What do video games mean to you?

[mizarkgram]

I know there has been numerous topics about why people collect and whatnot, but I was just wondering about something.

What are video games to you? Are they just "toys" to play with, is collecting just a hobby to pass time, a way to spend some money you just can't seem to find anything else to do with, your job, part of an obsessive disorder where you jsut cannot stop colelcting those little cartridges and discs?

With these ideas, I just wanted to see where Digistal Press fit into the piece of your gaming puzzle. Is is a place for reviews of current games for those modern-era gamers? A retro review site for those interested in retro-only games? A mix? A place for trading/building up obsessive collections? A social hangout with people who have similar interests?




For me, I used to collect video games just becasue it was a novel thing to do back home. Once I got to university, and had access to more and more places to get games, it just became an active hobby for me.

I found Digital Press one day when I was wanting to take a break from studying last year, and I have not stopped browsing through here since. I find it a nice getaway from school and work to simply read about my hobby, and other people's views. I have to also say that it is helluva funny to read some of the threads on here that some people post.... there are some . . . different kinds of humor on this site, but most of the time... I get a good chuckle out of people

[tony_good]

A reason to go on living, that's what games are.

Check out Twin Galaxies, if you haven't already. Try to go for a world record!

[DynastyLawyer]

What are video games to you? Are they just "toys" to play with, is collecting just a hobby to pass time, a way to spend some money you just can't seem to find anything else to do with, your job, part of an obsessive disorder where you jsut cannot stop colelcting those little cartridges and discs?

Videogames are essentially releases from the world, at least in my book. They're a good way to relax from a boring world. A moment in Sherlock Holmes I always found touching was when Sherlock pointed Watson to a window and essentially said: "Take a look outside. Would it be possible to conceive of a world more grey, more dull, more boring?" Sherlock was expressing despair towards a world bereft of challenges, and as a result, when the latest crime wasn't going on, he'd turn to the coke in despair.

I've lived a pretty academic and boring life myself, so videogames fill in for coke. Each game tends to create a new and exciting challenge, with rules to learn and strategies to devise. When not a lot is going on in life, videogames are there to keep you on your toes, and if it does it's job really well, to entertain you and teach you a different way of looking at existence. When a lot is going on in life... well... videogames will distract you anyways.

I was directed here by Sharc, who told me something akin to "WAAAAAAAAY better game discussion than at the PVP forums or Gamefaqs." I'd be inclined to agree. From what I've seen of those forums, they usually tend to devolve into flame wars, or people merely stating opinions as if truth. Digital Press seems to go a bit deeper in discussing games, and while we don't always agree, we tend to respect each other's opinions (on most issues) and we tend to have more knowledge to utilize than the average 13 year old kid asserting: "Halo 2 and GTA San Andreas are the best gamez, EVAR!"

[Iron Draggon]

When I started collecting them during the 16BIT era, I did so because I saw them as digital art. So each new game was like another new painting in my museum. I still see them that way, for the most part. It's all about the art.

As for DP, it's kinda like where I hang out with other connosuers of digital art. We're sorta like the beatniks, just chillin' and discussin' our fave works of art. The fact that you can play them is more like an afterthought for me.

So in that respect, they're more like kinetic sculptures than paintings, and especially now that they're almost all modeled in 3D instead of drawn in 2D, but the basic idea remains the same. They're just art to me, and little more.

Even the boxes and manuals are the same way. They're just part of the art. But what's scary is the tansientness of the digital artform. It's not like the art on the boxes and manuals. It's far more delicate, and much too easily lost.

[squidblatt]

I'm pretty much with Iron Dragon, except I probably have a much smaller collection. I used to be exclusively a PC gamer, but I've gone to pretty much all consoles with this generation. I can't quite think of games as the escape that they used to be for me; they're just not pulling me in anymore. That's mainly due to the amount of time I have. If I play a games for hours, it's only at the expense of something else far more urgent.

