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This is my Blog, on it I simply write stuff that I feel like writing about. You'll find it heavily slanted towards tech, games, entertainment and the like. I write about other stuff too, and somethings I write about things. I also do photography, the link is on your right.

Thursday 2 August 2012

GAMING



I have very fond memories from my childhood of me and my friends saving up as much money as we could throughout the week, then making that triumphant march into the local video store to rent a game or two for the weekend.  Nothing would stop us either.  I remember one time, making the trek with a friend, it had to have been –35C plus wind chill.  We made the march to and from the video store with no gloves, and no toque.  We needed a game to play, so the pain of frostbite was a small price to pay.  By the time we got to the foyer at the apartment we lived at, (it was a heated foyer thankfully) we were both so cold we could not operate my keys to open the door.  So we just sat there on the floor, waiting to warm up enough to be able to articulate our fingers enough to open the door.  Finally we made it inside, popped in the game into my NES, sat down cross-legged on the floor way to close to the TV, and proceeded to do what we loved.

Some weekends we have co-op games, those were the best, as we could play together. Sometimes it was a adventure game, we couldn’t play together, but that wasn’t important, we figured out the puzzles together, sometimes keeping details notes.  Sometimes it was a straight up one player game, we would switch off after losing a life.  Unless one of us was better at certain point than the other.  I was always lousy at ice levels, I’d leave those to someone else.  I would never admit this at the time, but I actually had the most fun when I wasn’t playing, it gave me the chance to really digest the game.  The graphics, the music, the design, the flow, the puzzles, the controls, menus, story, and the overall presentation.  Even as a young kid, I knew these weren't just silly toys and distractions, they were art.  Ok, some were complete shit, I know this, but with the good ones it was easy to tell that a lot of time and effort went into them.

I loved it so much that I started designing my own games.  In the sixth grade, I remember making maze games on paper, that all my classmates couldn’t wait to play.  I would make these intricate mazes that spanned multiple pages, each page being a level.  In order to beat the page you have to find the correct keys for each door, find weapons to get past monsters, collect gems, etc.  They were a hit!

That’s probably my biggest regret in life, I had the chance, a long time ago, to do just that with my life.  Make games that would touch people all around the world, profoundly impacting their lives.  Whether I lost it, or it was taken from me, I’m still not sure of up until this day.  It doesn’t really matter, it’s ancient history now. 

To this day, I still love watching people play games, just as much as I like playing them. I guess you could say I’m a bit of gaming voyeur, except usually people know I’m watching them….usually. Not only is it fun to watch the game itself, it’s also fun to see how people react to them, joy, surprise, anger, wonder, sadness, exhilaration, a game can take you on a journey that Hollywood only wishes it could.

Enter the modern day of the Youtubes and what have you.  One of my favourite things to watch are really good let’s players.  If you don’t know what a let’s player is, it’s a person who plays through a game, and records it for the world to see.  The really good ones can be endlessly entertaining.  To be good you have to be able to provide quality commentary as you are playing to really showcase the games.  You have to be funny and insightful.  Nothing is worse than a let’s player who says. “ummmm….ahhhh” more often than anything else.  One of my favourite let’s players is a guy called “One ‘f Jeff.”  He is brilliant.  Also Cr1TiKaL, although he doesn’t play entire games, just snippets of them.

So I say, let’s hear it for let’s Players!  They are constantly under attack from short sighted game companies for supposed copywrite infringement.  Claiming they are showing game footage without consent.  They have no idea how many people buy their games because a let’s player introduced them to it.

-jer

P.S. The game I almost froze to death to play: Bug’s Bunny Crazy Castle 

1 comment:

  1. I enjoy this guy:

    http://www.youtube.com/user/lukenuetzmann

    He has done an asston of games. Surprisingly not that well known on YouTube.

    If you're at all into Minecraft you would know this guy:

    http://www.youtube.com/user/EthosLab

    Definitely well known, wholesome. What is not well known is that he is from Edmonton!

    ReplyDelete