5 Reasons Why I Love/Hate Video Games - An Open Letter

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Dear video game industry,

I have to tell you something. I know this may sound like a breakup letter, but it is not. You still make me laugh. You still make me cry. You still make me full of anger, rage and happiness. You still make good sandwiches and tell me that my ass looks good in those jeans. This is a letter of frustration; a letter of loving hatred. Oxymoronic I know, but I feel the need to point out your failings €“ as well as your more favourable bits €“ so our future together can be as fruitful as possible. I recently travelled to London for the Eurogamer Expo €“ the mecca for the people who love you. Walking in and wandering around is like a surreal lucid nightmare. Waves of humanity, bright flashing lights, colourful posters.The walls are plastered with aliens, grizzled soldiers, cartoon animal thingys and people with giant spiky hair alongside either manly neck beards or hires from the young-and-overly-flirty-ladies-with-breasts rental service shoving stickers, posters and QR codes into your hands. Oh look, another person squished awkwardly into the badly made clothes of a Final Fantasy character holding hands with a really sad looking Agent 47... Who has lost his bald cap. It's a totally unique experience which I both love and hate at the same time. I'm not going to knock my weekend walking around the neon hellhole, in fact, it was pretty awesome. Hey, I got to have hands on with the Playstation 4 and the Xbox One; I played Titanfall, Dying Light, Super Mario 3D World, Beyond: Two Souls, The Crew and so much more. I met awesome internet celebrities like Matt Lees, Lucy James and the Bitsocket screw. I got to chat to PR acquaintances and say hello to amazing developers like David Cage, Mike Bithell and ate pizza with some guys from Media Molecule. I even got recognised by a couple of people who are fans of the gaming related nonsense that I put on the internet. The whole experience is, honestly, all in good fun. However, rather than previewing everything I saw €“ fifteen games overall €“ I figured I would speak to you about the trends, both within the games and the people that play them, that I noted while pottering from booth to booth.
 
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From an early age, Dan Hobbs became downright obsessed with nerd culture. On his desk he has Tetris cufflinks, a broken Wii remote and a Mankind action figure. He still enjoys throwing his contrarian opinion at you, whether you like it or not.