Our generation will be remembered for our video games. Every generation is remembered by its popular art; when you think of the 60s you think of Woodstock and hippie music. When you think of the 80s, you think of Miami Vice and the birth of music video. So when your grandchildren think of the 2010s, what will they picture in their minds? Let's put it this way:
DAVID WONG YOU ARE MY HERO! The rest of the article goes on to talk about why and how the video-game industry is basically going downhill from here. It's really interesting and worth a read, even if you're not a gamer. Also, I love the writing style, but that much is obvious anyway :D
As I explained to one of my friends who was being a bit anti-gaming, here's the deal: I personally can't stand the stereotypical gamers who don't get outside enough and live in their parents' basements and stuff. And don't argue, there are people like that out there! Yes, it is more an more an unjust stereotype these days, but still I find that people have this negative attitude to games themselves and not the mindsets of the people playing them.
So why do I play them at all? I don't know about anyone else, but I play Age for the strategy and because the Middle Ages are cool. I play stuff like Call of Duty because I consider the plot line worth something and I personally enjoy 5-hour action movies where you are the protagonist, even if it is in a narrow systematic CoD style. So yeah, the same way that you watch stupid violent action movies, I play not half as stupid but maybe equally violent computer games. And I have more fun doing it than I do watching movies, and I'm also less desensitized to violence because the vidoe games are severely less realistic.
In my opinion, there isn't much wrong with video games, violent and bloody or not. Provided you get your required dose of social interaction and outside environment exercise, feel free to
...because I know of movies and certainly books which are worse. I mean, the Bible itself is probably more scarring than Black Ops, and we haven't even gotten to this century's crap yet.
So why the problem? Well, the thing is, despite all these well-meaning video game creators just wanting to let us have our spot of fun in a different way, people take the whole thing way too far. How? Well, let's take the example of the Call of Duty series, because that's what everyone knows about, for some odd reason. Now, when before did anyone use the phrase "Black Ops"? These days, our interjections and exclamations are interspersed with words like headshot, buzzkill, tomahawk, prestiging and unlocking trophies, and various allusions to seizing objectives and claymores/C4. Anyone watching any movie can immediately recognize the guns they're using, and are suddenly insiders on the SAS/USMC. "Hardcore Search and Destroy" has become a mark of elite status.
And we haven't even gotten around to the cold, calculating, duty-to-humanity Captain John Price and his classic cigar,
who has got to be the most ass-kicking character creation since like freaking Darth Vader. He's been teaching us about honour and duty and camaraderie and also raw unadulterated I-own-the-world badassness since 2003. Come on! He's the guy replacing all the Harrison Ford characters for our new generation here!
But now because of all the above, us (we?) the gaming community end up getting hated on, because kids these days can think of nothing else! And that's the whole problem, because if everyone listened to my earlier stipulation of getting the required dose of outdoors + social interaction! For shame!
But yeah, until we re-think our strategy (as Ghost would put it), we're gonna be stuck with the negative stereotypes which also happen to be true. Look at that first image again; the problem's not what's there, it's why?
