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About Me

29 yrs old
Attorney
location: Midwest


currently playing:
Warhammer online
Peggle Nights
Dragon Quest IV
Rock Band 2
Little Big Planet
Fallout 3
Gears of War 2
Dead space


Favorite Games:
BioShock
FF III (US)
tecmo super bowl
Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Civilization series
punch out
Star Wars KOTOR
Mario golf
Mario Kart (64)
Tony Hawk 3


TV Shows you should watch:
The Wire (best tv show of all-time)
Lost
Battlestar Galactica
Freaks and Geeks

Favorite Movies
Star Wars Trilogy
Pulp Fiction
Children of Men
Roger Dodger
Terminator 2
Quiz Show
JFK
In America






We live in an age were no one understand they are boring. the internet has allowed everyone to voice their opinion and present themselves to the world. While this has many benefits, it also has just as many negatives. the largest being that no one seems to understand they aren't very interesting. I understand that so i'm not going to pretend i am remarkable because I can afford $40 for broadband.

We are here because we share a common interest, video games, so I am going to focus on that. how i got here in terms of video games.

My first video game memories are playing my parent's Atari 2600 Man, I loved that thing. I don't know if it was just because it was so cutting edge or because I was just a stupid little kid, but I would play any game on that thing for hours. I read lists of the all-time worst games and many include some of the favorites from my youth. I would play E.T. non-stop. I didn't mind that it took me 20 tries to get out of a pit because that was all I had and all there was. I would fly around as superman (while wearing my superman underoos) across nonsense backgrounds and enjoy every minute.

In elementary school I finally upgraded to the NES. I wasn't an early adapter. My NES came with the power pad. But that was the beginning of the end. From that point on I was hooked. My dad would often take me to the video store to rent NES games. that was before the days of blockbuster, so we would go to the local mom and pop rental place. That was also the day before the internet, so it was much harder to get info about games to know which were worth playing. I would hunt through the isle reading the back of every box and looking at the pictures. As a kid your sense of time is skewed but it had to take me at least a half hour to choose a game. I would narrow it down to a few and feel the pressure as my dad told me to hurry up. I still didn't have the discriminating taste I would later develop so I was usually happy with my selection.

About the time of the super nintendo, I started to develop a video game palette, which was great timing because that's when games really came into their prime. Games evolved in terms of story telling, gameplay mechanics, and even multiplayer. As a youth I was also an avid reader and this is the time that games started to match the ability of a good book to whisk a curious youth into strange new worlds. FFIII can hold its own against any classic children's book.

Around this time blockbuster and hollywood video stores began to open. My father worked for the fire department which qualified him for a discount at the local hollywood video. Anytime we would rent a movie or game we would get another rental free. no limits. everytime. my god that was amazing. it doubled the amount of games I could rent! I feel like I played everything back then. this was also the time when home systems began to match some of the arcade games. Me and my friends would rent bomberman for the snes, not to play bomberman, but to get the 4 player adapter that came with it. then we would use that and play 4 player NBA jam until the sun came up.

At this time games didn't have street dates. I would call the video store to find out when they expected a new game and then call them every 2 hours from the day the they estimated the game to come in until it actually arrived. thank god caller ID wasn't prevalent then because the guy at the game store wouldn't have answered my calls the week Street fighter II came out.

By the time the N64 was released I was in high school and had a part time job at a nationwide retailer. As I mentioned above, games didn't have street dates and neither did consoles. I was working the day the first shipments of N64's came in. I called my parents begging them to front me the money (hey, i got a 10% discount). That was some advanced stuff. And the controller was so crazy for the time.

My nintendo 64 took me into college. I don't remember much about that for some reason, but i'm pretty sure If i spent the amount of time studying as I did playing mario kart, goldeneye, mario golf, and fifi soccer, I'd have about 4 graduate degrees.

After a long time in school (I did get one graduate degree) I'm now an employed and have disposable income. As a result I have an 360, ps3, Wii, ps2, and DS. I really think we are in a golden age of gaming and games have taken similar evolutionary step as they did between the NES and SNES.

I hope to become an active member of the destructoid community. I've been reading the blogs for months and hope i can live up to the standard you all have set. If you read all this I appreciate it. If not, I'll understand. It's probably not as interesting as I think it is.

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Gamertag: IUMogg

Following (2)

When did gamers become elitists? Mogg | 6:52 PM on 08.08.2008 15 comments

Let me start off by saying there are always outliers and people who are just jerks. These people will attack anything popular to get a rise out of fans. I'm not talking about those people. i'm writing about the backlash against "casual" games and gamers by a large segment of the gaming community. At this point its impossible to address this with discussing the Wii. The Wii is the symbol of the casual gamer movement. Nintendo has been able to tap into an entire new market and as a result sold millions of copies of such crap games as Carnival Games and Deca Sports. Anyone who is really into games know they are crap games. So here is an amazing idea, DON'T PLAY THEM. I've never understood why other people's preferences offend gamers. Does a family enjoying Carnival Games together cause you to enjoy Smash Bros less? I doubt it. No matter the type of good, there will always be casual consumers who aren't very concerned with quality or don't have the experience necessary to judge the quality. That is why the third Too fast, Too furious movie makes money, that McDonalds brings in billions of dollars, and American Idol is the most popular show on tv. However instead of going online to bitch about people who watch American Idol or complain that Fox has abandoned the Hardcore tv viewer, I'll go watch The Wire or Family Guy on my dvr. I think what some people seem to forget is that often the money that publishers make from such casual title gives them more leeway to take chances on innovative games that we all love. People complain about EA as its this stagnant juggernaut who produces crappy licensed games and retreads of sports title with roster updates. But do you really think EA would have been able to invest in upcoming games like Dead Space and Mirror's Edge without the stability the income from those title's bring in? It's highly unlikely. The bottom line is these companies need to be profitable. They have shareholders which they have a legal duty to do what they can to make them money. We should be grateful that these people are willing to play the crap games so we can play the good ones. Another benefit of the casual game market is that it creates wider acceptance of video games as a medium. We all understand that games can be art and people who play games aren't nerdy recluses. As games break through into mainstream markets that brings this reality to the masses. As a result games could become a more legitimate medium in the eyes of the public. One last criticism of casual games is that if crap casual games weren't there, good games aimed at the hardcore market would take their place. While this might have some legitimacy with a company like nintendo, its unlikely for smaller 3rd party publishers. the game market isn't closed. There aren't a limited amount of games that can be released, so every casual game takes the place of a hardcore game. Both can and do exist together. With the discovery of this new casual market, publishers will meet that demand. Often these publishers would not be profitable without this market, so if the market didn't exist the publishers would exist. It is not a given that these publishers would automatically start creating hardcore games if they couldn't create casual games. Finally, although I don't enjoy many of the casual games (though I do enjoy some), I do enjoy seeing people share the joy I get from video games. My dad hasn't played video games since the atari 2600 or tetris on gameboy. he does enjoy puzzle games and casual word games you find for free on the internet. last christmas I bought him a nintendo ds with brain age 2, wordjong, and picross. now he plays games everyday. although my dad wouldn't last 2 mins in a game of Gears of War, he is now a gamer. I take great joy in seeing my dad share a hobby of mine even though our involvement in the hobby are completely different. Hardcore games will never go away. We are lucky with the quality of hardcore games we get to play. Last year was one of the best years in the history of video games and this fall looks to match it with Spore, littlebigplanet, gears of war 2, fallout 3, etc. I think we should play these great games and be happy that others who previously wouldn't get joy from games are happy playing carnival games. There is no reason we can both enjoy our hobby side by side. Attached photos: