Why I love games/Why I hate gamers

I love games.

I know, I know. I can’t drop a massive bomb on you like that and not give you time to recover.

Actually, I’m a bastard, so yes I can.

Indeed, I love me some games. I’m not really genre choosy…I like shooters, I like strategy games, I’ve even started liking some RPGs in recent years.

But where did this come from? WHY do I enjoy games as I do?

The honest truth is, it’s something I’ve never really spent much time thinking about before. I just choose a game, load it up and get playing. But I figure such a personal investigation might make for an interesting post. And if it doesn’t, I’ve tacked on a second part that is guaranteed to at least produce an entertainingly apoplectic rant.

Yet again, we have a post topic that features my dad, this time in the beginning. He was the original reason that I was pulled in to the gaming realm, specifically strategy games. Back in the day, we had an old school Apple IIc. My dad was a big fan of a game called War in the South Pacific. It was nothing to look at (seriously…Atari 2600 games could look down on this), but it was a fantastic strategy game set in the southern Pacific theatre in WW2. Anyway, I dabbled with it while my dad regularly smashed the AI. And when that grew boring, I guess he decided it was time to smash me…at the age of 10.

I lost…A LOT…but I also gained a love for strategy gaming that remains in place today. I also had to gain an ability for thinking outside the box to make the game in any way interesting for either one of us. Anyway, from their the hobby grew outwards with the addition of games like Techno Cop and Destroyer to the library of my youth. Soon, I wasn’t just a replacement for the AI. I was a gamer.

Now, up until recently, I was often WAY behind the curve. I didn’t actually own a console until the Sega Genesis. I didn’t have a Playstation or an Xbox until years after they came out. I was stuck with horribly mediocre PCs for a long time, computers that would look at anything resembling modern games for that time period and suffer heart palpitations. So I spent a lot of time with older games, especially when it came to PC titles. And I’m pretty sure that’s why I’m not a graphics whore.

Meanwhile, as I dived more deeply in to gaming, my family life was growing more and more unbearable as dad and I entrenched in our bizarre war against one another. At that point, gaming became every bit the escape that books were. For a few hours, I could sit down and concentrate on doing something else. I could get away from the never ending fights and just enjoy myself without leaving home (kind of an important consideration, since money was usually pretty tight).

So gaming had already ingrained itself on my brain as an enjoyable pastime of my youth, and now it was an escape from the (often self inflicted) disaster of adolescence and young adulthood. It was a source of creative thinking, and a source of enjoyment.

As for gaming now, I’m pretty sure that part of the reason it does fill such a big piece of my recreational life is simple habit. I don’t mean that in a negative context…I would explain my continued love of reading in the exact same way…but part of the reason that I game is that I’ve always gamed.

But I don’t have anything I’m escaping from anymore, so that isn’t a piece of it. I guess that it does come down to the simple fact that I enjoy them.

I like blowing away bad guys with automatic shotguns.

I like trying to concoct a Casus Belli to attack a neighbouring nation with something resembling legitimacy.

And I like running around as a medieval antihero, getting in bar brawls and trying to bang every chick I encounter between missions of slaughtering monsters for anyone with the gold to pay up.

I like having to problem solve and figure out strategies, though only in certain game styles. For example, while I can scheme a devious plot to engage in warfare against a neighbour to take their center of trade for myself, I cannot figure out what items to use with each other to open a chest in point and click adventure games. I can conceive things on a grand scale, but I cannot solve puzzles on a local level.

And I don’t always want to fire up the brain. Sometimes, all that I want is a chance to get away in a multiplayer shooter for a few hours, or to hop in to a music game and play that for a bit. Sometimes all that I’m looking for is just a chance to relax, unwind and obliterate some Nazis/zombies/aliens with high powered weaponry.

The other fine part to gaming is that (on PC at least) the dawn of digital distribution means there are games on sale almost all the time. The number of games that I’ve paid more than about $20 for in the past year could be counted on one hand, and I buy a lot of games. So it’s become fairly affordable as well as enjoyable. Of course, a game being cheap means I’m much more willing to hurl it in to the abyss of forgetting that much sooner if it doesn’t grab me pretty quickly, so it can be a bit of a double edged sword.

This is not to say that everything related to gaming is something I 100% love. There are far too many generic games out there, and far too many themes that are revisited again and again AND AGAIN. I’ve probably spent more time fighting the Battle of the Bulge than the actual battle took to complete. Luckily, the new flood of games from Eastern Europe and Russia has meant new battlegrounds and new ideas are showing up more frequently. The downside is that many of the games from those regions are really fucking hard. No, REALLY fucking hard.

There is one segment of the game world that annoys me more than any other. There is one piece of it that tends to send me in to a fit of rage more reliably than all others combined.

Gamers.

The mere mention of that fucking word makes me, well…

It didn’t used to be this way. Gaming communities used to be fun places. Sure there were debates and arguments, but they didn’t tend to explode in to the ridiculous blood feuds that happen FAAAAAAAR too frequently today. Somewhere along the way, things changed.

I have never encountered a group of people more willing to pull a Chicken Little and lose their shit over nothing than gamers. Fox News has a better record for seeking out factual information. And once these idiots glom on to an idea, that’s it…no actual info that counters their dumb fucking belief will sway them.

A recent example…during Gamescom, one of the announcements made by Paradox Interactive was Paradox Connect. Basically, it’s an optional system that creates an online profile (or melds that with an existing forum profile). The first step is an achievements system. It sounds like the next step is multiplayer matchmaking, something I’m excited about because Paradox games are supposed to be quite good with multiple player-controlled countries.

Information backing all of this up was freely available in a number of places, including the Paradox forums. And yet, on several forums the conversation was “OH MY GOD! PARADOX IS CREATING A FORCED ONLINE CONNECTION SYSTEM! I HATE THEM!” These screaming jagoffs were shown that it isn’t required, it isn’t any sort of activation/connection system and it isn’t any form of DRM. Did they change their tune when shown those pesky facts? Not at all.

On top of that, we have the hardcore anti-DRM reactionary. This breed of syphilitic stain allows no actual game conversation to occur…no no, he hijacks ALL game talk to be about DRM. And his opinions on that topic are to be treated as fact, especially when they’re bat shit crazy…which is pretty much always.

Then there’s the simple fact that the average gamer has become a whining, selfish brat. Conversations on forums with company reps tend to go like this…

Hey! This game was too short, and I fully equate the value of a game by its length! I demand more!

Well, that’s cool…we just finished an expansion! That’ll be $19.99!

How dare you charge money for what you worked on! You’re evil! I’m going to pirate it, and I’m telling you so, yet I still expect you to give a fuck about anything I say!

At least the pirates who then show up on the forum and expect tech support for the game they stole are hilarious…these other dudes are just wastes of sperm. Is this what they’re like everywhere else in their pitiful lives? Please, cut your wrists now.

And oh, the depressive types who immediately assume the worst about everything to the extent of making Eeyore here seem happy and cheerful by comparison. What delights they are!

And the fanboyz! The multitude of sub-retarded fanboyz! They think their console is better than yours because of who made it. They think their PC is awesome and anyone on a console is dumb as fuck. They think (insert company here) can do no wrong because…well…they’re awesome. They think (insert company here) is shit regardless of what they make. What wonderful delights these wastes of lung tissue truly are!

The gaming world would be a much better place if these morons were collectively rounded up and made forced organ donors.

Okay, enough about these pieces of shit…my blood pressure is rising. I know, a nice gaming session will cure that. Yes, gaming.

I love it. I just wish gamers weren’t involved.