A reader reminisces over the early days of gaming, when he was a child, and how different things are now with his children and live service games.
I am going to say something now which if you would have told me I would write a year ago I would have eaten my own hat! (Have you seen how much hats cost these days!)
Now, before I begin, I will say that I agree with everything people are saying regarding the games industry now vs. then, as we all sit back in our rocking chairs eating Werther’s Original and shouting at anyone who would listen about ‘back in my day!’ This isn’t to tell anyone that they are wrong, just that things are changing, and have changed, and ultimately there is nothing we can do about it and we are not supposed to like it.
I, like many others, grew up in a very different world with my Mega Drive and many of us will say, ‘Back in my day we got one game per year! At Christmas and, if we were lucky, we might get another for our birthday! Then we had to blow in to it to make it work! And you know what? They had the audacity to charge the same amount as now, etc.’
I have owned most of the mainline consoles, and the Sega Saturn, and have enjoyed some fantastic games in that time. During my teenage years, which were very difficult, gaming helped me through it.
Like a lot of people I would play gaming to be challenged and loved the likes of Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden, and the harder difficulty levels. I still have my retro consoles to this day, when I feel like shutting the world out, and will look through my old issues of Edge and GamesTM and mumble about how different it used to be.
My first game was Sonic The Hedgehog, I got that bundled in with my Mega Drive (I think it was Christmas 1993) and I would play it any chance I got, completing it over and over again. My friends had other games and we would swap such titles as Alien Storm and Rolo To The Rescue, but I was just Sonic to the core – bedsheets, cups, toys, basically anything I could get my hands on.
I think sometimes what we have to ask ourselves and put into perspective is… if we had the infrastructure that is in place for gaming now, how much of the way we played games was through necessity rather than choice?
My son and daughter are both over 10 years old now. What are the games that they mainly play? Yes, the trio of the damned, which have brought about the gaming apocalypse as we know it!
Minecraft (which I feel gets more of a pass), Roblox, and *gasps* Fortnite!
I must admit to you all now, that I have indeed played these games with them (don’t worry, I will cast myself out into the desert) and whilst I would never play them in my free time, they are perfectly functional and Minecraft was actually quite relaxing.
But upon joining the lobby I realised how much these games do to keep the players involved. The different categories, add-ons, and characters… the games have a basic gameplay mechanic, Fortnite is actually quite a solid shooter and much, much better than some of the awful shooters on PlayStation 2 (remember, I’m casting myself in to the desert).
Before I knew it, I was running alongside Michelangelo (I refuse to call them Mikey, Leo, Donnie, and Raph) and a musclebound Peter Griffin. I really wanted to be John Wick but refused to pay (obviously). Fortnite is the name of the game but for anyone who plays it, it’s the world they create.
It was pure role-play and completely absurd but for an hour or so it was actually quite fun – and the best part was I didn’t pay a penny!
It took me back to my childhood and made me remember that I didn’t actually compete with my friends in games that much, we just had fun (split-screen or pass the controller, in which you would always get the third party controller by ‘Gamezmadtigerzpro’ which was basically a potato with buttons in it). How many of us caused havoc in Liberty City playing GTA 3, competing for who could get the most wanted stars?
I suppose in conclusion what I am trying to say is… gaming has changed, it continues to change, and do you know what? We are not supposed to like it and expecting gaming to exist in our parameters of what we grew up with is maybe a bit unreasonable.
Gone are the days where we only had to wait two years for a sequel. My daughter was born in 2009 and GTA 5 was released in 2013. She has seen one GTA game released in her lifetime and may be old enough to play GTA 6 when it’s released.
In that same span of 13 years (if GTA 6 is released in 2025) from the year 2000-2013 think of how many GTA games were released and its various DLC and spin-offs. I’m not saying GTA is the benchmark for all games, but it does show the development time and cost. No wonder the youth of today aren’t beholden to any franchises.
Can people honestly say that if our favourite retro consoles were hooked up to the Internet and we could buy additional characters, levels, dungeons, weapons or stories we wouldn’t have begged our parents for SegaBucks or NintendoCoins? I know there was the odd Sonic and Knuckles add-on, I could just imagine my Sonic wearing golden sneakers!
Now can anyone point me in the direction of the doors leading to the desert?
By reader Rob
The reader’s features do not necessarily represent the views of GameCentral or Metro.
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