started watching it from the beginning to catch up with me. If I had been playing Killing Floor that whole time, she probably would have told me go to outside.
Of course, people around my mother's age are playing video games these days, as well. They're not quite as accepted as TV, but they're getting there. What bugs me is the fact that negative attitudes about so-called "gamers" persist despite the growing acceptance of video games themselves. It doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense, but there's still some undying belief in our culture that the typical video game player is an introverted outcast who lives in his mother's basement and never showers. This stereotype lives on, even as video games themselves become increasingly mainstream (and even, ironically, as the casual video game players who know nothing beyond Angry Birds try to hijack the word "gamer" in some attempt to be more "nerdy" because they want to be just like the hipsters who already hijacked the word "nerd" so they could feel different without sacrificing their popularity; I hate you guys).
So it's not really video games that are getting all the bad press, aside from the occasional accusation that they're the sole cause of school shootings. It's the people who play them — more specifically, those who play them often — who are essentially ridiculed and demonized. People like me, I suppose. But I can't pretend that I don't see an explanation for the fact that the world still loves to make fun of us. Video games as an entertainment medium are okay because they're only seen, erroneously, as casual time-wasters (for the ten-minute bus ride) and toys for children (despite the fact that the majority of popular games are allegedly too violent for children). No one cares if children waste their time on such trivial things. Any adult who plays video games for more than ten minutes at a time, on the other hand, is going against society's misinformed view of what video games are — he's playing with children's toys — so he must be a friendless, sexless, jobless man-child who never grew up. Have I mentioned the whole thing about mom's basement?
"You think you can get to level ten?"
"Detective... I'm thirty years old, I live with my mother, and I have a Captain Kirk costume in my closet."
After all, only children and losers would spend time on something that isn't a job, a car, or a vagina.
In all seriousness, what you see in the video above is completely bogus and stupidly offensive, but it's the norm. It's the typical television portrayal of a person who consumes interactive media. The average person assumes that you must be good at video games if you're a hopeless loser, and vice versa. (Okay, so the guy in the video above actually wasn't very good at the game — he's bested by a girl, which is supposed to be surprising or something — but what's happening there is still harmful enough.) Most people, even many of those who play video games casually, tend to have a low opinion of those who make a real hobby out of it. This is why it's so easy to say that video games, more than any other trivial and meaningless form of entertainment, are trivial and meaningless.
But I'm not going to war over this. I'm writing this because I think it's an interesting topic, but I don't really feel the need to justify what I do or why I do it. I shouldn't need to. Furthermore, it's not really my intention to sit here defending video games as if I'm being paid to do so, even though I might have done this inadvertently. Playing video games is just a hobby, for me, not a way of life.
Maybe we should really be talking about hobbies of all kinds. Any sufficiently enjoyable hobby is almost always a terrible time sink, even the wholesome ones like fishing and reading books. If video games had never been invented, I'm sure I would be using some other kind of entertainment to distract myself from the economy, my student loans, and the fact that every good job I can find requires an engineering or business degree that I don't have. (They were lying when they said I could be anything I wanted. I've decided that I'm forcing my future children into whatever career is most economically viable at the time, regardless of how they feel about it. You want to be an artist? You're moving out early. Happy fifth birthday, have a suitcase.)
For me (and, presumably, for many others), the act of playing video games is, in part, escapism. This alone makes video games a waste of time, in a way, but it doesn't make them unique. What makes video games unique, if they are unique, is that they're so damn good at entertaining us, which is why it's easy to get "addicted" (and, yes, that might be a legitimate problem for many). Video games are not, in fact, some esoteric "nerd thing" that only "nerds" can enjoy. Of course, everyone probably recognizes this, by now, except for the older generations who have gotten to the point of hating all the new things that they don't understand, like cell phones and the internet. But they'll be dead soon anyway, so I don't have to it to them.
Games, in general, are timeless. Games are something that humans have been using for millennia to escape from the horrors of everyday life. I'd even argue that playing games is a part of being human, and I'd like to see you try to prove me wrong. Any game, by the strictest standards, is a complete and utter waste of precious time, but that's exactly why we play them. A game whose rules are enforced by a computer really isn't so different.
If you're more than 40 years old, you almost certainly feel that I'm a lazy punk who should stop being a parasite and get a job so that I can contribute to society instead of wasting my life shooting zombies. In my defense, it wasn't my generation that ruined the economy while I was in college, and while I could be sending job applications to every McDonald's restaurant within a 50-mile radius (which doesn't even guarantee me a position), I can afford to hold out a bit longer for a job that won't make me suicidal; my fingers are crossed.
But I think there's a valid argument on the other end, too. It's not that I should "get a job" — calm down, I'm looking for one — but that I've spent too much of my life shooting zombies instead of building lasting relationships with living people... or something. The same goes for anyone who self-identifies as a "gamer" or any synonym thereof. Are we all wasting our lives on video games? Unless your job is directly related to developing, playing, selling, or writing about them, playing them really accomplishes nothing... I mean, aside from fun. And fun is worth something, right?
