Yep, another rant about “Well, back in my day…” except without that actual phrase; I can’t say back in my day — I’m 13! But what I can say is that from what I understand from my older siblings and their friends, there have been some very drastic changes in the heart of the video game community, and two of them I will cover in brief.
* The Fans: Probably the most noticeable change is that of the attracted and targeted fanbase of video games. When video games began to be very popular back in 90’s, it was considered somewhat “nerdy” to actually own a video game, let alone many. Of course, this was not the case with arcade games — they were treated often as the activity the “cool kids” took part in after school. Now, not only are arcade gamers still treated this way, but now players of popular games like Call of Duty, God of War, and Assassin’s Creed are considered totally normal and even somewhat cool.
* The Games: A somewhat obscure title for a not-so-obscure topic. In my lifetime I have been able to note the change in which games are produced. Now, the attention is often given to the blood and gore aspects, as well as graphics in general. I find that the more I play Black Ops and Modern Warfare 2, I get a strong feeling of monotony and deja vu. There really doesn’t seem to be any fresh ideas in the First Person Shooter genre. The same goes for RPGs like Assassin’s Creed. As much as I loved the first and second games, Brotherhood made me feel like I was playing AC2 with slightly better game mechanics and a lazy extended plot structure. Though I plan to give Revelations a try when it comes out, I get the feeling that prowling the streets of Constantinople will have little to no difference from running around in the city of Rome (aside from the scenery, of course).
Now, despite my disfavour of these changes, I am in no way trolling modern video games. I tend to enjoy Oblivion, AC, and Fable just as much as I do Dungeons and Dragons, Daggerfall, and Ultima. However, I don’t wish for these games to go as far with this modern trend as CoD has (I’m just using CoD as an example; I love those games). At that point, games become more of an occassional simple pleasure rather than a game I genuinely enjoy.
