College Killed the Hardcore Gamer in Me

The gamer is dead, dead as doornail. I should clarify that statement; the gamer in me is dead. Allow me one more clarification, the hardcore gamer in me is dead and the culprit was college.

While I may be a bit superfluous in revealing the untimely demise of a part of my former self, this is because it’s something I have struggled with since I first noticed it happening.  I didn’t want it to die and like a hidden tumor growing in my brain, it snuck up on me and did its damage before any preemptive measures could be taken.

It seemed to happen in no time at all. In fact, it feels like just yesterday I was fiending to get home from school so I could unload on some n00bs in endless rounds of Counter-Strike, or level up my Hunter with some invested hours in Phantasy Star Online. It really feels like no time at all since I inhaled the news feeds of IGN and made dozens of daily posts on G4’s message boards under the username Snowmiser.

Then one day I sat down for a game of Super Smash Bros. Melee with my cousin. He is seven years my younger and I introduced him to the absurd fun that is Nintendo’s character brawler. I was generally used to schooling the boy in the ways of Mario or Captain Falcon, but this time I was shocked to find that he had suddenly developed gaming skills on par with Vince Vaughn in Swingers. He was handing my ass to me and made sure to smack talk the entire time. If I had ever seen the movie I would have probably felt like Stallone in Rocky V, but everyone has told me to avoid that low-point in the series for the betterment of my own existence.

Pop-culture similes aside, I was humiliated. Even my uncle commented on my withering gaming skills. It was my junior year of college and I realized it had been two years since I had completed a single player game of my own volition. I decided I needed to recapture my old glory, but when I sat down in front of my console ready to crack back into an all engrossing adventure game, I realized my zeal and passion for games and gaming was gone.

I couldn’t do it. Why? First off, the time commitment. Most games are ten-plus hours of gameplay and I had homework, reading and papers to get done. Then there’s the antisocial behavior. I was in college surrounded by people my own age. I didn’t want to become one of those recluses who only leaves his dorm to hit up the late-night drive thrus and empty his trashcan of used tissue.

No, single player games were dead to me and I found myself only gaming when it was in a social or group setting. Rounds of Halo, some heated games of FIFA and, of course, setlists of Guitar Hero were the only way to go for me. I could game for five or twenty five minutes with a group of my friends and feel like I had some fun without compromising my work or social life. I had become the casual gamer that the old hardcore gamer I used to be would have mocked and ridiculed.

But regardless of any amount of self-loathing and no matter how much I missed it, I just couldn’t get back into the single-player, hardcore gaming niche. Aside from Metroid Prime 3, I haven’t completed a full-length quest game since my freshmen year. Even after graduation, this is still the case.

This stems from the fact that it becomes increasingly difficult to justify long hours devoted to a medium in which I consistently question what in the hell it is that I am actually getting out of it. It isn’t a new debate, but I find myself posing the question as to whether or not video games are art on a consistent basis.

I want to say yes. There are some great examples in the potential for artistic expression in video games, but when I think about the ways I experience other forms of art and the way they effect me, well, video games rank pretty damn low on the list.

When I listen to music, read a book and, of course, watch a movie I can feel moved or inspired to look at myself, my life or life in general in new and exciting ways. When I experience art that moves me, it inspires me to go out and create my own work. When I beat a video game, you know what I usually feel?

“So what?”

This isn’t to say that there aren’t certain games have inspired me or games that have moved me. But those are few and far between. For every Ocarina of Time, Metroid Prime and The Secret of Monkey Island, there are at least a hundred more empty, first-person shooter frag-fests featuring excessive gore and computer generated big tits. The market is dominated by egotistical male escapist fantasies. Imagine if the majority of movies released were Michael Bay type extravaganzas, if every book were Twilight and every song some more Auto-Tune club crap. I don’t think people would take film, books or music very seriously either.

Video games need great character depth and character development. While it’s true that there are RPG’s that offer such an experience, they usually require around 40 hours of gameplay. There is a gap in the market for gamers who are looking for an artistic experience that don’t want to be anchored in front of a television for such an absurd block of time. I believe games have the power to move players and speak to something greater about our existence. Can it be done without having to master 17 types of shotguns and terribly cheesy voice over? I hope so, many just haven’t found out the “how” to that question.

That isn’t to say that there are not artists working right now to expand the expectations and limitations of the medium. However, these are mostly indie developers with much smaller budgets and much smaller fan bases. Like comic books, indie video game artists looking to do something more must face a dominated market in terms of both production and consumption.

I don’t want to come off as anti-gamer or anti-gaming. I want to love games like I used to. When I first beat Ocarina of Time, I was depressed. I didn’t want the adventure and my time in that world to end. I fell deeply in love with the characters and music in that world. I would go back and play the game just to wander Hyrule Field and play the songs on my ocarina that I loved. I remember the feelings associated with that game so well because it was rare that I felt something like that after finishing a game. I want to feel that again.

I want games to be respected, studied and discussed on the same level that film, music and literature are. If you know of any games that fill that void, let me know. I just feel that the medium just has a lot of growing up to do before the gamer in me is resurrected and video games are considered a true art form.

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