I love going to the video game store or the “electronics” section of big ones. At the same time, I despise it. Aside from the fact that it depresses me to see all the generic, bland titles that are vomited on the market, looking at all the shelves filled with games I’ve never played makes me feel as if I’m not doing my job as a game designer. What if I’m missing some interesting mechanics in an obscure game? What if there’s a sleeper hit in the pile? Yes, it makes me feel sad and slightly depressed but the negative vibe is evened out by the fact that I’m in a video game store.
I started playing when I was a little kid. My mom jokes about it by saying that I was born with a gamepad in my hands. Playing games was my favorite activity. It was both personal and social since I could talk about something cool with other kids. My grandmother, which was also an avid player, had subscribed me to Nintendo Power magazine. When I wasn’t playing games, I was reading about it. It helped me a lot to learn English; living in Quebec means that most of your entertainment and daily conversation are in French. Figuring out what “Duck and avoid shots using this crate” or “Thou has defeated thy Slime!” meant was much more fun than those English homework. Games had a large place in my life. I remember when I used to go rent games or visited the electronic section of stores. Video games had a small section reserved for them. The stores carried a few titles for only one or two consoles. Most of the time, it was only displaying NES games. During that time, I used to play all the games available to me. As I grew up and the market expanded, the 16-bit consoles took their turn under the spotlight and it became harder to play all the games. Still, being a kid, I had a lot of spare time, so I played most of them. Some I didn’t pick up because the box art didn’t interest me or had seen previews in the Nintendo Power magazine and felt it wasn’t my thing. The years kept on going and I became a teenager. The third dimension made its entry into the world of gaming and I started to have other interests. Suddenly, I had a life, friends, social activities and discovered cinema, comic books and music. Within a few years, my first passion faded to the background in favor of other fresh activities. On top of this, video games had become overwhelming to me. My good old consoles didn’t cut it anymore and I didn’t have the new ones; the arcades were disappearing slowly and making room for the new, top of the line driving simulators; the amount of games available for the new systems were now too much for me to keep up.
I officially came back to the gaming world when I was about 20. My teen phase had calmed down, I had defined myself as an adult, got a job and could afford spending money, my own money this time, on things I wanted to. Although I never really left the world of gaming, I still played with friends occasionally, I wanted to truly get back into gaming, like I used to when I was a lad. This is when I realized that the industry had changed. Specialized stores had popped. The Internet age had spawned websites dedicated to them. At least 10 different magazines specialized in games were now available at my local shops. During my absence, 4 major consoles, the N64, the PS1, the DreamCast and the young PS2 had all offered inevitable titles. I had a lot of catching up to do. As I read about the best titles and console to buy, I saw people boast “masterpieces” everywhere. The game world had definitively changed drastically in a few years. I was happy to see that the hobby I loved so much back then was now a lot more accepted by the public. Only a few years ago, games were seen as only for kids and geeks. Now they were for kids, teens, cool dudes and dudettes, and… Well geeks but it was accepted. I was glad to see that games had evolved and became a viable industry. I was looking for a career to pursue at that time and it felt like going in the world of video game development was a good idea.
We’re now 8 years later. During that time, the industry continued to grow. I became a game designer. The age of Internet took even more room and gave new possibilities to game developers. When I walk into a game store, sure I see the obvious commercialization of games, titles trying to attract the impressionable youth and take their parents’ money, but I also see an industry that has grown a lot, a world where creators have a lot of room to let their inspiration run loose, a universe where everything can truly happen. It is now a place where even the small guys, the independent such as myself can survive. That wasn’t the case before but now, it’s good to be in the video game industry. Now if you would excuse me, I’m off to take a little walk. I’ll probably stop at the game store, see what new titles they have today.
Tags: Game Life, Culture, game store, opinion