Last week’s “Sessler’s Soapbox” on G4TV.Com had Adam talking about X-Play’s recent achievement of 1,000 episodes. If you havn’t seen the special that aired earlier in the week, just imagine a really, really awesome clip show. In addition to looking back, the Soapbox talks about how games have evolved so that we don’t see the same kind of “bad” games that we used to.

Which is true, for both better and worse. After all, there used to be games that were so downright awful that you couldn’t help but laugh at their ineptitude. Now, those games are now gone and we are left with titles that are just… kind of awful. It’s an excellent thing to think on and I’m sure I’ll touch it in great detail one day. But for now, I’ll refrain. Instead I want to take a minute to look back at gaming past and explore why the “old days” were so much better than today.

My Youth, Defined

I’ve been watching Adam Sessler talk about video games since since I was eleven years old. I used to remember waking up on Saturday mornings and while all my friends were watching Beast Wars or that God awful cartoon based on the American Godzilla movie, I would turn to ZDTV and catch GameSpot TV.

1998 was a simpler time. Bill Clinton was President, 256MB DDR RAM meant your machine was blazing fast, The Undertaker had yet to go through his unfortunate “American Badass” phase, and Unreal was the name of an actual video game and not just an engine that’s licensed out to everyone.

Sure, the show’s production was a little cheap and the writing was somewhat tacky, but there was a real… well, “realness” to it. There was something about watching the program and being able to see how gaming was evolving and growing into the medium we see today. And this leads me to something that I’ve felt for a long time:

I Miss The “Old Days”

I don’t mean that I miss the old days in terms of the games themselves. In every measurable sense the absolute worst games being released today — the G.I. Joes and Turning Points — are far superior, technologically, than some of the better games that were released ten or fifteen years ago. My issue is not with the games, but the general gaming culture.

In the last several years, as gaming has become more mainstream, it seems to have lost that “je ne sais quoi.” That indescribable “something” that it once had.

For starters, I miss the days when a gaming console would play video games and thats it. I referenced this before in my reasons why the Xbox is better than the Xbox 360. There was a time when a video game console was truly a video game console. Now, with the exception of the Wii, gaming consoles are gone. They’ve been replaced with these all-purpose multimedia machines that play games, watch movies, surf the internet, check your Facebook, Tweet… they do everything. It’s the natural progression of technology but it also means that more and more people are getting into video games as a side effect of buying a new all-purpose machine. This leads some to adopt gaming as a hobby almost by accident. These poor bastards pick up games like Modern Warfare 2 or Halo 3 because those are the “it” games to have, they jump online and have no idea that the moment they open their mouths they’re going to be ripped a new ass by the so-called “leet”.

I miss the days where there was some sense of civility amongst gamers. This is something that the “Halo Generation” will never truly understand, but there was a time where those of us who wanted to play multiplayer games competitively would have to get in our car (or ask our parents for a ride), go to the local arcade and engage in one-on-one virtual combat with the same group of people who always seemed to be there. Sure, emotions ran high and on occasion tempers would flare, but for the most part everyone carried themselves with dignity and respect for their fellow gamer.

Then Xbox LIVE happened.

I don’t blame Xbox LIVE for what has happened to discourse in online games. I think Xbox LIVE is but one outlet representing a microcosm of a larger problem that exists in which people can hide behind a shield of anonymity and basically get away with saying some downright disgusting things. Case in point: I’ve been called some rather distasteful names in my life, but prior to Xbox LIVE I had never been referred to as a “cock-sucking nigger queen” by a twelve year-old before*. This kind of language has sadly become commonplace in multiplayer gaming. Why? Not because people honestly harbor these hateful sentiments, but because of the prevolent nature for people to “troll”; to actively act like a jackass simply to get a rise out of others.

Sadly it works quite well.

This behavior has spread to gaming blogs and message boards, where any dissenting opinion is met with a flurry of nerd rage that may include, but is not limited to:

• Questioning One’s Intellegence
• Suggesting One Die Because of One’s Lack of Intellegence
• Racial Slurs
• Sexual Slurs
• Frequent References to the “Basement-Dwelling Pasty Virgin” Nerd Archetype
• Frequent Use of the Word “Faggot”
• Death Threats Towards You
• Death Threats Towards Your Mother
• Insults About Your Mother
• A Desire to “Fuck” Your Mother
• A Desire for YOU to “Fuck” Your Mother
• Fat Jokes… About Your Mother

I’m sure I’ve missed a few, but you catch my point.

