A LINK TO THE PAST

It is true that gaming has grown-up, it has a wife and kids, a suburban home with two

cats and a dog. Once a rebellious child who skipped school, stayed up late and accomplished the impossible, this side of it is still evident slightly; but the concept of true gaming has been forgotten long ago. Gaming now seems to consist of mothers solving puzzles and tending to imaginary dogs and farms, 8 year olds playing gore-riddled FPS’, and your dad playing World of Warcraft, yes, World of Warcraft. In no way am I disputing this, but indeed praise the fact that gaming has spread its ho-rizons to a much wider demographic, and broadened its genres so much so that there seems to be a game for every single hobby on this planet. I think the way technology within gaming has excelled so far it is not only astoundingly clever but excit-ing; making you wonder what gaming will be like in 10 years or

so, as it is an industry that is always moving. However, I believe that game developers have forgot-ten what gaming is really about – the escape, the commit-ment, being the best, the excitement and hard-earned sense of accomplishment at the end. Have game creators given up on us ‘nerds’? Have they lost their passion in this art and merely cohere with the changing style of gaming within society? Unfor-tunately, I think so. Gaming should not forget about us, just like we didn’t forget about him. We were loyal to his progress, and we grew up with him; he resides within our fondest memories of childhood. I have considered myself a gamer for most of my life. I was brought up by a tech-savvy father and competitive older brother and I’m pretty sure my first word was probably “Killing-spree!” Some of my fondest memories were of me and my fam-

ily, huddled round our coveted Playstation One, SNES or Sega Megadrive and being engrossed in the rich, colourful textures and imaginative game play. The first game I ever completed was Casper when I was merely 4 years old; a fact that still impresses me and my friends to this day. We did not worry about the taboos of gam-ing when I was young, although we didn’t bother about much - it was the 90s. There were no news reports about school-wide shootings or children hot-wiring cars whilst suited officials pointed their assuming fin-gers at controversial gaming titles such as Grand Theft Auto or Call of Duty. We were surrounded by gaming as if it was our safety blanket; I could come home to be wrapped in its caring essence after a tough day at school and shoot a few zombies in the head pretending they had the same face as that snot-nosed little shit who pushed me over in the playground. Gaming was an escape not a chore. I remember when my Uncle in Manchester gave us his Commodore 64, an incredibly old-school gaming system that was stupidly unreliable and came with a dusty box of floppy disks. I sat there for hours inserting them one by one to see which would work. Out of the 30-something disks I was rewarded with two that worked

- one side-s c r o l l i n g S impson ’s a r c a d e game and a platformer where you played an an th ropo -

morphic tomato. It was worth it for hours of fun whilst thinking “what the hell am I playing?” Whilst it does seem like I spent every hour of my day playing on dusty con-soles, and therefore must look like an albino child, this wasn’t entirely the case. I did as much back-yard playing and pog collecting as any other northern child in the 90s; yet gaming was the back-bone of my childhood development. It taught me about progress, not giving up, being rewarded for hard work and healthy competition, rather than this “everyone’s a winner” bullshit. There are plenty of mothers out there nowadays who contest the idea of games, and many other games developers who are trying to get them on board with their shiny cooking puzzles and dog-washing (ahem, Nintendo) and in turn spending more time and money try-ing to adhere to this other demographic of gamers rather

than focusing on classics like Tales of Sym-phonia and Legend of Zelda which gained them their love and support from the mass-

es of gamers in the first place. Another thing which I think is a huge difference in gam-

ing today is the fact that it’s so addictive. As online gaming became a reality and hugely popular, it was evident that being the best became a whole lot harder. We were plunged into this huge advancement in technology that meant we could play against people we had never met before, and therefore gained this crazy sense of

achievement when we killed their precious avatar. The craze in MMORPGs sky-rocketed and I delved into the World of Warcraft and made the tran-

sition from casual gamer to hardcore gamer. I spent any spare time I could grind-ing XP for my character; a beautiful night-elf hunter, and running her through te-

dious dungeons and raids in order to gain those pre-

cious high levels and equipment. On WoW you were surrounded by competitive people who used their virtual achievements

as a substitute for their lack of real life achievements, which apparently made them all tw*ts, whilst they were full of un-used testosterone, lack of self-worth and boredom. Nights were spent until 6am with fellow online friends, theory-crafting and developing tactics to impossible boss fights, it was good to break off from the area of gaming that now handed players the an-swers on a plate. Producers of WoW, Blizzard, seem to be one of the only mainstream develop-ers that still mix vintage game ideals like insanely difficult bosses and huge rewards with new technology and gorgeous graph-ics. It seems like many are following in its path but big time producers like Activision and EA still appear to be churning out easy and pointless games. Nevertheless, gaming will always change, and I will always love it. He watched me grow up, and I watched him. So isn’t it fair that gaming and his pro-ducers need to remember who stuck by him after all those years? ♣

I JUST BRAWLED TO SAY I LOVE YOUReaders tell us their first gaming love

Adam, 29 - Final Fantasy VII

Jordan, 23 - Crash Bandicoot“I always wanted to be a bandicoot...

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“I think it may have something to do

“Because of the amazing storyline,

Peter, 42 - Super Mario Bros. “I’m old but I must say Super Mario 64

ZERG.COM//DEC 2012//24

“Gaming was an escape not a chore.”