AGING GAMER

I'm to old for this!!!

by Gabriel Quizhpis

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Let’s face it, we all hate getting old but I like the feeling that videogames gave grown alongside me over the years. Like many of you, I am a very competitive gamer. I love the feeling of grabbing a controller and seeing how I fare against some of the best gamers across the world. We have all had that feeling in us at one point in another and the invention of broadband gaming brought us together in ways previously unheard of. The only issue I have with gaming now is the dreaded lag. I will admit it has a help/ hurt value in gaming, but it is something I am patiently waiting to be perfected. The days of internet gaming has brought us COD, GOW, Battlefield, and Halo. As I speak about the glories of internet gaming, I must balance myself out and speak about the downside of internet gaming and the effect it has on gaming culture.

Will the birth of internet gaming I must talk about the afterbirths of it as well. The most evident being the frustrations of the dreaded lag. Gaming as long suffered from this since the beginning and I see no end in sight. You would think that this sort of thing would evolve along with the consoles but unfortunately it hasn’t. Since the jump to Client/Server based gaming it has somewhat made the experience better but if you were the unfortunate soul who had the slow connection you would notice the 1 second delay. Once you start to experience the lag that’s where you experience the best of what the gaming culture has to offer. As an older gamer, I can honestly admit we have all been there, and as much as it has been a problem, it has also brought some funny moments. What boggles my mind is how our systems have evolved, but our connections are improving at a slower pace.

What was once getting online and having fun with friends, has now devolved into listening to grade school raging gamer kids talking about my mother, (guilty lol), and the hacker that wants to win at any cost. I must admit that times have gotten better with the newest console generation, but it does not fix the problems completely. The ps2 and ps3 gamers are now fathers, uncles, brothers, and more importantly, adults. We have moved on from the passion fueled days of old and are starting to accept that gaming is not the world anymore. That is why I look forward to gaming and returning to gaming’s true purpose of bringing players together to just have a good time and leave the BS at the job.

There is hope on the horizon with giga bit gaming and the emergence of co-op campaigns. Since I am an adult now, I do not have that drive to go on and face the world like I did in 2001, but what I do have is a drive for a constant connection that will bring me and my friends together in a way that has long been missing. The days of win vs losses and k/d ratio have lost their value. What I crave now hopping on games like final fantasy, ghost recon, and uncharted with my friends. Hopefully I will get to see a perfected connection and never have to worry about migrating to a new host ever again. The best days of gaming have yet to come

Is it only me or do many of you feel the same way? Leave a comment below.