GAMERS UNITE

This post is more of an appreciation. An appreciation to a community that is very misunderstood if you are not apart of it. A community driven by a strange passion. I myself growing up played football and the passion in sports is very unchallenged. Nobody questions the love for competition on the field. Some people enjoy dancing or even arts such as painting and drawing. Again a passion that goes unchallenged. People every day read books or binge watch shows on Netflix and for the most part that is unchallenged. But video games, at least for my generation we're always what the "nerds" or word kids were playing.

Anyone who was born between 1989 to 1999 can attest that playing video games took a while to become a very main stream thing across the board. Now it appears that video games have a market for anyone. Competitive? We have in depth sports games ranging from fantasy like Rocket League to real games like the beloved Madden series. Like adventure for hours on end? We have RPGs with large open worlds and an endless amount of quests and collectables with games like The Witcher and the Elder Scrolls series. Wanna live in an action movie? Naughty dog has made games such as the Uncharted series and The Last of Us to make you feel like your a cinematic hero or living in an HBO series. Gaming has endless possibilities and the community to come with it is fascinating.

Gamers will have incredibly in depth and moral conversations over very simple sentences "TLOU2 is garbage but looks cool" boom two hour conversation. "God Of War Ragnarok will be GOTY, not Elden Ring" shit better whip out the thesaurus and the guide book gotta make a strong argument for one of these sides. But yet despite all of the arguing and long drawn out conversations we can all agree on one simple piece of motivation. Video Games are art.

Gaming is the most prestigious form of art you could ask for. When done well you have vast ecosystems that bring color and life like a virtual painting. You have well written narratives with depth and creativity along the lines with most novels. The voice and motion capture are taken care of by actors who treat the rolls like they winning Oscars. You get to escape from reality for a short time and live your fantasies. Control the outcome and live as the player. Today is the best time ever to be young and playing video games. The hardware now produces amazing works of art that are hard to believe exist not that long after we had games like Super Mario 64. Red Dead Redemption 2 is a prime example of just how amazing of a world we can build in a virtual space.

This community is great to be apart of. It scratches everyone's back in one way or another. Yes the industry is getting hard in some areas. PlayStation raising prices, NFTs taking over the world, micro transactions (thank you Ubisoft and EA), the list grows larger every year. But we keep coming back. We keep living these fantasies because we can connect to them. Some of us like myself enjoy the art form and the story. Some just enjoy being the hero and flying around for hours on end. Some would like to rob banks and definitely wouldn't do it in real life thank you GTA.

Whatever your motivation is it's out there. Trying to explain to those who don't love gaming why you love it is impossible. We used to be seen as weird and yet the funny thing is…..we didn't give a shit. We just kept thinking of new ideas and game devs bring them to life. This world is great to escape to after a long week or stressful day. I'm glad this world is getting larger and is full of great conversations. Can't wait to see the future. That's all for now.

Cheers