Hello, morning. I'll have a cup of coffee and about forty minutes of first person shooting. I must remember to login every day so that I maximize my daily rewards and earn more experience. Every two levels I get a free loot box. I'll click on that box and watch eagerly as it explodes like a pinata full of fireworks. Look at all of those worthless cosmetic items. Wait, did I say worthless? I guess not if you're Epic Games. To be clear, I've never played Fortnite. The game in question is Quake Champions, a hero-shooter update to the venerable arena franchise complete with all the lovely trappings of modern gaming. Not a lot of people play Quake Champions. It's a niche product peddling 90's nostalgia to thirty-year old gamers like myself.
I don't know if I imagined I'd be a gamer in my thirties.When I was a kid, video games were played by nerd children. Now everybody's gaming, from your preteen adolescent to the baby-boomer with a smart phone. Everyone has a console in their hands, and everyone's attention can be diverted for a few precious seconds. That's fine, right? After all, football and baseball are just games. Chess is a game. Every hobby is pointless in its own way. Although I've never heard of baseball teams employing psychology to engineer an addictive product. Doing so might help with ratings since Millennials are watching Youtube more than live television.
What are the consequences of an entire population addicted to games? Can parents ween their children from spending too much time playing Fortnite when they're dicking around on their phones 24/7? Are my son and I going to bond together playing Call of Duty 15? Or are we each going to become isolated in our own private gaming spheres, separated by the years and cultural touchstones that neither can understand? Really, that's probably inevitable. Every generation has experiences that are incomprehensible to the previous generation. My father loves baseball. I occasionally watch baseball in order to share a fandom with my father. My son will probably dismiss baseball as a relic of another era and spend his time watching pro gamers or twitch streamers. That's okay, right?
Childhood obesity in America is at twenty percent. Do video games have something to do with it? I don't know. I think I'm more concerned with our addiction to constant distraction.We live in an ever-changing world that requires an engaged response to the myriad challenges the future holds. Over forty-percent of the population doesn't even turn out to vote. Am I painting with broad brush strokes? Sure. I guess.
I don't know where this post was going, but there's a loot box with my name on it.
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