29 Nov, 2007

game1   Pronunciation noun, adjective, gam·er, gam·est, verb, gamed, gam·ing.

–noun

1. an amusement or pastime: children's games.

videogame1   Pronunciation noun,

–noun

1. A form of interactive electronic entertainment, more often than not steeped in all the misery and darkness of the deepest depths of Hell. No-one ever smiles and lots of things get shot.

It wasn’t always this way. Those of us who became gamers during the 8 and 16-bit eras can remember when games were supposed to be fun. We quite liked that. It might make us sound like big mincing girls, we know, but seriously guys, why the misery nowadays? Why does almost every modern game hero (Sorry, anti-hero) seem to be shooting up the bad guys of his respective post-apocalyptic cess pit/drug-riddled urban hellhole just to fill in the time between arm-cutting sessions and My Chemical Romance concerts?

Somewhere along the line, things went wrong. In our obsession to have the gaming medium taken seriously we fell into the trap of trying to prove its maturity by filling it with 'deep' emotion and 'adult' content. Ironically though, the majority of what we got was whiney moping, sex and violence, all pretty adolescent pre-occupations when you think about it.

We’re all for games maturing as a medium, but we we want to be enjoying our games, not reaching for the sleeping pills as we put down the joypad. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of grit and emotion to keep things involving, but modern gaming dumps so much horror on our heads that it almost becomes funny.

Don’t believe us? Start clicking and we’ll take you through the archives of pain.