Here goes something?

Hey, hey, hey

So as this is the first of several blogs to come I figure I will just talk about some general knowledge about my gaming experiences and a rant or two about games/gamers and maybe evil bunnies ... if there is time.

To begin, I have been around computer games since the age of about seven. I do consider myself to be a gamer, but not a hardcore gamer. I play games on easy or normal and rarely go on online multiplayer. My dad worked with computers so it was easy for me to have access to them. (Good ol' DOS) On the computer we literally had dozens of weird no name games and a few classics like Pacman, Battle Chess (The one where the Rook literally eats the Queen) and my all time personal fav Commander Keen. Nowadays I spend my time playing on the Xbox 360 on games like Halo, Dead Space and Fable. I must admit, I do spend far too much time playing on the console as opposed to much more important things like studying. (Hah, not likely!)

I am frequently told by my parents that I'm boring for playing on games as (as they see it) I do nothing but sit there, staring at a tv screen and that I should do something else that would allow others to join in, like watch a movie. This got me thinking, does watching a movie qualify as being more sociable and why are gamers always seen as being isolated geeks who don't know how to talk to people? Personally, though I am biased, I think not. I consider video games to be (or at least potentially) more sociable. For one, there is cooperative play from 2-4 players, not to mention these MMORPG's such as WoW, for which I will not touch with a ten foot pole, my apologies to any fans out there but I have had bad experiences with online play in the past and the prospect of paying $20 a month for a game you had to pay for initially anyway seems idiotic to me, maintainence/ updates or not. Anyway, back to the point. I do not fully understand why people see movie watching as more active than gaming, granted you can go out to the cinema with at least 200 other people and watch something, but you cannot or at least aren't supposed to talk and interact with eachother in a cinema and talking during a movie at home is distracting as you miss dialogue. In essence, for a movie you simply sit there and watch. For games, you can talk through them as usually, especially in shooters, dialogue is few and far in between. Although you do also just sit there, games are interactive, you control the outcome. You must think about how to get through a level in order to complete. (especially in Halo on legendary) In my experience with movies watching vs gaming, I definitely find gaming to be more of an activity. I get bored about 20 mins into a film and start picking at loose bits of cotton thread on my shirt. For me gaming requires more focus. This is obviously not for everyone though.

Thats enough from me and my half-spun rant on games.