I guess I look at them as artpieces, but they're not high-art. I enjoy the tackiness and all around bad taste of most games. The more absurd a game is, the more appealing it is to me. I'm not sure if there will ever be a game on par with the greatest examples of other forms of art, but I don't think there is a critical apparatus appropriate to really gauge games as an art yet. For one to develop, I think critics will have to draw from the fields of cognitive psychology and human-computer interaction, as well as the more traditional arts. Right now, I can only say that I like them as artifacts and as plain old games.

[thehistorian]

Gaming is to me, in equal parts, escapism, nostalgia, and social contact.

Escapism is what allows me to unwind and relax after a long day. Something to distract me for the mindless coding I do on web servers daily. Nostalgia is what got me to this job of web design and development. Were it not for video games as a child I wouldn’t have ever developed an interest in computers. In the 80s there wasn’t a public internet let alone HTML. Social is what brings my friends together to talk smack, and raise hell as we test our skills at whatever game we are playing…

As for DP…

Well DP is the great living brain of gaming. If I have a question about some obscure game on an archaic system, chances are I can ask about it here. And if I don’t get a direct answer, I’ll be pointed along the yellow road to hopefully discover the answer I’m looking for. DP is a knowledge community at its core. There is a social aspect, though it isn’t as involved, as my offline social life. Meaning that I know a few here, but informally.

[MegaDrive20XX]

My business is my hobby, as my hobby is my business...

[NintendoMan]

Until I found this awesome web forum, I thought I was the only one that in a one week period might spend hours and hours searching places for games, spending hundreds of dollars (sometimes), and bringing home more than can fit in my truck. Spending hours on hours reading the latest videogame related info, online and in magazines.
It's so awesome that I am not the only one that is obsessed with videogames and the related merchandise. Before meeting people on here, I knew and know a whole bunch of people that play games, but no one that understands why I have so many games. Big stacks taller than me that are unplayed.
Basically VideoGames mean EVERYTHING to me. I NEVER see that changing because there will always be a game that I can add to my collection.

[Steven]

They are many things.

1. memories; a window into my past and the past in general, good times gone by

2. a hobby of mine which I like to engage in

3. entertainment

[cr0n0]

Videogames to me are way to relax from the REAL world, sort of a getaway from reality. Ever played a game and then looked at the time and said "Oh CRAP, LOOK AT THE TIME?"
Time flies by for me when I play a game I like. Plus they are more entertaining to me than a movie, because games allow you to interact with them and you play a role in it other than just being a viewer.

I don't collect games, but I no longer get rid of them (or consoles). I want to keep them as a sort of reminder of what transgression the video industry has gone through all these years.

[EnemyZero]

video games have always been my escape from the real world, especially when i was younger, i was different and didnt have many friends so i turned to games (sega genesis) which is why im such a huge collector of the classics and a big sega fan :P

[Richter Belmount]

a getaway from pressures and boredom of my redneck town.

[Graham Mitchell]

To me video games are art. I admire them, critique them, and compare them to other works as I do with music. I love music, and collect records and music-related stuff (even though I had all of it stolen at one point and had to start from the ground up again. That blew.) I have had the same feelings from video games that I get from music. Playing Shenmue and Ecco the Dolphin on the DC were both life-altering, transcendental experiences for me, for example.

I've been excited about games since I was a small child, and I owned almost every system from the NES to the current generation. I always sold my old stuff because my mother didn't take to kindly to 800 lbs of cords lying around, and I wanted to keep trying new stuff. It wasn't until I met my fiancee', Nikki, that my attitude changed about collecting. She was the first girlfriend I had that ADVOCATED me playing, because she could tell it was something I genuinely loved and appreciated, and she bought me many of the old consoles I used to have. (Though I have collected NES stuff for as long as I can remember. But the Genesis, SNES, Atari 7800, etc. are all recent additions care of her).

That said, I'm glad that I found this community; most people in my life who are "gamers" really give gaming a bad name. They often don't eat, and occasionally don't have a place to live, but they've got the latest stupid game. I don't blame games for that, because if you took the games away there would be some other problem or addictive element filling their void, as the problem is personality. But the average gaming Joe that I've met (and it's probably far from the rule) is a lazy stoner who likes to blow shit up. Here we dig severely deeper than that, and I really feel that I'm part of a community here--a feeling I don't get at school or in the town I currently reside. So, that's what gaming and DP mean to me.

