It's strange to look back into my early years and see how far the medium of gaming has come. I remember when I was a tween playing video games wasn't considered cool. Jocks reigned supreme in school and declared gaming was for nerds, parents just echoed the mantra of the media saying video games just rotted your brain. Now we exist in a society where almost any given person is just one phone swipe away from a video game and the naysayers of the format are completely silent. It's a known fact that video games are beneficial to the development of human mind and it's communication with the body (or hand-to-eye coordination). There are even games that are specifically made to increase your brain functions, physical fitness, or knowledge of any specific subject. Even more astounding to me is the fact that people officially compete in video game tournaments. Though it's been around a long while in some unofficial way professional gaming has truly turned into a discipline all it's own.
Hearing people all over talking about the new Madden, GTA, or Call of Duty game reminds me of the days when video games were considered to be a child's toy. The first video game I played was when I was around 4 or 5 I think and it was on a computer that didn't even have a hard drive. It was all one contained unit that connected into an outlet but if you powered it up without a 5.25 floppy disk in it nothing would happen. Each disk contained a program that this particular computer would run and a few of them were simple word games I found amusement in. The ones I remember playing the most were hangman and a Q&A game that mocked you with your answers upon completion. Not long after that I was allowed to play games on the Atari 2600 my parents owned. Further down the line I discovered the Nintendo Entertainment System with such great games as Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda, and Final Fantasy. From that point on I was hooked.
For a while not many people actually admitted to playing video games because the common consensus was that they were aimed at little kids. Apparently it was okay to play video games until you reached at 12 or so. After that all those people you'd previously talked to about any games you'd played over the summer didn't even acknowledge your existence. I still maintained a close knit group of friends but social pressures over something stupid led a few people astray.
As I grew older I continued to enjoy playing as many video games as a could and watched the medium change. Being pulled into the environment and story of any game used to require a lot more imagination but now games can produce the substance to suck you in the moment you press start. It's turned into an interactive art form able to convey emotions and ideas in a way that (in my opinion) can't be equaled by any other format. I back up this claim with an example even.
Say you like a character in a movie or TV show that does something you consider bad. You might have some emotional conflict at the idea that someone fictional you've grown attached to did something you find immoral but imagine if you were the one controlling that particular fictional character. In other words watching a story unfold is one thing but actually making it happen through your own ability adds weight to it's significance. With the invention of games that provide multiple pathways based on quasi-morality the experience grows even deeper.
I've been greatly moved by the plight of my digital avatars, I've triumphed in the face of adversity in many virtual worlds, I've become corrupted by evil that has lead to my own destruction, I've gained fictional friends I will remember forever, I've lost people, and most importantly I've learned more about myself and my morals that I could ever imagine.
When I was a child and helping Mario stomp Bowser into the dirt I imagined how awesome games could be if we didn't have the graphical limitations we did back then. Now that reality has come to fruition and I am reveling in it.
