Gaming...

To me games are much more than a visual story, or time fillers. I believe being good at gaming is much more than quick reactions and a sharp mind for strategy and problem solving. Just as with most other 'creative arts' I believe gaming can be used to express, inspire, and captivate, but I believe most of all this is not appreciated by most people playing games today.

There was a time when if you had any skill with video games you would have been considered a 'nerd' (before it became popular to be one) and be shunned from most social circles. Since the early days of the next gen consoles being a gamer has turned into something almost completely opposite. These days having stand out skills at any game earns you respect from your peers and in some cases fame and even fortune. I refuse to believe its due to more than more accessible on-line gaming that being a gamer now has such different connotations to just 3 or 4 years ago.

I've played games since I was 3 years old, throughout my life the people I've considered my best friends have always shared my love for video games, growing up finding peers with the same passion for games was difficult, but I probably wouldn't have realised just how difficult if not for the release of the original Modern Warfare. Since its release Modern Warfare has been the introduction to not just multi player gaming, but gaming as a whole to allot of people who now consider themselves gaming.





Just as in the music and film industry, a healthy portion of true gamers (those who have been gaming way before Xbox Live and the Playstation network) find themselves frustrated thanks to the wave of 'commercial' gamers that now shape what video game creators are doing, to ensure they meet there targets and stay in their jobs, rather than trying to create unique and memorable games. Thus creating games that some see as of a lower quality to appeal to the masses. At the same time without the recent increase in interest in gaming, us 'old skool' guys would still be considered undesirable and throw ourselves into our gaming even more, supporting the stereotype so many of us struggled with, in particular during school years.

This is a topic that has no obvious opinion, if any at all. Not many people I try to discuss this with have a strong opinion, which I find quite unnerving, especially when I'm looking for the views from people I know have been gaming hard the majority of their lives. Id hate to see gaming turn into something like film or music, that it can only be dominated by a handful of creators, regardless of the quality of what they output. Perhaps the climb in social status of gamers has blinded many to how gaming is changing?