Posted: 14-05-05 In: Editorials By: Munro2 |


And there it was. Not just one-hundred plus megabytes of code anymore, but the real deal. The alpha. Sitting on a FTP somewhere out in Cali ready to be downloaded and abused by every fan on the planet. Five users at a time no doubt, but you get the idea. It was just there. The cigarette to a nicotine deprived smoker, the misty beer to a late night alcoholic, the lolly-pop to a sweet tooth. The source of our addiction. (No pun intended) It was Half Life 2. The game we all had been anticipating, right there, waiting to be ganked. Literally. Talk about temptation though right?. The first playable form of our beloved Valve crafted master piece was out and about gradually spreading itself to all corners of the internet. Mostly dark and troubled corners, barely passed by the average at home user, but there none the less.

Now in a Un-Shakespearian type conversion; to download, or not to download? That was the question, which sat on the minds of many eager HL2 fans. To download the alpha, giving into temptation and immature self-indulgence? Or not to download the alpha, remaining loyal to Valve’s five years of blood, sweat, and tears. Quite the dilemma to any hardcore, casual or jaded gamer these days I would say. And I can’t go on without thinking that those who did download the alpha should be forever considered narcissistic cheaters. Did you really lack the patience to wait it out? To drool over more screens and movies for a few months? To let Valve slowly, and readily spill the info out to us as they had planned? I could go on for pages and pages in a bash attempt to all those who did download the alpha, but that’s not the aim of this writing. It’s to question what video games have become to us.

In 1996 my family purchased its first computer. I had already been an avid reader of all the gaming magazines at the time, so I saw this as my first opening to stick my foot in the PC gaming world’s door. The computer wasn’t strong enough to handle the latest games at the time so I did some research and got a new graphics card for it. With that card I needed a game. So I scoured the shelves quickly trying to find something to drop fifty bucks on, to go along with my new Voodoo. There it was. That pretty orange box with the bumpy lambda symbol shining on its cover. It stood out from all the other boxes, and I loved it. So I snagged it. It was Half Life. When I finally got the card working, and the game booted. That was it! I had delved into the world that would soon become the shattering blow to my rising social life. But I could care less. I was intrigued by my new found love. Video games! Since 1996 I’ve played all the games, read all the reviews, previewed the latest and greatest, and have even written about my experiences with gaming. It’s become somewhat of a core hobby, and time taker to me. So basically, when not chatting it up with the local fans, or writing reviews, I’m in the game.

Not until recently have I noticed that when I do step outside of the game, into the community forums, and the chat rooms, that attitudes have swayed, that the tides have turned. Gamers have really changed. No longer are the games played by brace faced computer nerds or four-eyed pizza faces. No longer is video gaming an underground geek sub-culture. No longer are Half Life, or Quake, or Doom unheard of on city streets. Above ground, in a popular society, gaming is in the lime light. Now with that fame comes the masses. The high-school jocks wanna play games, as do the cheer leaders. Parents wanna play games. Your 5 year old cousin wants to. Hell even your pet fish probably wants a piece of action! It’s become the fad, the latest trend. It’s spreading like a plague. It will continue to spread, and as it does, the audience will change. Your favourite game forum is probably now full of young pre-pubescent, horny teenage boys talking trash like there’s no tomorrow because it gives them a voice they lack in the real world. But was it like that two years ago? No. With gaming now becoming more of a mainstream form of entertainment we have to learn to expect this. Like when a good metal band sells out. All the teenage girls now like them for some odd reason? Where as years prior to the sell-out when the band was an underground unheard-of, the girls said it was bad music. Games are selling out. PC games especially. Video cards are becoming more user-friendly during installation. Companies like Dell, and Gateway are selling gaming rigs for Christ sake. Do you see the change now?

Ok. So where does the HL2 leak fit into all this, and who do we blame? We blame the game makers. Why? For making damn good games. Boy 1 buys Half Life. He plays it and loves it. He recommends it to Boy 2. Boy 2 also plays it and recommends it to Boys 3 and 4. Wow, Boy 3 was more of a movie buff, and Boy 4 was more of a web designer, but games are becoming so ridiculously good, and addicting that even the people who initially frowned upon them are now finding themselves immersed in the scientific labs of Black Mesa, or downloading trailers of the new Doom 3. Its spreading and spreading. New people are getting into it every day. Communities are growing, sites are forming, more mods are being made. Gaming has gone public, and with going public you get publicity. Do you think CNN would’ve covered the stolen source code topic if the Half Life community wasn’t eight-million large? Do you think practically every online news source in the U.S would’ve written their thoughts on the recent events if Half Life had only 500 players’ world wide? No. With the press, and the publicity, and the upsizing of gamer head counts we HAVE to learn to deal with this. We have to learn to pull together and handle them properly. The ones who wanna download the alpha and post their opinions of it onto forums whose sites have relationships with Valve. The ones who wanna load into the Source their own vicious Trojans for the unsuspecting to trigger. The ones who wanna just play the damn game! We have to learn how to live with these people. Just as in the real world, there are people we don’t like. Criminals, Dictators, Traitors! We can’t just make them go away. The HL2 alpha is out. No amount of bashing, or flaming will make things go back to there once pretty ways.

Video Games? The title itself is almost as contradicting as the colours these days. They don’t go together anymore, Video and Game. It’s not a game anymore. There’s money, and high stakes, and gambling involved now. It’s being taken over by the big wig corporations, and deep pockets of our commercialized society. It’s a life style. Not a fad, or a trend, or a wave anymore. It’s a damn life style. Video Games are here to stay. Ten years ago I could laugh if Mario fell between a rock ledge and a sewer pipe leading me to the dreaded “Game Over” screen. These days if PokemonBoi2004 gets a head shot on me through the wall in Counter Strike, I’m going to question it! Games have become too important. People are breaking controllers, knocking over monitors, and pulling the plugs to systems nation wide because they didn’t win. Beat the level. Find the secret. Get 5 kills in one round. It’s almost sad. Games used to be fun. There not anymore. They’ve lost that mystery, and sense of magic ness.

Are you expecting a solution from this article? How to make things go back to the old ways? Don’t! Because I don’t have that. There is no solution. This is how things have come to be. This is how things will be. Let’s start getting used to it people.