Modern gamers are soft.


Including myself, I have been softened up so much by modern games. And I might even enjoy it.

Once, not too long ago, games had genuine consequences. Real no-foolin consequences. If you died, you lost a life, if you lost enough lives the game ended, reset, finished. This resulted in genuine tension, genuine no-fooling tension, you'd literally be on the edge of your seat, sometimes sweating over just surviving or making it passed that difficult leap.

Now games treat us like toddlers. They fill the screen with hints, tips, tutorials and solutions to the puzzles and obstacles we face. We have an unlimited store of lives. We can try something as many times as we want without fear of any consequenses. If we die, no worry, we can just restart from a point shorty before. When we face a choice in an RPG there's no wrong choice, just an alternate reward depending on which path we take (which can be easily googled or we can save and restart).

The modern gamer wouldn't know what failure is, it'd probably give them a heart attack. We expect to play through every game beginning to end and watch the ending without ANY chance of failing. If we get stuck on a difficult section we blame the developer.

The modern video game is like a theme park ride. It creates a pleasant illusion of danger, the animatronic creature looms in front of us but we know it'll give way and let us pass. The theme park employee shouts and acts like it's real danger but it's all in good fun. There's never any real risk. Basically, when you play a modern video game you're never really in any real danger or at risk of failure, just the exciting illlusion that things are really exciting and dangerous.

But I have to admit, as a married man with kids, when I get home from work at night do I really want to fail at a video game?

Maybe, maybe not. I really do miss the genuine tension and fear of failing that only older games offered and the sense of actual challenge this created.

I'm torn.