You'd rather watch real humans beat the **** out of each other? I don't understand that.
I live in Wakefield, I can do that for free.
I didn't mind competitive e-sports when it was those bits off Gamesworld on Sky, but the modern interpretation seems to be incredibly po-faced and based around some pretty miserable looking games. They should fire up Power Stone 2 on the Dreamcast or something.
The point here, I guess, is that there was an era before videogames were associated with spotty, neckbeard male teens, and there's been an era since. That era was short, and sandwiched in between, but it did exist, at least from the perspective of how the industry marketed itself, and this is one of the reason you get some gamers who get bent-out-of-shape today as the industry becomes more diverse; because they remember when the industry almost exclusively catered to them while forsaking everyone else.
The thing is, it's easy to disprove the "neckbeards only played video games" myth as an extreme exaggeration. Those type of guys were -- and still are -- simply a part of the gaming world.
You get the same sort of BS when people go on about girls didn't play games, or didn't feel there were games that appealed to them. Lots of girls(and women) actually loved classics like Zelda, Tetris, Super Mario Bros., Sonic etc... etc... It was just a fact that boys/men tended to embrace technology more and become quite obsessed with it.
Anyway, I clearly remember that gaming appealed to both sexes and all ages in the '80s through to the '90s. Of course, as the industry was still young, publishers tended to focus on young[under 20] gamers, but there were plenty of games that would appeal to a more mature audience. Just look at puzzle games, adventure/rpg, sports titles, simulations etc.... I also remember always seeing adults playing racers and games like Arkanoid in the arcades.
Computer shows/fairs were full of adults buying all sorts of stuff. There really was a lot of enthusiasm for gaming across all age groups. Robin Williams was a gamer and even called his daughter Zelda.
The major change during the PlayStation era was gaming developed a 'cool' image. And even that approach to marketing can trace its roots back to what Sega did with the Mega Drive. Sony did a great job of helping to make gaming even more socially relevant. It paved the way for the modern industry that's not only booming but also far more respected as a culturally relevant medium.
The embracement of all these interactive movie storytelling roam-a-thon games from the Last of Us, to Assassins Creed, to GTA then beyond and the pretense they are in fact actually enjoyable and a worthwhile diversion of your time.
All use a similar template that makes them at times indistinguishable with merely the plot and graphics altering and are quite frankly dull collect-a-thon-mission-a-thons or excuses for narrative extrapolations into navel-gazing from frustrated wannabe film directors.
That these are considered the epitome of gaming now is not something I accept. It takes more skill to code a good game in 128K or 1MB or 16 MB Cartridge or putting a game on a CD than many of these bloated so-called epics, , with the independent scene and smaller publishers providing more originality and fun these days.
Actually there is a great deal about modern gaming that has a lot to answer for...
I do not accept for instance that you can become a millionaire by merely playing games on that thing called TWITCH for instance, to an audience of millions like Ninja, raking in 500,000 dollars a month through advertising alone, yet it is true... I just do not want it to be...there is something broken with the world it seems...
I agree that a lot of these navel-gazing games are very similar, but these days I find myself picking the navel-gazing stuff over retro games. I never thought this would happen but here we are. Spider-Man on PS4 is one of the greatest games I've ever played and I'm glad they didn't need to squeeze it onto some CDs, or even a few DVDs.
Speaking of which, there are plenty of games that required great technical skill and prowess to squeeze into tiny memory/storage footprints but turned out to be, frankly, crap. Being great at coding doesn't equate to being a great game designer. There was a lot of rubbish back then, and there's a lot of rubbish now.
Quick question. Anyone remember if they ever had Mega Drive pods at Cathy Dennis concerts?
It was in one of her gigs, shown in a issue of SEGA Power, I do believe. I believe she was wearing an Ecco the Dolphin T-Shirt for the Press photoshoot for SEGA too. I guess I'll have to try and dig out the issue.
Not only were there pods, it seems she also a special cassette that came with Sega Power wherein she reads tips for Sonic and other games over her own music. What a time to be alive.
I didn't mind competitive e-sports when it was those bits off Gamesworld on Sky.
It's incredible to think how ahead of its time Gameworld really was, even to the point on using the phone line for online battles. Loved Gamesworld the best gaming series ever made.
Not only were there pods, it seems she also a special cassette that came with Sega Power wherein she reads tips for Sonic and other games over her own music. What a time to be alive.
That's not the issue. SEGA Europe heled some crap beach football PR press event, with the likes of Cathy Dennis and John Barns present. Where SEGA said they would have a Mega Drive pod in one of Cathy's gigs, so fans could sample Mega Drive games before the gig and during the intermission.
If I remember correctly Cathy and the like... were all wearing Ecco the Dolphine 2 or Jr T-shirts. SEGA were always ahead of their time, even down to liquid cooling
Comment