4 Ways You Are Killing Video Games
3. The Rise Of The Internet
Without sounding years my senior, its the fault of that-there internet. When I was a youngun, if you wanted to express your hatred for something, you had to write a strongly worded letter, maybe leave a voice message with Terry Wogan for Sunday afternoon television. Perhaps you could stand on your front porch with a loved one and shake your fist at the world that has wronged you. Now? Simply roll over, pull out your smartphone and mash badly spelt obscenities into your touch screen keyboard.
Remember when games were fun? When they just visualisations of your wildest fantasies? I used to swap cheat codes on the playground, talk about Zelda bosses in the middle of maths class, or lend a friend a cartridge because my ham shaped fists could not, for love nor money, get a certain star in Super Mario 64. As the internet has grown, so has the convention of the faceless culture. These days all I need is a email address and a witty pseudonym and I can spew hatred towards a person or group of persons.
As this industry grows, so does the antagonism. Do you remember the uncontrollable amount of bullying that BioWares Jennifer Hepler faced when she dared to suggest story-driven games could let players skip through combat sequences? What about when high level Street Fighter X Tekken player, Aris Bakhranians, defended the presence of sexual harassment in the fighting game scene because it was part of the culture and had more than just a handful of people coming to his defense?
Before I started digging, I was going to place the blame of the slow decline of intelligence in this industry square on the players, but it isnt. Those people who bitch and moan to the Nth degree, are part of the problem. Us, in the press and those in the game development and publishing communities are too at fault for the coming of what could be another crash in the video game monopoly. The most worrying part of all of this is the caustic attitude that the three strange bedfellows treat each other with. Dont forget there are exceptions to all of this.