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The Gaming Journal #6: Gaming and the World

Its been a busy week for me. I havent had any time to sit down and play games. Who would have thought that the life of a gamer would be so tiring? Its been such a long week. Im running low on gas, and, no, Im not saying I need to eat more beans even though that would probably help. This gamer is tired.

Since I havent been getting to play games, Ill share what else has been going on in my lifeIm not going to delve into my love life, so dont worry! Ive been doing a lot of reading. If Im not playing games, Im usually reading about them or reading about other computer-related topics. This week has mostly been a quest for better knowledge of the gaming industry because, regardless of how much I think I know, there is always something I dont know.

Theres one thing that really bothers me about the gaming market, but I cant really pin it down to a single entity. I can look at consumers and gamers and see it. I can look at the publishers and see it. Theres ignorance mixed with bigotry. I simply dont understand where its all coming from. The result is a lot of lies and conflict in an industry that markets fun, and that spells trouble for the gaming society as it challenges any moral fabric that once existed.

I want to stress a few points before I continue. The first thing is that for as long as the industry has been experiencing rapid growth, which started sometime in the 1980s, there has been Nintendothe business that knows how to turn a profit. Nintendo has always been about making profit. They introduced the industry to such terms as price gouging, price fixing, and monopoly. They know all the tricks in the book about how to throw their weight around, and this is a likely cause for the fallout theyve had with other publishers.

This is not to say that the industry wasnt fun and innocent when Nintendo was number one. It was all that and a bag of chipsa really big bag of chips! We had a game machine that came straight out of the box with two controllers, a zap gun, and two games. And even after that they continued to supply two controllers with their game consoles. The only downside to that era was the price of games went up to as much as $75. However, the flagrant bashing of game companies and the constant shuffle for more intense game content was not present back then like it is now.

What the industry consists of now is a product of how Nintendo chose to run their business. And, with as many perspectives as there are on the subject, most everyone is in agreement on this particular matter. I dont lay blame on Nintendo for everything that has happened, but the gaming industry has degraded to a point that American businesses are probably happy to see. We have a massive market with diverse tastes and a feverish fanaticism for things we like. We blindly spend lots of money and defend our choices with a religious fervor.

The thing I dont like is all of the conflict in the gaming industry. I see it out in public when Im shopping for games. The stores are full of employees who have an unofficial affiliation to one console or another, and it doesnt matter which console they choose. If its not Nintendo, they are not for Nintendo. This is true a majority of the time. The problem that arises is misinformation. Thats how the Xbox wound up with a 180-bit processor in one instance, and the GameCube was discontinued in another. Its one thing for store employees to simply not know the facts, but its another when they are blatantly lying to serve their interests.

I also see it in public when Im hanging out with friends and even when Im in classes. Gaming is a hot topic, but youd think in the Computer Science department, of all places, people would have a better handle on the facts. But the only fact that people have a handle on is that they like one console or other and dislike everything else they dont own or want. Thats why one of my friends is so convinced that Nintendo GameCube isnt selling at all. His reasoning: its $100 now. As far as he knows, Nintendo is already out of the console business. He, and virtually everyone else in the department, thinks Nintendo is on its way out the door, and its because of misinformation among other reasons.

Something else I see a lot is the outright assumption by other console owners that GameCube doesnt have any games that interest them. No matter how many commercials they see or how much you try to tell them about the games, they dismiss it out of hand. Theyll admit that Mario is pretty cool and Zelda is a sweet game, but somewhere after that they stop being interested in Nintendo or any of the games being produced for Nintendo consoles. This is a clear case of not wanting to know anything more than what is already known, and the problem originates with ignorance and bigotry.

The worst place to witness this horrid behavior is on message forums. One would think on a Nintendo board, of all places, that happy gamers would be gathering to talk about what Nintendo has going right. But this has not been true since before the Nintendo GameCube launched. The bashing and thrashing was going on before the GameCube could even hit store shelvesand perhaps rightfully so. But its the abundance of negativity that gets to me.

Still, the problem spreads even further when I go to boards specifically for a video game. I go there expecting to share experiences or find new ideas to try, but what I find in addition to those threads are complaints. Gamers have turned into the biggest crybabies critics. If the textures werent crisp enough then the developers were lazy, or if the voice actors werent emotional enough then they have something against the console or companyor whatever! Sometimes its good to call a company on bad production values, but others the complaints are plain ridiculous.

I wont even take much time to stumble into the console war threads. All I can say is that the industry has taken a decidedly sinister turn against Nintendo, and the gamers are equally guilty. What I miss are the days when gaming was something we did for entertainment. I miss the days when Captain N and Super Mario were on television. I miss being able to talk about video games without debates and arguments. I miss the days when my favorite games werent treated as misfits in a world that diverged from innocence to take on more mature themes. But Im getting older, and Im sure old people have said the same things about music and television.

Now that Ive said my spill, I think Ill finally go relax this evening!