Evil Empire 2.0? I don't hate em as much as they tell me to.

By bludst0ne January 17, 2009 3 Comments

Note: This is a comment I posted on the news article describing NPD's data for top selling games of the year.

Color me casual but I happened to enjoy many of the games that came out for Wii. I don't understand why so called "Hardcore" gamers harbour the disdain they do for a company that is only bringing more people into the fold of gamedom. And don't give me any nonsense about how they are just casual fools who wouldn't know good if it slapped 'em upside the head. That may be but are you only ever given instant credibility in an industry if you jump right in having all encompassing knowledge of whats what?

How many people jump into Pop Warner football running counters and traps in a zone blocking scheme? How many peoples' first movies were Apocalypse Now, Seven Samurai, or Citizen Kane? When you build your first computer are you really concerned with the multipliers on your processor that dictate your ability overclock your ram or what kind of CAS latency said ram has? Did you start putting together corsairs in glass bottles when you got into building models?

No

The truth is we all started somewhere. We saw a kid with the ball and we all chased him  in a group en masse without much concern for man coverage or zone. We were happy with An American Tail, Jungle Book, and Toy Story as the movies we watched over and over again. You wanted to make sure you attached the mainboard to your case correctly. And we all started with legos.

If my point hasn't been made clear I will elucidate more succinctly. It can only be beneficial to have more gamers, be they "hardcore" or "casual" since even if there is a greater saturation of the persona non gratas they will be allowed to grow into the industry and come to appreciate even more the reasons why so many of us enjoy it.

I know it's cute and clever and fashionable to hate everything about the Wii,  but to be honest, in my own experience some of the best times I've had while gaming have been whilst doing a three hour marathon playing Wii tennis, playing Warioware till the early morning and even getting subtly insulted by the Wii fit software.

I'm not going to say that any of the Wii games save for perhaps Brawl were in my top GOTY list but undeniably good times were had while playing Nintendo's console.

Isn't that the bottom line in gaming?

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