Baby Boomers. Straightforward. What was the generation of their kids? It's my generation and I'm not certain. They tried Generation-X, "Gen-Xers" to be hip, but that didn't really work. I mean Gen-X should have started in 1965 and lasted to 85 but it doesn't seem right to call a 46-year-old man Gen-X, just because the marketed "cool" aspect is gone by middle age. I heard a theory saying Gen-X stopped with 1979, making me the last year of it. After that was the Reagan Generation or the MTV Generation or something, but then even that got shrunk down to about a decade because there needed to be a generation for the Computer or Internet ("Dot Commers"?). I say from now on we can pretty much just label them all the Failure Generation. Damn uppity kids.
Okay, anyway, enough of bitching about that. I'm just saying, the whole idea of a generation was that there would be some sort of way to identify them through shared ideals. If I'm Generation X, and the youngest of the batch at that, then what I'm going to say isn't going to be shocking to my fellow Xers.
@$#! online gaming.
I came of age on NES. That system was freaking awesome. 8-bits and it was genius. It was reminiscent of arcade culture where when your character died, you started over again and the only way to show you were a true, unadulterated bad-ass was to be a true, unadulterated bad-ass. You didn't get to continue unless you had a cheat code. Try winning Contra without up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a, start. I dare you. Castlevania might as well be impossible. You wanted to achieve on the NES, you gawddamm achieved or you sold the game to a friend for half what you paid for it and lied about being bored with it.
Sure, not all games were hard, but there was a feeling like you were pretty special if you could win an NES game. I remember friends inviting me to their house to show them how to beat Goonies 2. They sat and watched. If it was time for me to go home to, you know, sleep, I'd just press pause, turn off their TV and then come back at retarded o'clock the next morning and they'd keep watching. Saving mermaid Annie and beating the Fratellis was THAT big of a deal. Sega Genesis was similar. I didn't get real far with Altered Beasts. Where did it change? The Playstation.
Now, you might say "You're missing PC games." I'd answer, "Yeah, because I wasn't a dork." I liked video games. I wasn't sickly white from not seeing the sun for months at a time and wallowing in my 4-days-worn underwear. PC gamers back then seemed like the D&D kids with a new format. I never did the D&D thing. I played sports. Sunshine was my friend.
Anyway, most kids were like me. We liked sunshine and girls and consoles (even if I was, and am, intimidated by women). Playstation sorta ruined all of it. With the Playstation, you had the memory card and could save, the graphics were good enough for cinematics, and you could have voices. Videogames became like movies.
Because they were like movies, and so much time was put in those cinematic flourishes, the developers sure as hell weren't going to make the games so hard you wouldn't see what they'd dumped the majority of their budget on, so they made them so you could restart levels or go to checkpoints. Then they discovered that people are lazy and *like* feeling like winners. Then games got too easy and they had to start having various difficulty levels.
I HATE difficulty levels.
The first time I play a game, I don't want to play on super-duper-insane, because I don't want to kick the dog and threaten to murder my mother out of frustration. I pick the "normal" and I fly through the damn thing. Then, I'm good to go at playing "hard", but by then I already know the story line and don't really care about beating the game with a piece of tofu as my only weapon. By then, I'm looking for something else. So, yeah, I'm kinda lazy too. But I liked it better when there was one level and it was tough as balls and you had to deal with it. Nothing pisses me off more than when I'm playing on "hard" and am having trouble with a boss fight or something and continually dying and the game asks if I want to dial my difficulty setting back.
"I will stab you, video game!" (Punts Fluffy)
Anyway, as I've aged, I've gotten to a point where I don't play video games because they'd be fun. I play video games to make time pass (try sitting through law school lectures without them) or to keep from thinking about all the things in adult life that drive me nuts (money, job, women, etc). Video games are my zen garden. Wax on. Wax off.
Which brings me to online games. I don't want "interactive experience" with fellow gamers. If I'm not playing a sports game, drunk, against a buddy of mine sitting on the couch next to me, I don't want to have squat to do with anyone else. My video gaming is a sad little reality-avoidance technique that I prefer to do alone. Sorta like masturbation. Just because there's swaths of people who also do it to, I don't want to do it with them. Unless, I guess, I'm drunk and they're sitting on the couch next to me. Hmmm...the analogy breaks down there, but whatever.
I "game" on laptops nowadays because I travel and need to be mobile. I need a self-contained game so that when I'm in a meeting, I can be killing orcs or reconquering the Roman Empire, or what have you. I don't want to feel like I have to be tethered to an internet connection. BTW, for you people out there who can't imagine this, there are places on this planet where high-speed internet does not come out to play.
Beyond that, I don't give much of a crap about my level whatever character taking on your level more pathetic character who unfailingly destroys me because you chose not to sleep for a week. I just want to thrash things and move on to the next challenge. Plus, usually when I play video games it's because I don't want to deal with people. I don't want to deal with them in a more frustrating way (headset or in-game messaging).
Now though it seems like they're making games primarily for online vehicles. Why can't I just play a Modern Warfare game through the normal way? Why is the focus on playing with other people. I'm a misanthrope. @#$! other people. Especially the kind of people who play online video games.
The reason all this comes up is because I also like comic books. There's a game that looks cool, DC Universe Online. Well, I couldn't play it if I wanted to (no high-speed in Kabul) and then, IT COSTS $15 A MONTH/$199 FOR LIFETIME TO PLAY, AFTER YOU PURCHASE THE GAME FOR $50-60! I must be getting old, because @#$! that. I just want to play as Batman or some other super hero, beat people up and save the day. I'm not trying to join an alternate reality.
I like my sadness/ennui solitary and self-contained, people.
@$#! online gaming.
If you disagree, enjoy being part of the Failure Generation.
5 comments:
I played D&D in the sunshine. What do you have to say to that, hm?
AB. You're a girl. Which is weird in and of itself if you were playing D&D in the sunshine, but I guarantee you either played alone or with other girls, because D&D guys are allergic interaction with sunlight and humans possessed of XX chromosomes. They were sitting in their stinky underwear playing PC games.
Very astute observations, Ajax Holmes. Clearly, you are familiar with the norms of D&D culture. There is one factor you failed to consider, however: I have two older brothers. It was we three kids (and occassionally other neighborhood peeps) who played D&D in the sunshine. We lived in Florida - you do everything in the sunshine there.
You could probably write a better blog post than me then. Dangit. Foiled by a girl.
That's right. Watch your back.
Post a Comment