[gepeto]

#1 When I was younger I believe the atari 2600 was like 279.00. My parents could not afford one I was always playing games at my friends house. When i got older I made money now I buy games and play them. I enjoy watching kids in my neighborhood play my games. I know I will never beat all of my games but I have them to beat.

#2 It keeps me young and my soul stress free. I believe all hardcore game collectors are young at heart. and at times the competition fierce.

#3 Most people that owned systems at one point or another and most have spent alot of money buying games and systems and have traded them in or sold them and have nothing but memories. I don't know of anyone who wouldn't like to play around of punchout.

#4 Someone needs to be around to tell the story:)

[Aussie2B]

Maybe it sounds a bit corny, but video games are my entire existence. Of course, I balance my life with thoughts of family, my boyfriend, and my responsibilities, but the rest of the time my mind is consumed with thoughts of games, whether it be conscious or not. I have a lot of other various hobbies, but they all stem from games (listing to game music, reading Japanese comics based on games, etc.) I'm pretty much perpetually broke, but if I didn't have games, I'd have virtually nothing else to spend my money on besides what little I spend on necessities.

If it wasn't for games, I wouldn't be in college taking Computer Science courses. I don't know if programming games is what I truly want to do, but I can't picture myself being happy with any kind of career unless it's within the game industry, and I figure no matter what you get into in the video game industry, knowledge of programming and how games are made can't hurt.

[mezrabad]

Not to intentionally sound "weirder than thou", but I always thought of videogames as simple approximations of other universes viewed through a tiny little window. They're these ordered systems that have rules that you have to figure out how to use or get around. I think I felt this way because 2600's Adventure so captivated me. I used to have dreams that took place in that little kingdom, in much the same way I later had dreams of being in Britannia or The G.U.E.

I've never thought of them as an escape, or as something to pass the time. It was never "oh, I can't wait to get home to relax and play Privateer." It was "I need to get home so I can get past that damn Oxford mission." I didn't play them so I could get away from the real world, I played them because I felt there were "things I had to do" in these pocket universes.

There was an article on Wired.com about how some people were getting so immersed in Katamari Damacy that they would look at objects in the real world and wonder how large their katamari would have to be to pick it up. While they were wondering they noticed that they'd begun to "steer" towards it because they thought they may have been big enough already. I was like that with text adventures. My internal, and sometimes not-so-internal, monologues, at one point, were series of terse verb noun commands that I would recite under my breath. "open fridge" "get milk" "open milk" "pour milk (into glass)" "close milk" "drop milk" "close fridge" "drink milk" (you don't have the milk) "get glass" "drink milk".

I'm not like that anymore, reality is a lot more prevailent, but I'm not entirely convinced that it's intrinsically "better". People go hunting for deer all the time. It just isn't convenient to do it everynight, there are licenses, there's weather and there's life threatening accidents. Who says I can't get the same thrill as often as I like in an MMORPG? Okay, I'm not bringing home a rack to hang over my mantle, or venison to consume, but I'm also not going off and getting shot at by some idiot who thinks I'm vaguely elk-shaped.

My father-in-law is always quick to point out that what happens in those worlds "isn't real", by which he implies "has no value". He might be right, but I feel the same way about his religion, so there ya are.

Who knows, we may actually BE the avatars that other beings "play" for a couple of hours of their lives every night. At the end of our "lives" there might be someone pulling a jack out of their skull and saying "hey, that one was really cool, I was a videogamer in there, too! Maybe I'll make the next one a Messiah! I've got these cheat codes I've been meaning to try out . . ."

[StealthLurker]

Although I've fallen from being a true gamer (more of a collector now), my current feelings are:

1) art
2) nostalgia
3) necessary for my completist tendencies
4) very rare nowadays but, fun entertainment


.

[Xantan the Foul]

part of an obsessive disorder where you jsut cannot stop colelcting those little cartridges and discs?

I think that one about covers it for me LOL