Why you should care

                In choosing this topic it is my intention to express my great fascination, and passion, with video games in general. I wish to convey upon the minds of the reader what a video game can be and why you should care about them.

                Many times in my life I have had to defend the entire genre of video games to those around me and this has led me to my chosen topic. I feel, as an avid gamer, that everyone can find a video game they just love and never want to put down. Video games can be an expression of how a person truly thinks on the inside, or they can portray the inner workings of the mind. I don't pretend to have a strong grasp on the field of psychology, but I have noticed certain personality types gravitate towards certain types of games. For example, I would argue that the average player of call of duty has a shorter attention span and is happier with instant gratification. But I digress, this is something I wish to talk more about in a later post, back to my original thought, why everyone should enjoy a video game.

                When I was around four or five I remember the first time I played a truly epic game. Here I do not use the term "epic" lightly, it is a proper word and is overly used in society. This epic game was called "Kings Quest V. Absence makes the heart go yonder". This game was something magical. It was my first role playing game and the first adventure game I had ever seen. It had wizards, evil creatures, and everything else a little boy could want in a good fantasy tale. There was only one problem. Back in those days there was no voice acting, there was not even the technology to support voice acting, so everything about the story was done in text. And I could not read. As you can see, this made it quite hard to play the game. My older sister even told me that I could not play the game, which was technically hers, because I could not read. This did not discourage me however. I rose to the challenge and through some long nights of study I learned how to read just so I could see her wrong and play this great game.

                This is the experience I am truly talking about. A video game can be a great tool for learning and creativity. This game  gave me a extra drive to learn to read and now that I look back on this event, it is amazing to think about. Because of this, I know everybody can experience something like this as well with a good game and I encourage people to do this.

                One of my favorite activities while in the employ of Gamestop was to engage in an exercise with my co worker. We would each try to find the perfect game for our customer and the winner of this exercise would be when said customer returns and has a huge smile on their face, and can't stop talking about the game. I loved doing this. You see, there is no one game for everyone. It is like picking out the perfect fitting pair of shoes for someone. Not everyone is going to like a shooter or a role playing game. Those two genre crowds do not generally get along. The fun part about this co worker exercise is that the customer usually has no idea what kind of game they like, and that makes it a fun thing to do.

                You must inquire about the person, do they have the patience for a stealth game? Where it could take 15 minutes just sitting and surveying the area before deciding what to do? Or do they have the internal drive for a sandbox style game, such as Minecraft or Oblivion, which requires that they make their own story and play their own way? Or are they a third type, someone who does not have a lot of time and they just want to waste their buddys in a frag fest and laugh as their bodies hit the ground?

                All of these aspects are something to consider when thinking about games in general. It is rare that a shooter fan will enjoy something as "boring" as Minecraft. Or that the person who spends 80 hours building a to scale recreation of the star trek enterprise, this really exist(warning, it swears!)¹, in Minecraft will think that shooting somebody is fun.

                In the end though, all that matters is that a person enjoys what they are doing and they have fun doing it with others. In closing to this long winded rant about video games, my question to the masses is thus.

What kind of gamer do you think you are?

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