Since in today’s world traditional media has made a supreme effort to alienate males (as detailed by plenty of other posts), our money and our recreational time has to go somewhere. For the 35 and under demographic (and a good chunk of the older guys, don’t lie) much of that money and free time has gone to videogames.
Leaving aside the female/LGBT ghetto, videogames attract people easily because of the following factors:
- They are interactive — suspension of disbelief is easier to get if you are a part of the story instead of just watching it. Not that you actually believe that you are that guy; you just get more immersed in the story (This can apply to both sexes, I know).
- Gratuitous violence. Although the politically correct corps has tried over and over again to stop it (mainly though lawsuits), the bad guys still can go boom in an explosion of gore.
- Lack of mercy for the bad guys. Unlike female oriented stories, filled with conflicted, overemotional dramatic characters, just like in a real war with real evil guys, things become simpler. Yeah, it’s a sad story. Yeah, too bad that it happened to you, but you are still evil and hence, I still get to blow you up so you don’t conquer/destroy the world.
- With evolution of technology and story lines, the Byronic hero has found another reincarnation. Note: He appeals to males. The bad boy caricatures and manginas don’t.
Of course, there is the fact that you can interact with others, both in an off-line party in multiplayer games (Street Fighter, Tekken, Mario Party) or in online games, the leaders in those being the Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPG) like World of Warcraft (didn’t think that I wasn’t going to say it, right?), Dungeons and Dragons Online, City of Heroes, Champions Online and the upcoming Star Trek Online and Star Wars: The Old Republic, just to mention a few.
However, this is isn’t a beacon of light that shines against the darkness; it is an industry that is still ruled by soulless executives that would LOVE to sell more games to girls, but experience has proven that females tend to go to casual videogames like Bejeweled, Peggle and basically everything in Miniclip.com, and you can’t justify spending millions on a female oriented game when a)You’ve got an audience that isn’t very hard to convince to try something (Buying it is a different matter) and b) They. Don’t. Know. How. to appeal to females with a multi-million project. The closest thing to that (and still toxic for the industry) is the premise: Hey, let’s clone WoW!!
A note about World of Warcraft: Its success is because it was the game that opened MMORPGs to people that don’t have too much time, unlike the other games of the time. WoW marked the MMORPG market and you can get in the endgame content of any game with 3 sessions of 2-3 hours each week, given enough dedication. Anyone that tells you otherwise is a liar. Or has too much free time on his/her hands. Or is addicted, just pick one.
Don’t let the rabid videogame fan-girls convince you otherwise, most of their kind goes to Bejeweled.
The main problem with videogames comes when people who are depressed and/or have addictive personalities get hooked, spending an unhealthy amount of time (when your head or eyes start hurting, take a break), and then shun everything else, such as a proper job, personal hygiene, keeping in shape and maintaining relationships (both long lasting and one-night stands), which should take more priority than videogames. When that principle is broken, the shit hits the fan.
Another danger is being consumed in a torrid online affair, Second Life, the leader on avatar based chat (and the exception, more females are users, but it’s a free-to-play game with premium stuff that cost money), has plenty of sordid stories about that, but any avatar based game can be used for that and it has been happening even since the text-based MUDs, along with the exploration of sexual fetishes. Ew. (Note: Furries are gross).
Then there is the funny stuff, like the things that you hear because of the lack of a push-to-talk button in Xbox Live or when anyone forgets to set one up — both the game and the forums are filled with natural Internet anonymous jerks, the cam whores and their victims/white knights, the drama queens, etc. The PC police usually forget that all that is funny. And a sense of humor is a way of dealing with pressure and stress.
Given that this world tends to make a large amount of males depressed, I know that is tempting to give in, to play games all day, world be damned. Don’t. Learn Game, keep in shape and keep a job. Fighting in the real world takes way more courage than killing monsters of polygons. Don’t surrender. But don’t shun them entirely like an Alcoholics Anonymous pussy and then start ranting about videogames being evil. Enjoy them, don’t be ashamed of your hobby; it is, after all, an enjoyable part of your life, just like any other diversion.
I know that this sounds like simple advice, but the best advice usually is.
