Categories
Retro gaming

The impact of my first experiences with gaming

I was very young when I first played a video game – around two or three years old. It remains one of my oldest memories, one of my first, formative thoughts of the world.

Many children my age had favourite toys, or imaginary friends. Things they adored, that came alive with their own unique understanding.

As a girl growing up with rapidly emerging technology in the 80s, video games were mine.

Those early days

Games back then required more than a little imagination. Those hazy shapes on the screen that were meant to represent people, or vast buildings, or the tiniest item. Not everything was particularly clear. You bought lots of second hand games, you traded games with friends, you didn’t always have the manual or the context for the game you were playing. Picking up a video game then required a little lateral thinking, as few things were obvious.

The only thing that was verbatim was the sense to experiment and discover, to share, compare and learn by doing. These old, almost nostalgic gaming traits are the biggest gift that gaming has given me. They are the tools I have carried with me into adulthood. As a child I saw a beautiful magic in gaming, as I got older I wanted to understand how my consoles and computers worked, how they were made. Video games were the first things to ignite a spark of imagination in my very young mind. Many things came after, but it was that first, very powerful feeling that forged me through the years to come.

Even back then I remember being enraptured by the interactively gaming posed, the promise of what would only improve and get better. I became even more fascinated when I realised that not everyone shared this view – that my parents and siblings found the process confusing or bewildering. This same galvanising feeling of inspiration protected me each time my love of video games was misunderstood, or each time I failed in a game. Video games did look basic back then, but they were also much more difficult. Both of these concepts developed my youthful patience.

I have and always will find it liberating for this reason. As a child video games were profoundly personal experience, a puzzle, an oddity, a secret. It was always seen in that way by others, but never by me.

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Gaming and how it’s shaped my identity

What’s telling then is how little has changed from my origins with gaming. I face many of the game prejudices from my peers about my decision to play games. Back then this a moral panic about a young child playing games that might be violent or deemed a waste of time. Secondarily I faced criticism for spending time on what was deemed to be very much a male past-time, rather than the more obvious activities expected from my gender.

These are still subjects I am grappling to improve awareness and understanding of as an adult.

Crucially back then gaming was relegated very much to those young minds who has the patience and energy to bear with this new interactive medium. My parents and other adults complained back then that gaming was too hard for them to understand, the barriers to entry too high. They still use this same argument many years later. Interestingly it was with a young, and open mind that I first turned to gaming. Free from the worries and prejudices of those around me. No one taught me, I found a way because I wanted to.

As such I’ll never really understand the argument that gaming is hard, and it really isn’t that much easier for young mind to learn, it was just easier for my younger self to be engaged by video games as a medium rather than terrified by it. I now find myself with the means and knowledge to verbalise that epiphany I had all those years ago. Something new isn’t something to be afraid of, and that certainly applies to video games.

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Gaming gave me confidence

So gaming inspired a life-long turn against the tide. The streak of my personality that asked questions. It encouraged a young mind not to rot, but to think more creatively and experiment.

Ultimately it was gaming that inspired a life-long love of computing and technology and my career in web development. Gaming helped me to appreciate that it was a hobby every bit as valid as any other way to spend time. A progressive and social medium. It’s not perfect and we certainly have a long way to go as a community, but it’s helped me to develop a way of thinking and adapting to change that few other hobbies could have.

Above all though it’s made me happy. Gaming has given me more pleasure and joy than anything else I have tried, and all from a flippant decision all those years ago to try out something society had told my young mind I wasn’t allowed, or wasn’t for me.

This post was written for the Critical Distance Blogs of the Round Table. This months theme was origins.

Categories
Video games

Sometimes gaming is too much like hard work

I’d be lying if I said there aren’t days where I detest video games. Days where the idea of playing something seems like too much like hard work. Lots of gamers like to pretend this feeling doesn’t happen, that gaming encourages overwhelming positive emotions and feelings every single day in a completely unending wave.

The days where this normally happens now are on days where I’m tired, swamped with commitments, and sometimes (just sometimes) an interactive medium seems too much like hard work. On days like this video games becomes another mountain to climb rather than an avenue to let me unwind.

It is very much a symptom of adulthood, not only finding the time to play games, but sometimes it goes as far as finding the energy to be inspired by them.

Days where I lack focus

I can’t dabble with games in the way I used to when I was a child. I’m simply unable to indulge in wiling away hours playing and experimenting in excited calm (like I used to). Often my gaming sessions now are very short and very focused, towards the end of the day when I am most tired and have the least patience.

As such the limited time I have to play games has a greater chance to frustrate me in some small way. The time limit renders me unable to make a great deal of progress with a game that needs more care, attention and time that I can perhaps provide that day.

I almost always turn the corner on feelings like this, but it’s important to talk about those days where no game seems to sate me. I’ve used Tombi as an example to illustrate this update. Not because it’s a bad game (it’s actually a favourite of mine). Although this month of gaming indifference has morphed it from a source of total joy and into one of frustration. As such it sums up the dangerous result of my temporary exhaustion with gaming nicely.

Tombi is a game I was highly excited to finally own a proper copy of, a games whose arrival I anticipated for years, whose genius has been partially ruined by my temporary (and perhaps) seasonal disinterest in games.

This feeling will pass and I’ll find a reason to get excited about gaming again (in a few weeks or less) but in the meantime I am pushing onwards through the game hoping the spark will leap back soon. I am certain it will because it is a game I have had the pleasure of playing at least once before.

Getting beaten up in the jungle.Attempting to bag a pig boss.

A tired frustration

It seems almost too easy to blame the games we play on days like this for our lack of focus and commitment. However we are equally responsible for the discontent, and the lack of focus. It’s also really easy for others to dismiss such feelings away by encouraging ourselves to try another game.

I personally find when I feel like this that I carry this feeling into every game I attempt to play. Turning even the most precious and appreciated game against me like some sort of horrible mirror.

So a vicious circle builds where I can’t progress past these feelings. I’m fearful to leave games on a bad moment as this makes it harder to return and try again. During these “push on through” moments, my precious gaming time instead becomes a frustrating exercise in time lost and lack of progression.

While I often have a reason to be frustrated about an aspect of my time with video games, I’m frequently reminded of how beguiling gaming is, how quickly it can change my mood, swing me back and forth between adoration and scorn. I take my (rare) moments of disinterest in gaming as one of the few negatives I identify with the pastime.

Part of this is down to the wealth of games we have now, a lack of time and patience from the pressures of adult life, but also how spoilt we can be as gamers. Demanding a good experience as if it were a right rather than a privilege.

I’ve talked about how chronic illness has forced me to use video games as a coping mechanism, now it seems apt to talk how it’s building a sense of resentment on the days where I am sick and video games provide no respite. There are days I resent games for not helping me to escape from illness. However I do feel guilty for expecting them to do this, as I start to use them to cover up my own poor health and inadequacies.

More often than not though these feelings are an indication that I need to take a break from gaming for a couple of weeks and come back to it bright-faced, because games will always excite me and this temporary loss of how they do, just serves to remind me.