Blog is a go!
By Thrawn1 1 Comments
I've posted a few "blogs" before this one, but they've all been fairly stupid. By that, I mean that they weren't intended to start any kind of discussion. Now that users such as Sweep and Lies have gained "blog noteriety," I figured I may as well contribute the the conglomerate of user-generated content that is Giantbomb. I apologize in advance if you find this immensly boring, because I'm in a philosophical mood at the moment. With that in mind, on to the topic...
Video games. (I've heard they're decent) What are they? The number of different answers to this question varies as diversly as the number of different kinds of people that play (or don't play) video games. For example, here's how each of the following stereotypes (and for mattbodega, I realize that stereotypes are bad things) would likely respond to this question:
1. The Casual Gamer - "I just play games in my spare time, you know, like wii games and stuff. I can probably get by on owning a few games, because of the limited amount of time I spend playing them."
2. The Skeptic - "Video games are a waste of time, energy, and resources. The people who play games are only seeking cheap thrills, as video games contain nothing that is socially significant. (art, music, literature, etc.)"
3. The Hardcore - "Video games are awesome."
4. etc,etc,etc...
I know I oversimplified the "hardcore" gamer, but I did so because I wanted to elaborate on that gamer specifically. But not right now, I'll get around to it later.
For the main point of this blog, let me give you my take on video games. In order to understand this, I must first give you information about myself. I'm generally very cynical, yet I stupidly remain optimistic about a lot of things. I think that most activities/jobs/hobbies you could chose to pursue are wastes of time. I don't assign a whole lot of importance to things like religion, patriotism, etc. Those idealistic kinds of things serve a purpose, but I'm not the kind of person that single-mindedly devotes themselves to an arbitrary cause. That being said, I completely devote myself to the arbitrary "hobby" of playing video games. Wait, have I contradicted myself? I don't think so. The things I mentioned earlier (remember, patriotism and whatnot?) are ideals that have some kind of purpose or goal. These said goals are usually unattainable, you can easily spend your whole life devoted to something such as religion and in the end, you may have realized that you've spent your whole life devoted to a goal, a goal that may (and most likely) or may not be worth all the time and effort. So what makes video games any better? Video games provide an escape from the clusterfuck that is life. Remember, I'm a fairly negative person. Anything that can pull me away from that mindset earns a spot way up high on my priority list. That might sound shallow; "who wants to waste their life playing video games?" Well, I think of it this way: Anything other than playing video games would be a waste of time for me, and video games are fun, therefore I should play them as much as possible. That doesn't sound so barbaric, does it?
All of that probably puts me in the "hardcore" category of gamers, (I promised I'd talk about it ;) ) but I realize that I may be on the extreme end of the spectrum. Which brings me to the question I wanted to ask. Most of the people who read this will follow in the "hardcore" category, and I want to know:
What are video games?
Please comment, and leave an answer if you want.
(hint: I'm looking for a personal answer. Why do <i>you</i> play video games? What are the social benefits? etc,etc,etc...)
Thanks.