On Video Games, Escapism, and Hindrances Thereto.

I am a gamer. I've been escaping into virtual worlds at the expense of real life for more than 25 years. I remember my first gaming system. It was an Atari 2600. I received it as a gift for my first Communion. I grew up Catholic, and like a good little clone, jumped through all the holy hoops required of me. I didn't care about God or Jesus or any of that. But show me a video game, and you've shown me my new god. THAT is a religion worth following.
It never ceases to amaze me that there are people who in fact don't feel the way I do about video games. They think it's a waste of money to drop sixty bucks on a new game that I'll play for days at least, if not weeks, months, or even years. And when I'm done, I'll play it again. Yet, some of these same people spend $100 on a purse they'll wear for a month, or they blow it in hours at a bar, and the only thing they take away from that is a hangover.
Gaming is my hobby. It lets me blow off steam. When I've had a day that pushes my tolerance to its outermost limit, I know that I can bring myself back from that edge with the proper game. If I just want to escape the world, then I'll immerse myself into a fantasy realm of magic and monsters. Role playing games make me focus only on the story and the visuals unfolding before me. On the other hand, if there is a specific person that has caused my bad day, then nothing beats a cathartic session with a fighting game or a hack and slash adventure. Unwinding after a long day requires a good game.
To be perfectly honest, I have no clue how other people unwind without them. Watching TV is far too passive to do me any good. I love to read, but if you're angry or tense, how can you possibly focus on reading? I don't get it. Then again, a lot of people like to have a good workout to blow off steam, and think gaming is too passive and lazy. In return, I can't conceive of such a thing as a good workout.
Of course, that doesn't mean that I don't have some issues with the world of video games. Some of these are entirely my own dysfunction. You'd think that after 25 years of gaming, that I'd be really good. My boyfriend has been playing games for less than half the time I have, and he excels far more in his chosen genres than I do. It's discouraging, and more than a little embarrassing. After all, I'm a child of the 80s. I scarcely remember a moment in my life without games. Either the Atari, or the Nintendo, SNES, and on through PlayStation, PS2, and the glorious PS3. Yet, despite this training since childhood, I'm merely OK at most games. But that doesn't dim my glowing admiration and love for the medium.
Gaming has changed so much since I first began. It was pretty much a platformer-based industry in the 80s and early 90s. It was a simpler time. As much as I loved games as a kid, when I try to revisit the old platformers from the day, I find that I either suck really really bad, or I just don't like them anymore. Of course, back then, games were entirely 2-D, so choices were a bit limited.
These days, games are more like movies. Beautifully rendered CGI cutscenes and in-game animations are cinematic in scale. For the first time, story has become important in genres other than the RPG. Character development, customization, versatility, gameplay and voice acting are all key to a video game's success.
Video games also have a much broader audience these days. It isn't just pasty-faced geeks so pale that the sun might burn them away. Cool people play them now, too. Grown men, and most astonishingly, women are gamers. The influx of so many different people, all with diverse backgrounds, means that there are different types of gamers. It's a big challenge for game developers, I'm sure. Unfortunately, it's sort of thrown the gaming world into disarray. On the one hand, innovations in gaming and the technology are growing by leaps and bounds. Competition means that companies need to outdo each other, and the consumers benefit.
But it's also given rise to some insidious trends. Gamers can be split into three basic types. There are casual gamers. These are people like your mom. You know, they didn't play games as a kid, or they never really got into them. They aren't really gamers. They're people who play games. There's a pretty big difference actually. The unfortunate effect casual gamers have on the industry is that there are a lot of games that try to capitalize on the mindset. These games are short, simple, and easy for the non-gamer to pick up and plug in, so to speak. Unfortunately, sometimes quality is sacrificed in the crush of quickies for the casual gamer. Is this universally the case? Not at all. Some of the so-called "party games" are actually pretty fun, if you are at, say, a party. And puzzle games can be a good diversion for a short time. But I prefer a bit more depth, so I have to sift through the innumerable options to find the games that appeal to me.
The second type of gamer is the "hardcore" gamer. These are the types that eat, sleep, and breathe games. They collect trophies and achievements so they can ridicule people that don't have them. They go on to message boards to brag about how they beat the latest trendy game in 3 hours on the highest difficulty level without dying, and if you can't do the same, then you're a "noob" or "teh ghey" or whatever else passes for English these days.
Hardcore gamers have had a serious effect on games, and I don't believe it's for the better. Developers and publishers know they can count on the hardcore gamer to buy their product. So they pander to them, without regard to everyone else. So more and more often, I'm seeing games that eschew any sort of effort in developing a single-player mode and focus on the online multiplayer mode. All the downloadable content is for multiplayer maps or multiplayer missions. It bothers me because, as my boyfriend has said, there are some people who play games to get away from people.
Another problem with games that have been negatively affected by hardcore gamers is the difficulty level. I really don't see the appeal of a game so hard to beat that merely playing it adds more stress than you release. I have fun playing through the game. I want to win. I don't want to play through the same level dozens of times until I can finally (or not) beat the boss, solve the puzzle, survive the gambit, or whatever other ridiculously difficult challenge I need to surpass. I don't care about "gamer cred" or anything like that.
These days, difficulty levels are misleading. Some games don't give you a choice, and those are the ones that worry me the most. Because I know they will end up being damn near impossible for someone with my modest abilities. Now, it seems, Normal means Hard. Easy means Normal, and sometimes even Hard. Hard means Impossible, So You Might As Well Trade The Game In Now. I have a great love of games, but not a great talent for them. Is it fair that I spend $60 on a game, but I can only get halfway through the story? I say make Easy mode actually easy. Not merely slightly less of a challenge. Actually easy. And make cheats available, so we can become unstuck in certain situations. I'm no programmer, but I know it's possible to disable cheats for a multiplayer mode and still allow them to work offline. And don't punish me for cheating. For instance, there have been a few games that allow cheats, but disable saving your game when you activate them. Ridiculous.
So, you can probably tell by now which of the two previous types of gamers bothers me most. Myself, I'm the third type. I'm just a regular guy, doing what he loves, regardless of labels. I just want to enjoy myself, and as long as it doesn't directly hinder anybody else's enjoyment, why should that be a problem? I just want to escape into a game at the end of a hard day. I want to feel the thrill of playing a game to its conclusion, of conquering the bad guys, of seeing the the story through to the end. I don't have to be good at video games to do this. I just have to love them.