Traditional Gaming

For the last 8 years I've been heavily into video games to the exclusion of any other type of gaming. After this holiday season I find myself growing a little disenchanted from gaming though. I still love video games, but the constant onslaught of sequels and "me too!" games is really making everything seem a little repetitive and boring. I increasingly find myself longing for the good old days when most of the games I played were of some sort of physical manifestation...like the collectible card game "Magic: The Gathering." There is something to be said for gathering around with friends and playing a game. Sure you can have a "social experience" online now with your friends but the whole thing is more than a little detached. Things definitely have room for improvement in the console world when it comes to social networking and interaction.

I remember years ago when I played Warhammer 40,000, a table-top miniature game, at my local comic book shop. There was a strong sense of community and friendship that prospered there that online games have a hard time rivaling. There was also the hobby aspect of assembling my troops and hand painting them. I took real pride in the appearance of my troops and I had a strong personal investment in each piece of my army. Playing war games online is not nearly as fulfilling as I'm essentially pushing a button to deploy a polygonal avatar of what implement of destruction I want to place on the battlefield.

More often than not my opponents in video games are people I hardly know or don't know at all which limits the amount of fun I have with them. Getting to know my opponents well was part of the charm of the comic book shop atmosphere. Now and endless sea of faceless opponents awaits online, which makes finding a match easy, but I would argue it also makes the whole process much less satisfying for those looking to just have a good time instead of trying to take the top spot of the leaderboard.

I've certainly met many great people through playing games online and I certainly don't mean to diminish that aspect of video games, it just seems that there is something being lost as many young people will never have the traditional gaming experiences that I had growing up. Maybe its just the post-holiday gaming doldrums talking for me and Killzone 2, Street Fighter IV, and Resident Evil 5 will erase all the doubts I'm having about gaming right now. In the mean time anybody want to play a board game?