Wild Blog has appeared!

It's 2 am kids! Know what that means? It's blogging time!

What better way to start off a blog than with a rant, a gaming rant to be more specific.

I've been gaming for about the last 16 years, and while that may not be as long as some people out there, it is definitely longer than a lot of people playing today. Over the last few years, I've noticed gaming has become more and more mainstream in our culture. I can remember back when people would make fun of me because I did a lot more gaming than other people did. I honestly thought I did a lot of gaming when I was younger, but compared to what some people are doing now, that was nothing. Go boot up a copy of Call of Duty: Black Ops, and look at how much play time a majority of the people playing have. Go ahead, I'll wait.

......

See what I mean? There are many people on there with weeks worth of play time logged. WEEKS!! I've even seen some with at least a months worth of play time. And these aren't your stereotypical nerds, these are (basically) the same kind of people that would mock gamers back when gaming wasn't as mainstream. So what happened? What created this double standard where it was not ok to dump dozens of hours into, say, an RPG, but it is totally fine to dump weeks and weeks into Halo or Call of Duty?

I think it has to do two things: gaming companies trying to expand their audience, and that expanded audience liking to see s*** blow up.

Playing any of these games is like watching a Michael Bay film. Tons of over the top action and violence are the substance du jour, and judging from the sales of Black Ops, people love it more than air. I'll admit, it is fun, but it does get repetitive, especially since every Call of Duty for the last few years has just been a re-skinned Call of Duty 4. I wonder what will happen when everyone else tires of it. Will these people stop gaming? Will they move onto another genre? Will gaming go back to being more niche like it used to be? Who knows? Only time will tell.