I'm with you on that.
I more or less gave up gaming entirely in my mid teens when Counterstrike was still a mod of HL, and the PS2 was still the hottest thing around, then came back in my late 20's to discover that it had changed beyond all recognition, and not in a way which made it feel more fun to me.
I still bring the PS2 out for a hit of nostalgic fun from time to time, and have an old PC with original versions of Half-Life, Operation Flashpoint, Deus Ex, and most of the classic C&C titles which I hang onto for much the same reason; but I'm not likely to ever return to gaming in a serious way now the industry and scene has changed so much...
The drive towards a constant drip-drip of (costly) single-player content and making online multiplayer the real core of the game is the opposite of what I'm looking for; I spend all day dealing with people, so when I want to just switch off I'd rather not interact with more of them; I can always go to the pub (ok, maybe not right now) or ring a mate for a chat if I want to socialise, and feel like it's more on my own terms.
All that said, whilst it's not for me anymore, I can see what attracts people, and totally get why it becomes a serious hobby for lots of people... Some of the excellent reasons for which
@rafezetter sums up pretty comprehensively:
That second bit I find really interesting, because it really speaks to the positive things gaming can bring to people's lives, in terms of both self-esteem and personal growth!
So as much as gaming gets a bad rap from some quarters (and there can be a subcultures within some games of quite toxic individuals who
really don't help the image of gaming), it's definitely earned its place as a genuine cultural activity which is not to be dismissed out of hand.
Thanks for the kind words of that - I'd like to add something else about my point you quoted, in online gaming it's "just gamers". Occasionally I get to have voice comms with people, but it's not the norm among "strangers", so it's mostly just text chat (for PC games anyway), and text chat has no gender or race.
Male, female, trans, neutral - and any one of the LGBTQ crowd, all chatting WITHOUT BOUNDARIES - and very very often, VERY often, if the online friendship turns into an offline one, with shared contact details, by the time you learn that "Oathbreaker" is actually a 46 year old gender reassigned female from Cardiff, married to another woman (one of my RL gamer friends), that new information becomes so inconsequential, you forget it after the first 5 minutes talking about more games
(at least those of us that are not a-holes)
It's "just people", interacting without the masks we all wear in real life. - well apart from the trolls, subverts (those pretending to be other than what they are) and G.I.R.L. (Guy In Real Life) players.
Gamers are without doubt THE most inclusive group of humans on the planet and that's a viewpoint I hold based on 20+ years of doing it.
You'd also be surprised at the feeling of community - I'd like to share two true stories, about a tragedy and how gamers dealth with it:
The first is about a Wow player - This isn't one I was personally involved with but is worth a read anyway:
My disabled son’s amazing gaming life in the World of Warcraft
The second story is about an Eve Online player called "Vile Rat" (don't let the name put you off) he was a serving communications officer in the US Embassy in Benghazi, Libya. Some of us higher up in the corporation heirarchy knew he was serving overseas and roughly what he did, but no more than that. The night of the attack on the embassy, he sent us ingame messages that the consulate was under attack - in REAL TIME - and then we heard nothing more until several days later when the names of those killed was released - and one of them was "Vile Rat" aka Sean Smith. I knew Vile Rat, and had met him once at Eve's Fanfest, an all round good human being, who served his country and just also happend to be a "gamer".
We (the corp he was a part of) decided to start a fundraiser for his wife and two children and raised over $127,000 - all donations of gamers, many whom had never met him, but knew of him through the game - as being part of the Goonwaffe's top staff, and thier main Diplomat for inter Corp / Alliance communications.
It was US, the gamers, who raised money for his family, not his co-workers, not his superiors; US. The people that many seem to dismiss as childish adults playign childish games, when the reality is often very far removed from that outside perspective.
There's also a wiki about him:
Sean Smith (diplomat) - Wikipedia
You'd also be surprised how many "celebrities" play online, because there, they are utterly anonymous.
