17 Hours


Why Video Games Have Corrupted Us
November 20, 2008, 7:20 pm
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

I used to be an avid video gamer. Perhaps an addict. I would play them [games] from as soon as I got home from school until the time I went to bed. I played them for hours at a time non-stop, negating food (but drinking myself to hell-bound with Mountain Dew). Hunter S. Thompson, I must say, there’s actually nothing more depraved than a man who’s on the depths of a Jake Ball-esque video game binge, and that will either send you into a state of sleep deprivation or to a domain of mind warping.

I’m a writing fiend, but I know when to call it quits. I can write for hours at a time. Sometimes I’ll fire up my laptop and begin a 5,000 word tome on how Randy Moss and Cris Carter would have worked out as a much younger receiving tandem with Tom Brady at quarterback in 1998 (a Brady in his prime). But I digress.

Video game addicts amuse me with their unremitting button mashing skills that poorly translates to the screen they morbidly stare at. And I say morbidly because it’s almost deathly how the eyes both become dry due to avoidance of blinking. As thousands of pixels flash every millisecond, gamers mash the triggers, buttons, and twirl the joystick to victory.

Are you playing the games or are they games playing you?

My video game playing days started becoming hazy in 2006. I still played, but not as much as compared to how much I used to play. Everything become dull and dense. The same trite shit I’ve put up with in other games. I started taking interest in writing and a potential sportswriting career thinking, “Hey, this is something I can and will do. And if somebody asks me, ‘What would you do if you weren’t a sportswriter,’ I would have to tell them unemployed, because it’s my niche.”

The fact that the originality of video games seems to have plateaued, considering that war games are still war games. Maybe they plataued over the last year. Perhaps they truly haven’t — maybe it’s the fact that games still bore the hell out of me that triggers my disdain for the video game industry as a whole.

Next-generation — is that it? I remember watching a trailer for NBA Live 2006 for the XBOX 360, remembering the Detroit Pistons and Seattle Supersonics appearing on the trailer, with Ray Allen missing a shot and Rashard Lewis slamming it in on the rebound, right over Detroit’s Tayshaun Prince. The announcing was crisp and the graphics were unreal. The game released along with the XBOX 360 on November 22, 2005 and it was pure garbage. The false advertising in the commercial instigated quite the buy from gamers, but complaints began to augment over that and the other EA Sports title Madden NFL 2006.

Next-generation, my ass.

I’m still waiting to be mesmerized by what these nerds from Microsoft and Sony can construct. As of now, I’m bored out of my mind and would rather play Rockstar Games Presents Ping Pong instead of try to be convinced otherwise that any true progress has been made.

As for now, I’m going to save myself from the mind corrupting circulation that seems to be incessantly perpetuated by the abysmal video gaming industry.

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Why Video Games Bore Me
November 4, 2008, 6:52 am
Filed under: General | Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Video games bore the holy mother-canucker out of me. They are repetitive. Plain and simple. Most games relate to each other in so many senses that if they were anymore alike, you could peg them for being the same game.

I like playing sports games occasionally, but I’m terribly bored by a week after playing a sports game because it begins to become repetitive. The only reason I’m even amused by sports games is because they can mimic real life situations (if you use adjusted sliders to the gameplay settings). (SIDE NOTE: Try repeating those sentences aloud three times fast, because yes, I know, my use of ’sports games’ seems to be a little superfluous, but I’m reminding those hardcore video game players, just because their attention spans suck.)

Games like World of Warcraft, Halo, Grand Theft Auto (though, I did love Grand Theft Auto and managed to play the heck out of IV for a week or two), Guitar Hero, and Rock Band command people’s lives. 50 years ago, kids’ time was consumed by exercise and knowledge. Now it’s consumed by candy and button mashing.

I guess I’ve grown out of video games, and have found that there’s much more that I could spend my money on. A video game can’t keep my concentration for more than 45 minutes, no matter what it is.

I would rather read a solid, formidable book than play video games. If you’re a Boston Celtics fan, what’s better than reading about how John Havlicek and Bob Cousy were the main catalysts of the 1957 Boston Celtics or how Kevin Garnett picked up the 24-win team in 2006 to a 66-win season that subsequently landed championship number Seventeen back to Beantown on June 17, 2008?

Or what’s more interesting than reading about two people who met on the website Yahoo! Answers in the Books and Authors section because of the overrated ‘Twilight’ (by Stephanie Meyer) series, subsequently falling deeply in love with each other?

If you’re a video game fan/addict, that’s no problem — I’m not bashing what you like. I’m only telling you my thoughts on why I don’t play them and why they bore me.

Video games are fun. . . for about a week. Then everything becomes trite and overplayed. I become uncouth playing online and begin to excessively yell expletives at opposing players because the game will start to bore me.

My bore from video games started years ago, actually. Probably in 2005. I would play one game for 30 minutes, then take an hour break, then play again. It couldn’t keep my concentration.

I thought I had ADD or something.

Then, in 2006, I read “T.O.” by Terrell Owens and “Now I Can Die in Peace” by Bill Simmons, and I started really, really getting into reading. I couldn’t stop. I developed an inner-affinity for words and how they were interlaced together. I lost myself.

There’s also a study out that shows you burn more calories in one hour reading than in one hour playing video games. You would think otherwise, but because your mind is working at a torrid pace and your eyes are constantly on the go, you burn more by reading. Cool, huh?

I must be the only guy in the world at 17 who doesn’t give a flying flip about video games. Certainly, they’re fun for a day or two, but the boredom settles in. Reading never does that. Not to mention video games aren’t going to get you a career unless you know somebody that knows somebody in the field, and even then it sucks, because if you’re a game tester or designer, you have to go through the strenuous process of playing God-awful games.

Reading is strength. Writing is power.

Do what you want.

I’ll read.

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