Twilight of the Gamer

            I am here today to lament the death of gamers. The industry is killing gamers more and more quickly, and soon, there will be none left. If you are one of the lucky ones, one who was a gamer, who misses the days of real video games, then I salute you. If you’re a 13 year old punk who thinks you’re a gamer because you have the most kills on Call of Duty, then you are the problem the industry is creating, and I weep for your generation. Video games are made for a wider audience today, and that’s a good business plan. I can’t blame the video game industry for wanting to make more money by appealing to a wider and more diverse group of people. Games are made to be played and defeated and to make money. That’s what a business does, but it’s dumbing down and outright destruction of challenge, thought or innovation is killing what was a great and interesting group who had at one time been something special.

            Gamers. That name used to mean something. Perhaps I’m feeling elitist, perhaps I’m feeling nostalgic, but at one time in my life I was a gamer, and I was damned proud of it. I knew my way through Bowser’s toughest dungeons, I’d traversed the lost forest and found the master sword in the cemetery, I’d beaten Dr. Wily and his worst robot masters, I’d even mastered all the Virtues and traveled through the Moongate to the Abyss (that was a LOT of fun. I miss that game). I didn’t have the internet. I didn’t have help and cheat guides (though I did manage to read the occasional Nintendo Power at the Library, but that didn’t help me beat Earthworm Jim or Sonic the Hedgehog). My friends and I had a long list of achievements, of games we’d not only beaten, but conquered and destroyed. At one point, one of my friends and I were working on writing a FAQ for Final Fantasy 3. I still remember that our advice for Dadaluma was to imp him (it makes him easy, and cute!).  We did these things on our own, exploring, guessing, making our way through dark dungeons, massive mazes, and troubled corridors. We did it for the thrill, for the pleasure, for the fun of friends and games. We explored every inch of every map to find the best stuff, looked for answers that weren’t apparent or obvious, and got help from each other, using what brain power we had. In some instances, one friend would think differently enough to help us find things that we had never seen before (still my thanks to Dustin for reasoning that bubbles make us jump higher in water. Eric and I might never have found that last sub-tank without you).

            I recall going through the original Resident Evil, learning as I went, screaming a lot, and a couple of us sitting down to find the best and quickest way through so we could get the best weapons. It took hours of careful gameplay and thought, but we managed, on our own, sans the internet or game guides and we earned that rocket launcher and we went back and slaughtered that game. Or spending countless quarters and finally time when it came to home consoles, figuring out the move sets for the Street Fighter characters, and learning their various strengths and weaknesses until I could get to and beat Bison on one quarter or with no continues. It was exhilarating, thrilling. I have very fond memories of all these things that make me proud. It was difficult finding things in these old games, or looking for easter eggs or other things.

            Today, all the games are the same in one way or another. All games today come with a tutorial level, because people who play games today need their hand held to learn the controls. Why read the manual to learn anything? Most of them, or enough of them that I’ve seen now have a built in feature that will ask you if you want to skip a level or reduce the difficulty level if you fail too many times. I got made fun of by my video games when I failed a level too many times. Seriously, you don’t believe me? Here it is. Check it out for yourself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-1UGMoZDwg&t=2m45s

There’s actually more there, I just started it off at one of the best parts. See? They made fun of me for it. Today, it’s “Don’t worry, you don’t have to do anything to play the game, just watch!”

            Now, there’s a part of me that feels a bit of a jerk saying all this. I am a casual gamer now. I don’t play a lot of hardcore stuff, and there are a few games that are coming out or have recently come out that don’t coddle you and are great examples of good gamer games. Left 4 Dead, for example, is a hell of a gamer game. Grab your weapons, explore till you find the safe house, don’t die. No explanation, no hand holding, just go and learn. Plus, it’s equally hard navigating the AI, or your friends to the same goal without having something bad happen. Seriously, those AI are really really dumb, and my wife, in particular likes to alert the horde. She’s not really a play to win in Left 4 Dead, she’s a play to kill a bunch of zombies. I can forgive her, for the most part, but no one should run off happily screaming “I hear a Witch!” in that game. Seriously.

            The reason I started this rant was Skyward Sword, the new Legend of Zelda game. One of my son’s friends brought it over and I got to watch them play a bit of it. I can’t believe people are raving about this game. The game told him exactly where to go, what to do, and when he found a monster to attack the game paused to tell him exactly how to kill the creature! This wasn’t a boss this was some regular critter that you find bunches of. It stopped to tell him how to beat it. It was bad enough having to hear Navi tell us to listen every time you found something new or came across a new creature in Ocarina of Time, but at least she didn’t hand hold us and tell us everything we needed. We could ignore her if we wanted (though, admittedly, she did tell us how to beat things and gave us advice. Man, I hated that little fairy) or listen if we wanted, but at least she didn’t stop the game (that I recall. It’s been a while since I played, so if I’m wrong, I apologize). Honestly, the only thing I have to compare such stupidity to is Mario 64. Imagine playing Mario 64 and a goomba walks up to you. The game pauses and a big text appears saying what it is, where it comes from and that, to beat it, you have to jump on it and squish it. Same with the turtle, the thwomp, or any other creature you come across. That’s how I feel about this stuff. There’s no more experimentation. There’s no more thrill of the hunt, and no one has patience for it. It’s even gone as far as massively multiplayer games. Never go into a dungeon or raid not knowing what’s up. Heaven forbid one experiment, learn, or grow in a game. No, you must go “read up on it on the web” before you attempt anything. Always know your part! And if you don’t know your part, don’t ask for help, because you’ll get yelled at. It’s a sad thing really.

            So gamers are a dying breed. Soon, there will be none of us left. No more will time be spent bombing every wall to see if there’s a secret behind it. No more will we jump over a pipe to see if there’s a warp zone behind it. No more will we be shocked to find a woman in a space suit after hours of mapping (that’s right, kids, no auto mapping in the original Metroid) and code writing and luck and searching and destroying those god damned metroids. Soon we will have nothing but internet battlefields where getting the most kills and being the most annoying earns achievements (or gets you kicked off for “hacking” cause heaven forbid anyone have skill). Soon games will be nothing but data fragments sent across the internet for which you must be on the internet to play, with handy wikia’s and FAQs right there in the DLC for a small fee. Soon, thinking will not be necessary for game play, and we’ll watch imagination, creativity, and thought processes all together die. It is a sad time.

            Now, maybe I’m wrong, but from what I’ve seen, I doubt it. Someday, though, if we’re very lucky, a group of young friends will be gathered around a game, determined to play it through without help, eschewing the internet, and one of them will say to his frustrated companions, “Well, your underwater, and it surrounds you with bubbles. Maybe you’ll jump higher.”

PS: Don’t get cocky in video games, kids. If you get cocky while playing a game, you end up trying to shoot a velociraptor with your handy new shotgun and all you hear is a “click!” before you’re violently mauled and end up screaming like a little girl. And never ever itch your eye while playing a game. It’ll cause you to explode. Later days!