I Hate Videogames

What’s with videogames these days? On one hand, they are much better than those of yesteryear, and on the other hand, they are turning our kids, friends and families into virtual zombies.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have some deep seated hatred for videogames; quite the opposite, in fact, I love videogames, if the truth be told. I even co-own a website, PS3GamerGroup.ca, that caters to people who enjoy Playstation 3 and its games.

I’ve been playing videogames since the early ’80′s beginning with the Commodore Vic 20, then moving to the Commodore 64 and then the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). While the Vic 20 and C64 had rather crude graphics and sound, I never really enjoyed videogames until I got my NES. The graphics were still crude (8bit magic, I tell you) and the sounds were very simple (the worst cell phone ringtone today is by far better than the best soundtracks of videogames back then), but the gameplay changed. Think of the Super Mario Bros. platformer – a very simple game, but it somehow provided hours, upon hours, of entertainment for me and my friends. However, even with such soon-to-be classics in the making, such as Super Mario Bros., my friends and I still found the time to do other things. We played catch, football, pool and ping-pong. We also walked or rode our bikes everywhere or anywhere we needed to be.

Today’s videogamer, in my opinion, do nothing outside the videogame realm such as participate in friendly sports challenges, or even have the energy to walk or ride their bikes anywhere. They do nothing but want to play videogames. They even want rides to friends houses to play videogames. Friends that live a 15 to 20 minute walk away now seem lightyears away and they desperately need a ride because they may take away valuable time from online play.

Today’s videogames are, in a word, awesome. Take Uncharted 2 and the Call of Duty series. Both are tops in their class and allow gamers with unlimited gameplay, especially with online play. Online plays both sides of the same coin. Not only do you get to play an awesome game, you don’t even need to leave the house to play with your friends. These gamers get up early to play videogames (well, as early as they can on weekends). Skip meals to play videogames. Take one bathroom break every seven hours. Go to sleep late, after playing videogames. Todays videogamers are turning into zombies. Ironic, as zombies are a favorite “bad guy” to kill in games (see: COD: World at War and Black Ops, Burn Zombie Burn, Dead Rising and the eagerly anticipated Dead Nation coming soon, for a brief list of the latest zombie killing games.) Come school mornings, gamers don’t get up in time to get to school on time and responses to parents pleading sounds like a zombie in the middle of a bowel movement. They even walk slow and awkward ( the best visual to give you would be some of the first zombies encountered in Shaun of the Dead). Getting these gamers to take a “break” for, oh, I don’t know, eating supper or taking out the trash, can be a real chore in itself. Sometimes, I bet parents wished they had their own game console to log online to and then they could talk or msg their kids to go eat and/or do their chores. I bet they would listen to that because it seems they are a slave to the game and its contents.

Ok, now back to the topic headline of I hate Videogames. Maybe I should of titled it, Dr. Videogame (or how I learned to stop hating and like the game). I don’t hate videogames. I hate what it is doing to today’s youth: turning them into zombies. I swear I saw a videogamer just the other day saying in a zombie-like groan, “…games…games…”. Help me, I’m scared.