The Video Game Insanity

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I have to confess I don’t understand the video game fanaticism I see going on these days. People are camping out for days, even weeks in some places, all for the honor of shelling out $600 for a game station. Now, as I understand it, most of the people standing in line simply turn around and sell the things on eBay for somewhere around $6,000. Is this the only reason? Is that really worth sleeping on concrete for six days in a row? Am I missing something here? Maybe it’s just that I am not a games guy. Sure, I have spent many hours playing games of all kinds on my life. I have played board games. I have had bursts where playing certain games ruled my life. I went through a period during my high school years when I wanted to play “Risk” all the time and played for hours with friends. I even had a brief moment of playing roll-playing games although I never got obsessed enough to then spend hours talking about my character in public like some people I knew back then. The thing it, games have just never held much power over me for the long-term. In fact, these days, I prefer to avoid them all-together. Not to sound too much like an old-fogey, but I can say I was there at the birth of the video game in the home. My family, for some reason, was always on the cutting-edge of the home video game system back in the infancy of the genre. My family even had one of those home “Pong” game systems that was likely to burn the images of the dashes into your television screen. We were also one of the first families to have an Atari system. Then our family jumped to Colecovision which made me the popular kid on the block for a while. Then what did we do? We got the Atari game adapter for the thing and kept buying Atari games. I was into video games for a while. I spent hours playing “Space Invaders” and “Asteroids.” I was pretty good at “Asteroids.” Of course, I played the best when I set it for the kids setting on the game system but I was, technically, a kid so that wasn’t cheating too much. Of course, back then, there was no way to win those games. You just played until you ran out of lives. I think the first quest game was this Atari game where you wandered around these mazes looking for swords and chalices and crap like that. I also remember it was one of the first games to have hidden things you could find. As I recall you could get a “magic dot” that would allow you to do something. At some point, though, video games just passed me by. I never got a Nintendo. I remember everyone in college having one of those damn things and I would spend hours while they tried to get through “Super Mario Bros.” I never thought the game looked like fun. I think for me the problem is those games that are so popular are just frustrating for me. I do not have great hand-eye coordination. I have never had great hand-eye coordination. This means video games are impossible. So, those games that have a story to them are frustrating because I can NEVER GET TO THE NEXT PART OF THE DAMN STORY!!! It would be like having a DVD and putting it into the machine and watching the movie up until the next chapter and then having to figure out some impossible puzzle in order to get to the next chapter. I like movies. I love movies. I like being able to sit there and just let the story get to me. In “Casino Royale” I am going to get to see the next chapter and what happens to James Bond regardless of whether or not I can open the suitcase to find the combination to a safe guarded by eighteen guards and a giant monster with tentacles. I cannot imagine enjoying a story where I could never get to the next chapter. I just don’t have the patience. For me, getting to the next chapter should be no more difficult that sitting still or turning the next page. It should not involve killing something or solving a puzzle. Ever. Thank you. So, for me, no matter how great the graphics, how intense the storyline, or how moving the entire game experience is I will never be compelled to play a video game or consider is at cool as a movie or television show. This does not mean that I, as a writer, wouldn’t gladly help script a video game. At this point I would help people write grocery lists for pay, but I just don’t want to play the damn things. I don’t find all of that problem solving and shooting fun I just find it frustrating. I lose interest and I just give up. I let friends win the games and then they can tell me about the story. Needless to say, this means I will not be seen sitting on the cement outside of a Best Buy or toy store hoping to shell out a few hundred bucks for a video game system. I will not be doing this to even turn around and sell it for a one hundred percent mark-up. I just will not do it because I don’t think sitting outside in the cold looks like fun and I don’t think lugging the damn games around in the box looks like fun and I don’t think playing the games looks like fun. I realized I was old and the world was passing me by when I saw the story on “60 Minutes” about a kid who was making money playing video games. He is considered the world’s first virtual athlete. He was winning money by playing tournaments and those first-person shoot-‘em-up games. He was making money by selling gaming gear with his game name on it. It was the first moment I truly shook my head and wondered about the kids today. Before you know it I will be standing outside of my home with my cane raised over my head telling kids to get off of my lawn. If you love video games and spend hours and hours and hours parked in front of your television playing these games then I salute you. I am sure you are better than me in ways I cannot possibly understand. I am willing to admit you are more patient than I am and probably have better hand-eye coordination and problem-solving skills than I have. I grant all of that to you. However, as the guy who ends up sitting there watching you play the games instead of watching a movie on the same television screen I can only say I would rather we watch the movie version of “Scarface” than play the game.