Weekend Confirmed 104 - Mass Effect 3, Diablo 3, GDC remainders

I love video games.

Ever since pong and the Atari 2600, those primitive shapes and characters made up of 5 pixels have allowed me to escape into another world. I have loved watching video games evolve. From 8 bit, to 16 bit to polygons, games have evolved into a place I never thought possible in my lifetime. When hardware limitations caused sprites to flicker more than 8 of them were in a screen I didn't think even my grandchildren would enjoy experiences as vast and rich as Skyrim and I'm only in my 30s.

I never thought in my wildest dreams I would be able to explore full realized 3d worlds populated by voice acted characters. I never thought I would be able to zoom off around the galaxy in a space ship, talking to aliens and battling terrifying enemies. There was a time when a the crude, pixelated character models mouth having a single frame of animation was the biggest technological leap forward and now days even specks of mud is rendered on a character's boot.

I remember when games cost a lot more, I remember riding to the shop to pay $119 for a SNES cartridge that held about 5MB of data and now days I can buy a game for $10 that's over 1000MB without even leaving my lounge. I remembered when the only way to play multi-player was to sit next to someone on the lounge and now I can play with millions of people around the globe.

I also remember when video games were a sin. I remember getting stitches on the inside of my mouth from being punched by a school 'footy-head' because playing video games was a reason to pick on people. I never thought I'd hear celebrities talk about playing games and people even pose as gamers to try and appear cool. I never thought I'd see mario t-shirts in a store cause gaming was something you kept secret from the world.

When I was young I never thought video games could ever allow me to explore worlds as detailed as the art on the cover of the manual. It was full off imitations and it's been thrilling to watch games develop into a place I never thought possible in my lifetime. I feel immensely grateful to have lived in such worlds as Fallout, Skyrim and Mass Effect. It's truly an amazing feeling and a privilege.

The unfortunate thing is that with cheaper, infinitely more detailed, more easily accessible, more socially acceptable games I've seen gamers become increasingly more cynical, critical and generally ungrateful. It seems that the better things get, the more people become unsatisfied. I'd like to put gamers in a time machine and send them back 25 years, give them some perspective. I'm sure they'd beg to come back to the gaming utopia that we now inhabit.