Hello all!
Gaming is a massive part of culture and has grown larger each decade. It’s a way of life for some, a way of stress relief and relaxation for some, and may have even changed someone’s life who was struggling in a bad place.
What is gaming to you? How did you get into gaming, your fondest memory, and how has your love/tastes in gaming grown or shrunk over time?
We all have our story, so what is yours!
I couldn’t tell you how I got into gaming honestly. I’ve been playing games since I could remember. My first console was a dark purple, opaque Gameboy Color. I played Pokemon Yellow a lot. Didn’t get far though because it was before I could read. I also played Kirby Tilt’n’Tumble and Megaman Extreme 1 & 2. I eventually received a GB Advanced SP and many I played that thing everywhere. I owned a game called Shining Soul II and it was the absolute best game ever, at least I thought. Also remember watching Pokemon episodes on the SP cartridges they made for it. Good times. That was the beginning of a lifelong affair.
My fondest memory… That’s a tough one. Solo, I would say that my fondest memory was beating The Showdown, event #51 in Super Smash Bros Melee. It took me a lot of tries, but I eventually did it. I felt like the king of the world at the time.
If we’re talking Multiplayer, few things get close to when my brother and I play Deep Rock Galactic and we get swarmed by an endless sea of spiders and we have only our guns and our guns and brotherhood to get us through the mess. Sometimes we don’t come out alive, but we always fight to the last bullet. Good times.
In the last 5 or so years, I’ve really branched out into other genres, experimented more with new ways to play, and focused on giving everything in a game a chance. I’ve tried many different builds in games like Elden Ring and Nioh 2, and it’s actually a lot of fun to mess around with builds, though I’m not any sort of min/maxer. Recently, I have been trying more simulator type games. Been feeling pretty burned out by all the gaming scandals, so I find my love for gaming has hit a snag. But sims and smaller games, focused on fun instead of balance and profit, have been slowly helping me recover the love.
Even still though, I don’t think I will ever have a love for it the same way after all of the horror stories I have heard and read about from devs, as well as the current state of business practices in the genre. Gaming needs time to reach its rennaissance when it stops being so much about the money. It’s gonna take a while for that though I think.