Television is commonly cited in response as being just as much of a time waster, if not more, but I'm not going to use this as any kind of counter-argument, because everyone already knows it. What's interesting is that excessive TV use isn't seen as an epidemic. It's hardly even seen as a waste of time. We just accept it, most likely because so many of us are guilty of it that it seems normal, whereas newer distractions like video games and the internet have yet to earn our collective trust. (A few times in my childhood, I was told that cartoons would rot my brain, but that was a long time ago, and I hadn't done my homework.) Why does television get a free pass? Few of the people who talk bad about video games would actually turn around and defend television in the same breath, but television is rarely the primary target of such attacks. If you have something against electronic/video/digital entertainment or the act of sitting on a couch, you turn straight to video games, because that's what all the kids are doing.
Obviously, television is a very mainstream distraction. Our parents watch TV, our grandparents watch TV... it's probably been about 80 years since anyone was considered "too old" for TV, if such a time ever existed. To be without a TV in the United States is almost taboo, and — let's be honest — the majority of home-owning people who don't have TVs are just weird. They're the kind of people who don't let their children eat candy on Halloween. Screw those people. There are also the hypocrites who claim they don't watch TV even though they're downloading entire seasons of the newest TV shows on their laptops, as if that doesn't count. Screw those people too. Almost everyone watches TV at least occasionally, so it's completely understandable that avid fans of popular television shows are almost never seen as unhealthy degenerates by society. When I watched three episodes of Breaking Bad in a row at my mother's house, she didn't tell me to get a life; she went on Netflix and started watching it from the beginning to catch up with me. If I had been playing Killing Floor that whole time, she probably would have told me go to outside.
Of course, people around my mother's age are playing video games these days, as well. They're not quite as accepted as TV, but they're getting there. What bugs me is the fact that negative attitudes about so-called "gamers" persist despite the growing acceptance of video games themselves. It doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense, but there's still some undying belief in our culture that the typical video game player is an introverted outcast who lives in his mother's basement and never showers. This stereotype lives on, even as video games themselves become increasingly mainstream (and even, ironically, as the casual video game players who know nothing beyond Angry Birds try to hijack the word "gamer" in some attempt to be more "nerdy" because they want to be just like the hipsters who already hijacked the word "nerd" so they could feel different without sacrificing their popularity; I hate you guys).
So it's not really video games that are getting all the bad press, aside from the occasional accusation that they're the sole cause of school shootings. It's the people who play them — more specifically, those who play them often — who are essentially ridiculed and demonized. People like me, I suppose. But I can't pretend that I don't see an explanation for the fact that the world still loves to make fun of us. Video games as an entertainment medium are okay because they're only seen, erroneously, as casual time-wasters (for the ten-minute bus ride) and toys for children (despite the fact that the majority of popular games are allegedly too violent for children). No one cares if children waste their time on such trivial things. Any adult who plays video games for more than ten minutes at a time, on the other hand, is going against society's misinformed view of what video games are — he's playing with children's toys — so he must be a friendless, sexless, jobless man-child who never grew up. Have I mentioned the whole thing about mom's basement?
"You think you can get to level ten?"
"Detective... I'm thirty years old, I live with my mother, and I have a Captain Kirk costume in my closet."
After all, only children and losers would spend time on something that isn't a job, a car, or a vagina.
In all seriousness, what you see in the video above is completely bogus and stupidly offensive, but it's the norm. It's the typical television portrayal of a person who consumes interactive media. The average person assumes that you must be good at video games if you're a hopeless loser, and vice versa. (Okay, so the guy in the video above actually wasn't very good at the game — he's bested by a girl, which is supposed to be surprising or something — but what's happening there is still harmful enough.) Most people, even many of those who play video games casually, tend to have a low opinion of those who make a real hobby out of it. This is why it's so easy to say that video games, more than any other trivial and meaningless form of entertainment, are trivial and meaningless.
But I'm not going to war over this. I'm writing this because I think it's an interesting topic, but I don't really feel the need to justify what I do or why I do it. I shouldn't need to. Furthermore, it's not really my intention to sit here defending video games as if I'm being paid to do so, even though I might have done this inadvertently. Playing video games is just a hobby, for me, not a way of life.
Maybe we should really be talking about hobbies of all kinds. Any sufficiently enjoyable hobby is almost always a terrible time sink, even the wholesome ones like fishing and reading books. If video games had never been invented, I'm sure I would be using some other kind of entertainment to distract myself from the economy, my student loans, and the fact that every good job I can find requires an engineering or business degree that I don't have. (They were lying when they said I could be anything I wanted. I've decided that I'm forcing my future children into whatever career is most economically viable at the time, regardless of how they feel about it. You want to be an artist? You're moving out early. Happy fifth birthday, have a suitcase.)
For me (and, presumably, for many others), the act of playing video games is, in part, escapism. This alone makes video games a waste of time, in a way, but it doesn't make them unique. What makes video games unique, if they are unique, is that they're so damn good at entertaining us, which is why it's easy to get "addicted" (and, yes, that might be a legitimate problem for many). Video games are not, in fact, some esoteric "nerd thing" that only "nerds" can enjoy. Of course, everyone probably recognizes this, by now, except for the older generations who have gotten to the point of hating all the new things that they don't understand, like cell phones and the internet. But they'll be dead soon anyway, so I don't have to it to them.
Games, in general, are timeless. Games are something that humans have been using for millennia to escape from the horrors of everyday life. I'd even argue that playing games is a part of being human, and I'd like to see you try to prove me wrong. Any game, by the strictest standards, is a complete and utter waste of precious time, but that's exactly why we play them. A game whose rules are enforced by a computer really isn't so different.
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