things like this are the reason i'm glad i kind of left gaming and never really moved past the 32-bit era. were people arguing about things like this ten years ago? no fucking way. would i have had a heated argument with my friend down the street about how my super nintendo was way better than his playstation? no fucking way. he'd come over one day and we'd play Joe and Mac or Donkey Kong Country 2 and then I'd go over to his house the next day and we'd play Jet Moto 2. or i'd watch him play Tomb Raider and get all excited when he'd finally jump across some platform that took like two hours of not quite jumping right and falling into a pit before getting it just right and moving on to the next stupid platform that would take two hours.
my problem with the gaming industry is that our generation has grown up with it. does anyone really remember how shitty like 75% of the games they regularly played on nes were? because i've come back to a lot of those games i was so into when i was little and they were absolutely terrible, but it would be impossible for me to look at them any way other than fondly.
i feel like i missed the boat that sailed away from the dock when the gamecube, xbox, and to a lesser extent ps2 (though i do own one) dropped. it's impossible for me to get into games that have steep learning curves, and i couldn't give a shit less about first-person or third-person shooters or whatever.
it's strange to look at, not just how we have grown up with video games, but how they have grown up with us. someone who has never played a video game could probably never be good at something like halo or gears of war, and would most likely give up in frustration after only a few minutes. it's like trying to tackle the divine comedy when you haven't finished go dog go yet. that's why i like the wii so much, and why i honestly believe it will be revolutionary in the gaming industry (or at least, why it has the potential to be). it takes everything about the 'learning curve' of gaming in general, all of that practice you've had playing video games your whole life, and just throws it out the window. i mean shit, my dad, who still uses AOL to get online even though he has a broadband connection and you don't even have to use AOL for your AOL email anymore, owns a fucking wii and probably plays it every day. if a console as 'advanced' technologically as the wii can get my dad to call me late at night asking if i've played the new zelda yet because he's stuck in a dungeon, then that says something really big to me. my mom, who's played two video games in her whole life (tetris and dr. mario), likes wii sports. my parents would absolutely never get excited about any other console in the history of gaming, but they can't get enough of the wii.
anyone who hasn't yet should download doukutsu monagatari (cave story). it's a freeware sidescrolling platformer, you can easily find it with a translation patch with a simple google search. it is basically everything i have ever liked about a video game (and a lot of things that a lot of you gamers have forgotten you liked) all mashed up into one.
i've done a lot of rambling here, most of which probably has little to do with the topic at hand because i don't talk about video games much, but there it is. congratulations if you waded through this whole response i guess.
I think you capture the "magic has left" portion of the feature article perfectly at the begining of your post. But no magic dosn't mean we'll stop playing video games. We'll just keep looking until something else catches us. Something like 'cave story.'
I like your idea our growing up with video games. It's an important point, becuase it means that just as the generation before us was rasied watching movies and now creates forward thinking, interesting films, people like us could be creating games as art in twenty years. I wouldn't do it, but I could see SOMEONE doing it.
Maybe the Wii is the first step in this. Maybe by making games more accessable, the Wii will de-marginalize games and gamers. I'm PRETTY SURE this is what I want, but it's up for debate. Maybe I like being part of a small, elite gaming culture.
my problem with the gaming industry is that our generation has grown up with it. does anyone really remember how shitty like 75% of the games they regularly played on nes were? because i've come back to a lot of those games i was so into when i was little and they were absolutely terrible, but it would be impossible for me to look at them any way other than fondly.
i feel like i missed the boat that sailed away from the dock when the gamecube, xbox, and to a lesser extent ps2 (though i do own one) dropped. it's impossible for me to get into games that have steep learning curves, and i couldn't give a shit less about first-person or third-person shooters or whatever.
it's strange to look at, not just how we have grown up with video games, but how they have grown up with us. someone who has never played a video game could probably never be good at something like halo or gears of war, and would most likely give up in frustration after only a few minutes. it's like trying to tackle the divine comedy when you haven't finished go dog go yet. that's why i like the wii so much, and why i honestly believe it will be revolutionary in the gaming industry (or at least, why it has the potential to be). it takes everything about the 'learning curve' of gaming in general, all of that practice you've had playing video games your whole life, and just throws it out the window. i mean shit, my dad, who still uses AOL to get online even though he has a broadband connection and you don't even have to use AOL for your AOL email anymore, owns a fucking wii and probably plays it every day. if a console as 'advanced' technologically as the wii can get my dad to call me late at night asking if i've played the new zelda yet because he's stuck in a dungeon, then that says something really big to me. my mom, who's played two video games in her whole life (tetris and dr. mario), likes wii sports. my parents would absolutely never get excited about any other console in the history of gaming, but they can't get enough of the wii.
anyone who hasn't yet should download doukutsu monagatari (cave story). it's a freeware sidescrolling platformer, you can easily find it with a translation patch with a simple google search. it is basically everything i have ever liked about a video game (and a lot of things that a lot of you gamers have forgotten you liked) all mashed up into one.
i've done a lot of rambling here, most of which probably has little to do with the topic at hand because i don't talk about video games much, but there it is. congratulations if you waded through this whole response i guess.
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I like your idea our growing up with video games. It's an important point, becuase it means that just as the generation before us was rasied watching movies and now creates forward thinking, interesting films, people like us could be creating games as art in twenty years. I wouldn't do it, but I could see SOMEONE doing it.
Maybe the Wii is the first step in this. Maybe by making games more accessable, the Wii will de-marginalize games and gamers. I'm PRETTY SURE this is what I want, but it's up for debate. Maybe I like being part of a small, elite gaming culture.
Reply
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