Video game culture is ever-evolving, and despite the decline in some games and platforms, remains vibrant and active among students and even some staff members.
Physics teacher Jordan Dobbe plays a variation of games, including Fortnite and Clash Royale. His favorite game was Call of Duty Modern Warfare II on the Xbox 360, his favorite console. He said the 360 was his favorite because, “all of my other friends had 360s and there wasn’t cross platform.” He has thousands of memories of him and his friends playing splitscreen when there was no internet.
Dobbe does say that video games have gotten better over time (besides the quality and performance). He said, “Fortnite at the start was just a battle royale and they would change the map every season and that creates the story.” He explained personal computers (PC) are better because “the ping alone, speed, and PCs have more options & Discord.” Ping is the latency between the host (the game) and your inputs and Discord and a voice, video, and text chat app to communicate with your friends and communities.
PCs are worth the price, according to Dobbe, because you can just buy part upgrades instead of buying the entire system again and it’s more adaptable: “When they [large corporations] come out with something year after year they don’t change that much maybe because they don’t have the time. I think they should make games every few years but just update it, but by making a new game every year, they just keep getting more and more money,” added Dobbe.
Junior Issac Glodowski loves to play Rocket League and Minecraft but he doesn’t play as much as he used to. His favorite games when he was a kid were Pixel Gun 3D on his phone and Minecraft. He says that the Xbox Series X because, “it’s a mini fridge.” He said that games have gotten better over time but, “companies care more about the graphics than the game itself.”
Some of Glodowski’s favorite memories are having deep conversations while walking around in Minecraft. When it comes to PCs being better than consoles, he said, “It depends, if you’re only using it for casual gaming then consoles are better but the overall things you can do on PC makes it better especially if you do professional gaming.”
Sophomore Dylan Preuss, a member of the up-and-coming Esports club said he think video games have gotten worse, “I just feel like older games hit different and modern companies care more about money and not the game.” Preuss’ favorite childhood game, like Glodowski’s, was Minecraft because it was “1 of 3 games I had back then.” Some of his favorite memories were he recently got back into Terraria and American Truck Simulator. His favorite game is Rocket League, “because it’s a game that’s not fortnite that I can play with my friends.”
Preuss said PCs are so much better for him, a competitive gamer, because “you can get a pc for the price of a console with the performance of a console but you don’t have to pay to go online.” Preuss noted, “bigger companies are copy and pasting game over and over again and taking 10 years but only takes 2 years.”
Author Brett Weiss said, “Video games from the late ‘70s and early ‘80s offered intense experiences, where gameplay was immediate and intuitive, and most games you could pick up and play without reading the instructions–fun, action-packed gameplay. With modern games, you get much more philosophical meaning, more cinematic experiences, and more involved storylines.” Some of his favorite games today are Super Mario Wonder, God of War and Asteroids: Recharged Arcade; and his favorite game from 10 years ago was Super Mario Maker.
“My favorite old system is the ColecoVision,” said Weiss. “It was the first console I owned. I got it for Christmas of 1982. Tons of great arcade ports. My favorite post-Sega Dreamcast console is the PlayStation 2 because I love God of War, God of War II, Maximo: Ghosts to Glory, and other hack and slash titles.”
Weiss said that he doesn’t do any PC gaming because consoles “are so much simpler to set up and operate.”
“The smaller companies have more creativity because there’s less pressure to create a blockbuster title and more room to create something quirky and unique. The bigger companies are bogged down with massive budgets and keep recycling the same formulas, though there are still great games coming out, such as the excellent platformer, Astro Bot,” Weiss said.
The video game culture has changed a lot over time. From Pong to Mario to Fortnite, everyone’s opinion changes. People now seem to mostly play games from their childhood to get that nostalgic feeling back from when they were a kid. What do you think? Do you only play games from your childhood to get that feeling back?