I don’t remember too much of this in the old days. Sure, they most certainly wouldn’t be published but I don’t think the print mags of old had too many letters sent to them in which a reader would threaten to slit Dan Hsu’s** man-sack because of a low review score. At least, I would hope not…

The Slow, Painful Death of the Surprise

I miss being surprised. Believe it or not there was a time when you would actually be surprised by the announcements coming out of E3. I mean truly surprised, too. Nowadays “surprise announcements” often boil down to “confirmed rumors” based on information that leaks to a third-rate online gaming blog (like this one) days before a big press conference. Back in the mid-to-late 1990s and even the early 2000s, there would be an announcement made at the Sony or Microsoft press conference and your mind would be blown. Nowadays, because we usually know what is coming days if not weeks in advance, most gamers find themselves more angry at companies for what they didn’t announce than they are happy at what actually was announced.

Back in the old days every issue of EGM, Game Informer, GamePro, etc. had mind-blowing announcements month after month that would make you tingle in that oh, so wonderful way. There was a certain anticipation that would build when you knew that the newest issue of your favorite magazine was due, and often times there’d be kids at school who would gather at lunch hour and look through one of these mags together.

They used to be called “nerds”, back when playing video games was looked down on. Now every jock stays up ’til 3am playing Gears of War and every cheerleader has a pink Nintendo DS.

We have everything at our fingertips. Gaming news can be found on countless blogs, reviews and walkthroughs are in plentiful supply with just a simple Google search, and features like this one are commonplace on aggregation sites like Reddit, Digg and GameGrep. But no amount of scrolling a webpage can replicate the same vibe that I and surely many others used to get from flipping through the pages of their favorite magazines.

“Mainstream” Means “It’s All The Same”

I miss being challenged. There used to be a time when video games would actually challenge you, forcing you to use your brain to solve intricate puzzles or test your reflexes to dodge enemy attacks that would kill you with one hit. Now, as gaming becomes more and more “mainstream”, games are one step above playing themselves while people sit on their couches, clapping their palms and giggling like an idiot. I know for a fact that this isn’t the fault of the developers, either — companies like the Guitar Hero factory Neversoft so desperately want to flex their creativity muscle on another project that you can almost hear the pained screams of their programmers hidden under the many, many track packs that are released.

This sentiment is common among many game developers.

Sadly, one side-effect of gaming becoming a billion-dollar business is that most creativity is immediately squashed by publishers and marketing gurus in favor of the “safe” option, which has turned 95% of the gaming market into a big, brown sea of mediocrity. The vast majority of video games are neither bad or good, they simply “are”. Which brings me to my final point:

I miss hilariously awful games. With the exception of G.I. JOE: The Rise of Cobra there has not been a truly, hilariously awful game in years. There have been some pretty bad games, sure. I would even dare say that there have been a few titles that border on “infamously bad” i.e. Turning Point: Fall of Liberty, Stalin vs. Martians and Naruto Shippuden Ninja Council 4. But the gaming industry, due to a combination of better technology, better minds and a desire to make every game feel exactly the same, has more or less moved beyond the hilariously awful games like Drake and the 99 Dragons and Bruce Lee: Quest of the Dragon.

Sure, video games are better off without these kinds of titles but part of me would prefer having downright awful games to having the majority of games playing, more or less, as reskins of other games.

Rose-Tinted Glasses

In the end I am aware that a lot of people aren’t going to agree with me on this. Some of you younger folks will say that this is the best time to be a gamer. Others who are a few years older than myself will say that the mid-1980s were the best time to be a gamer. It’s all subjective, I think. In ten or twenty years time someone who is ten years old right now will be writing a piece quite similar to this, talking about a time when video games were just images on a screen and you had to hold a device called a “controller” in your hand to control your character.

At the end of the day, it’s just video games. What matters is that we all enjoy ourselves and have fun while hopefully taking something away from our experience. Besides, it’s not like we’re talking about a form of art or something…

*Seriously. I was called this by a child. A freakin’ child!
**Dan Hsu is a Michigan man. I went to Michigan State. That’s the only reason why I used his name.

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