The strange era of gaming

This is really a strange era of playing video games. You know hooking up a video game console to a television and playing games on the game console.

Recently someone asked me what I was playing for fighting games. I said "you know I am still playing Meltyblood". His response was "oh" and being surprise at me still playing it. Probably surprise people are still playing it.

His response and expression left kept me thinking for sometime. It kept me thinking why he was surprise that I was still playing the game.So that thought really lingered in my mind. As I go through gaming news, video game forums and playing games, a few possible reasons for his surprise came to mind.

If I would go onto steam and load up the new game titles, the first 100 new titles I could only recognize only about 20 of them. There is such a huge library of games, there isn't any reason to keep playing the same genre of game or even the exact same game.

So why do I still go back to playing the same game?

The best way I can put it is, to think of it like listening to your favorite songs or music. You love that song or music, naturally you would listen to them now and then. I can say the same for games. I like a certain game naturally I would go back and play it again. From this perspective you would realize it is not one bit strange or surprising.

Still I am not that into new games recently. Well not that into triple A games. In fact recently I got into collecting old games(still buying new ones of course).

For me the big budget games are getting less interesting and no longer catered for me.This is  probably a side effect of getting older, you tend to want to play the games you are familiar with. Sadly the genre that appeals to me are no longer being developed by the bigger companies. Strangely I don't mind it that much as indie developers are stepping up and filling the gap.

You must be thinking "alas the internet brought about great things like Indie developers, early access and Kickstarter to save gaming from running into the ground by grey design". That is the good part about the internet which you must remember the down side.

The upside of people doing good is people doing bad things. Oh how playing video games have grown and include people of all walks of life. There are always bad eggs somewhere doing bad things in general and they represent the groups of communities even if we do not see them as such.

Yes I am talking about people behaving really badly or doing horrible things at tournaments, lan parties, game events etc. For me the fighting game community has become the butt of the gaming communities in general and being both vilified and crucified because of a prominent incident that happened. I do not deny that the incident was bad but being on the internet also means that everyone remembers it and it is hard to shake off that image.

The sad part about the whole thing is the whole gaming communities suffer from the same problems as well. It just happens that the fighting game community is the scapegoat of the whole thing and people feel it is mostly alright to point fingers at them giggling at the butt monkey in the room.

The times when I was younger playing video games amount friends you know around the neighborhood Talking about them, trading secrets. Advising people to avoid bad games.Those times are gone. What a strange era for video games.