Thursday 23 April 2009

Gaming

Gaming means different things to different people. To some people, gaming means putting a strap around your wrist and waving your arms about. To some people, gaming is about getting home from work and spending an hour on their xbox. To some people though, gaming is a whole part of their lives. Some people will spend up to 6 hours a day sitting in front of a screen; fighting a war, playing football or acting like a guitar hero. So what is gaming for me? Well thanks to the interwebs and my keyboard I can tell you :)

Unfortunately, I sit somewhere in between the second and last category, I spend about 15 to 25 hours on that treacherous machine every week. I don't think I'm the worst though, I don't think I'm one of those people who sit in their parents basement and gets angry when they are killed by a spawn-killer or the sort of person who begins to cry when a rogue grenade blows their legs off. I see myself as a fairly casual gamer to be honest. But I wouldn't have said that about myself a year ago.

In fact, about two years ago, I became addicted to the MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) that is called World Of Warcraft. This game is based in a virtual world of monsters and dragons, where people fly around shooting lasers at people. It is what I call an excelled reality, in that it takes the mundane lives of people worldwide and makes it into a magical world where even the lowliest person can get to the top. The problem I found with this game is how much it sucks you in. It saddens me to see people who will sit there hours after midnight to raid (a large group of people venture to kill a large monster) with their guild (a group of 'friends' who fight and work together).

So what's the big issue? People are playing with each other (no..not in that way), chatting and making friends. Well are they? The only person whom I still keep in contact with from my two years on that blasted game lives fairly nearby but I've never seen him or spoken to him on anything apart from Skype, Ventrillo (a bit like Skype) or MSN. So are you really developing a social life? Some people do. A chap who went under the name of "Wmil" was a big member of the community and was 'out-of-warcraft' friends with a lot of the people.

So there, my thoughts on modern gaming. If it were me, I'd prefer to go back to the days of the Nintendo or Playstation One, but I guess that as games like World of Warcraft are released, and as we continue to have more and more 'NEXT-GEN' consoles shoved down our throats, we must accept that we will soon all be living virtual lives.

And to be honest...that wouldn't be half bad.

-Steve


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