Current Events > I can honestly say that I've been asked a million times why I play games.

(+) Yeah! (+)

And I normally just shrug and say "It's a hobby.", but that's a lie. Because when I'm in game, I'm at home. From the flames of cataclysm to the icy
mountains of Tamriel, anywhere I venture, is a place I love and know.
My entire life people preach that I could be anything that I wanted to be. But when I told them I wanted to be the captain of a ship, a spaceship, THE spaceship
that saves humanity. That I wanted to be Commander Shepard they told me I need to get a grip on reality.
And to them to them a grip on a reality means the American dream, working nine to five crammed up in a tiny cubicle
having two-point-five kids, a two story suburban house and a white picket fence. I divorce once, and I'd have debt into my early thirties because I took some bullshit university degree that's suppose to help me in the end.
This isn't reality, this is just a dull outlook on it. Now I understand it's human nature to achieve greatness, but I can do this as Commander Shepard, I don't need a degree.
And if I want to go on an adventure I don't ever have to leave
the comfort of my home. Yet, people spend an entire salary to travel and I can't help but laugh. I've single-handedly stopped a reign of ancient wyverns from destroying a nation, but before I could do that do I had to:
Learn their language
Become a master in Swordsmanship, Smithing, Archery, Defense, Magic, Speech, Hunting and Thieving!
Not to mention I had to take down an entire fleet of assassins along with a brigade of smugglers before I could even START my lessons in Dragon's Speak. I've always enjoyed an adventure, but I hated pawning my limbs to afford an
eighteen-hour car ride. And aside from being told that I can enjoy a white-picket fence at the end of my career, all my years as a student was balance between Fractal Formulas and believing I never be able to love which is literal INSANITY.
I've saved Princess Peach. I wanted to be the guy, and I became the guy. I saved Bandage Girl. And I've been Link for generations just to save Princess Zelda. But yet, I'm the eternal virgin, I'm the guy that's never going to love.
And sometimes this shit doesn't make sense to me, why people assume that I need to be out doing something and away from home to have fun when I have my own reality grasped between my hands. I have my own world at my fingertips, if I screw something
up I can rewind time. I can't do that in real life, but when I'm in game I'm free to what I please, when I plEEEase, I'm free to enjoy things the way I want to. I can build my own Kingdom and lead my people to freedom because I'm the mind
behind the game. I'm the one who enjoys these games.
I am a gamer.
And I always will be.

I tell them that Im broke and its basically the cheapest hobby there is

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They targeted gamers.
Gamers.
We're a group of people who will sit for hours, days, even weeks on end performing some of the hardest, most mentally demanding tasks. Over, and over, and over all for nothing more than a little digital token saying we did.
We'll punish our selfs doing things others would consider torture, because we think it's fun.
We'll spend most if not all of our free time min maxing the stats of a fictional character all to draw out a single extra point of damage per second.
Many of us have made careers out of doing just these things: slogging through the grind, all day, the same quests over and over, hundreds of times to the point where we know evety little detail such that some have attained such gamer nirvana that they can literally play these games blindfolded.
Do these people have any idea how many controllers have been smashed, systems over heated, disks and carts destroyed 8n frustration? All to latter be referred to as bragging rights?
These people honestly think this is a battle they can win? They take our media? We're already building a new one without them. They take our devs? Gamers aren't shy about throwing their money else where, or even making the games our selves. They think calling us racist, mysoginistic, rape apologists is going to change us? We've been called worse things by prepubescent 10 year olds with a shitty head set. They picked a fight against a group that's already grown desensitized to their strategies and methods. Who enjoy the battle of attrition they've threatened us with. Who take it as a challange when they tell us we no longer matter. Our obsession with proving we can after being told we can't is so deeply ingrained from years of dealing with big brothers/sisters and friends laughing at how pathetic we used to be that proving you people wrong has become a very real need; a honed reflex.
Gamers are competative, hard core, by nature. We love a challange. The worst thing you did in all of this was to challange us. You're not special, you're not original, you're not the first; this is just another boss fight.

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josifrees posted...

I tell them that Im broke and its basically the cheapest hobby there is

Is it?

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