Why I Quit Playing Video Games 20 Years Ago

As I wrote the title of this post, it dawned on me how long it's actually been. Getting old sucks. It's just constant reminder after reminder of how long ago things were.

Anyway, this is something I get flack for every now and then, particularly from @giftedgaia and @sykochica during some of our podcast episodes. You'll hear them say something to the effect of "We'll just call it a 'simulation' instead of a game" because of my interest in an app called "Universe Sandbox", which many of you may know. I like that one, actually, but for no other purpose than to burn time, not unlike Tetris.

Growing up we always had some kind of game console in the house. My first memory of this is my sister's original Atari 2600.

We had games like Pacman, Q-Bert, Frogger, and E.T. (which wasn't even a complete game), and my favorite, Pitfall.

Then, in 1985, the US was introduced to the 8-Bit Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). I remember going over to the houses of friends who had one all the time until finally, on my birthday in 1986, I got one of my own. And of course, my parents threw in a few extra games. Super Mario Bros., Duck Hunt, Double Dribble, Excitebike, Rad Racer, Contra, and of course, The Legend of Zelda (original shiny gold cartridge).

I was sucked in all day long. Playing outside became a thing of the past. Having friends stay overnight was usually meant some sort of "Tournament Of The Nintendo Giants" kind of thing, and which usually meant that the winner was he who beat Mike Tyson in Mike Tyson's "Punch Out".

Only a few years later, and I found myself the owner of a Sega Genesis.

There were only a few games I liked on it, but it was worth owning just to have these games. To be honest, I don't remember all but one of them: Flashback.

I absolutely loved this game, but it was almost a total ripoff of Total Recall + The Running Man, in that the main character has completely forgotten his identity, he finds a message from his past self that gives him hints as to who he is and how he got this way, and then has to go through a do-or-die, floor-by-floor "Death Tower" game show to win a ticket off the planet that he's on so he can go back to his home planet and live a normal life.....or something. It's been a couple of decades, so that may not be 100% accurate, so bear with me.

Then, at the age of 17, I bought a Sony Playstation. We're talking first-generation.
The reason I got it: Wipeout XL

I also played my fair share of Tomb Raider and Tekken as well. There were a few other games I played, but all in all I started to get burned out on video games. By this time, I had been introduced to video production and Photoshop, albeit the video was analog tape-to-tape, and the Photoshop version I used was 3.0 on Windows 3.1.

Why was I getting burned out? What was the mindset?

Ultimately, I felt that video games stifled my creative energy. I suppose it was simply my calling to go into the fields that I did - photo/video/computers. My thinking was that in those fields, the world is my oyster. I can do with it as I please and create things out of it that you can't get with video games. When you play a game, you're playing the same game that everyone else is playing. You're seeing all the same story line beginnings and endings that they are. To me, there was nothing unique about that. The end result made things in life no different than before.

But creating something does.

The thing you end up with at the end of a creative endeavor is yours.
Your creation is unique only to you. This was - and still is - fascinating to me.

I know video games have evolved immensely over the past 20 years. Even though I don't play them, I see my friends play them all the time, so I'm no stranger to them (to a degree). I understand there have been many new ways of achieving a more creative end-goal in many games.

But with the advent of multi-player online games, suddenly there is no end to them. This was something that, although I didn't play games, did have a direct impact on my life when I suddenly found myself having a hard time reaching some of my friends due to their weeks-long disappearance following the release of some new game. Even when I and others would go visit these friends, it was most difficult to get them to even put the game on hold and come out into the living room to visit with their guests because they were so absorbed into this virtual world.

I remember numerous times when I went into their room to say hello, only to find some dark box of a room where they had their gaming system setup in the corner, their back faced toward the door. Couldn't even get them to turn towards me so I could see their face. Just a quick toss up of one hand, "Hi."

This behavior seemed very much like a drug addiction to me. Just swap out the controller & console for a belt & needle.
Even the environment seemed fitting. This was just not my thing, nor would it ever be. Granted, I realize not everyone is like this with video games, but seeing this kind of thing just turned me off to it.

So that's pretty much it, in a nutshell. To this day, I don't have much of a desire to play games, I just don't see the point. And oddly enough, this has even spread to other kinds of games, including card games and board games. Even sports. There's just no interest there.

What about you?

I know that on the majority we probably have more gamers here than non-gamers.
But where do you stand? Surely I can't be alone in this viewpoint.

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