Why is it that the video gaming lobby (yes, I believe there is such a thing) always address those who object to video games and the video game industry as “idiots” and “morons”?
I mean, sure, you can say that people like Jack Thompson are pretty over the top and are reasonably derided in public, but then the stereotype that all critics of the game industry are usually of his ilk is thrown about by the pro-gamer press as a rule of action, which, to me, seems unfair.
Personally, I don’t care that much for games. I don’t play them at home, and I see the folks at school playing them in the same area of the student center everyday.
Why? Well:
- I’m a sore loser
- If I play competitively, I might as well be playing flippin’ Mario Kart 64.
- It makes no sense to get into them, so I analyze them from afar off, then make my judgments and say to the other players “Have a nice day, then”
Furthermore, the gaming industry. It’s one of the most wasteful products of late-20th-century Western industralization, with billions of dollars being poured into the latest technologies for the biggest hulk consoles that can fit into a living room, and billions more being poured into the creation of DRM-laced, tightly-downtied software and firmware utilities whose compositions are kept secret from the public for fear of their 1 or 2 other competitors “beating” them in “market share” or some other consultantese.
And these corporations are the darlings of geeks because…..why? What type of good or service are these mouthbreathing wastes of space providing to Western civilization?
This also goes into the PC gaming subindustry (Blizzard, for example). For what good is World of Warcraft except personal, electronically-simulated bragging rights that translate into billions of dollars in profit for one particular corporation?
Where is the imparting, sharing, and application of real-world challenges and ideas?
I don’t find it in the gaming industry as it is, or as it has been.
But I’m not an academic. I’m a college student who’s about to get his associate’s degree. Besides, I don’t care to be right all the time; I’d like to question my own assertions before (and after) I write them out, but mostly in hindsight.
I’ve just felt out of place when being around so many similarly-aged people who were deep into gaming (video, board, text RP, etc.). It was disconcerting when I first went to Oglethorpe (everyone else in my dorm was into playing weekly tourneys of Smash Bros. Melee, also mostly knew each other from high school, and all were in the main fraternity on campus, Chi Phi; I wasn’t in either categorization), and it is disconcerting now as I often head into the Student Center at MGTC, where some of the students play on their Nintendo DSs or PSPs, or have their daily D&D card game routine.
The reason is that I, consciously or unconsciously, didn’t grow up around games:
* Mom sometimes asks me if I want to play Uno, but I usually said “maybe later”.
* I was into playing on the Genesis and Nomad back when I was around 7 or 8, but my general interest in video games faded by the time I was 11 or 12.
* Even as the church was raising hay about DBZ, D&D and Pokemon (“OMG teh devil”), I was mostly uninterested in those types of card games and only saw the commotion of the church as being their latest bout of “me too-ism”, since the initiatives to restrict access to such games in parochial settings were generated outside of the county, usually through bullshit chain letters.
I just don’t know how to react to games anymore. Trying to understand D&D, or understand card games at all, within the last two years has been one of the most mind-grating experiences I’ve had recently.
So of course I will irrationally lash out like a bigot against gamers and the gaming industry. They just seem much more influential in numbers, finances and publicity than those, like me, who find more fulfillment in operating systems, applications and networks than whatever latest gaming title or console just came out.
And yes, I am what they would call a “total lamer”. I can’t help that sort of thing right now.