Gaming is a joke to some....

I saw a fairly interesting thing in Target where I work nightly. Mega Blocks has a line of Halo Wars items and while being a Halo fan made me giddy seeing these, I had a thought. Why is a Halo game which is a Mature title for the most part is subject of a children's toy? Obviously there are people that age with access to the Halo games but the reality is that they shouldn't be playing them and they are largely the reason that the Halo community has lost loads of credibility over the last few game releases.

Then I though about other things like who agreed to this? Did Bungie talk with Mega Blocks before this was done? Does the Mega Block CEO know anything about the franchise other then it's popular and they can make a quick buck off merchandise? I doubt anything of the sort took place and paperwork was sign without thinking and that's largely why no one thinks much of the industry.

If a Film is rated R, you will not find a toy of the lead character in your local store's toy section. That's because parents take the content in films seriously but when it comes to gaming they think that everything that's released is OK for little Timmy to play and the reality is that it's not.

The ESRB has failed to catch the parents attention in what game to chose for there children and as a result, adults such as myself are left to suffer with them yelling "headshot" into my headset. As a gamer I'm very unhappy with paying for a service like Xbox Live, only to have mine and others experience tainted due to the inability of gaming to police who it does and who it doesn't advertise to. Why not run ads for Mature rated games at night like they do for Girls Gone Wild?

The reason is that the heads of the gaming industry have tasted the money and they will do anything even if it hurts the core user base (gamers 20-35) and until some drastic changes are made they will continue to act almost like the Tobacco Industry and keep on trucking until gaming is unable to legitimize itself as the craft it truly is.

When a gamer becomes a father.

On Monday June 27th, at 5 am central standard time my wife to be will be in labor and delivery and some time after that my son will be born. Alexander James Sloan will be apart of our lives forever. This will be my first child and going into this I’m not really sure what to expect. 

To give some background on myself, I have been a gamer for going on twenty years now. My first console was a Sega Genesis in 1991 and my first game was Sonic the Hedgehog. Ever since games have been apart of my life in almost every aspect of it. In fact in a future blog entry I plan on doing a year by year retrospective on which games meant the most to me in the last twenty. 

Now that’s out of the way let’s get the to the meat of this piece. Becoming a father is definitely going to be the best moment of my life. What I don’t know is how this will affect my aspirations to break into video game journalism. Don’t get me wrong I’m no stranger to hard work and long nights and I will do my best to make sure I don’t miss anything my little man accomplishes. That being said I know that to make it in this industry, you have to be on top of everything that is hot in gaming and at the very least keep tabs on the most relevant happenings. 

This will be hard to do because I don’t make very much in the way of money and while I did have just enough to keep myself well off in interesting games, with the new addition things are going to get tight. Not just in the finance department, but as it is now with work and things I have to do around the house I usually only average about seven to ten hours a week playing games. That number is sure to decrease even more once baby Alex is here. 

There’s also thinking about trying manage what kind of games I play around him when he gets older, will I try to impose restrictions on him that I had when I was a kid? What type of content will be in games by the time he’s able to hold a controller? Am I going to push him toward game because they are my passion? All very valid questions that I have absolutely no answer for. 

I guess in essence I’m just thrusting further into adulthood. My ability to deal with upcoming changes will shape my ability to not only reach my goals, but provide Alexander with all of the opportunity that I can possibly provide the little guy. After all I’m not just living for me now!

Competitive Gaming: Why you should watch!

Competitive gaming is bigger now then it has ever been and a recent article from a Kotaku contributor ignited a fire storm of fans firing back to what to them seemed like an attack on something they have grown to love. Personally, I only have a small amount of experience with the profession. I watch the Madden Challege on ESPN and I know who "Fatality" is. Mostly though I haven't been able to follow the progress of the sport, largely due to the fact that it isn't really thrust forward into the public eye.

Major League Gaming is the largest collection of professional gamers on the planet. They host Tourneyments that are packed with spectators and boast huge cash prizes to the winner. MLG has had a few  television specials dedicated to their largest tourneyments, but has yet to find a consistant place on network TV. This isn't really due to lack of demand, but rather an inabilty to make watching these tourneyments compelling.

It's difficult to convince someone that watching other people play video games is something appealing to do with their time. After watching some of the tourneyments on television, I can see why they feel that way. There's next to nothing exciting to the average viewer, a no-scope kill or well-place grenade is lost on the regular gamer because they play just for the fun. Understanding all the naunces in gamesand trying to convey that as entertainment is something that is difficult to do.

That's not to say that they can't make an interesting show out of what they have. The Madden challenge for example has the drama of sports in general adding to the tension of each match. If you follow football at all, you know that the best moments are the last second comebacks. Michael Vick's amazing fourth quarter to bring the Eagles to a win was one of the moments that defined the 2010 season. This easily translates to the Madden Challenge because people have a real world moment that they can draw real emotion from.

To achieve this for Major League Gaming, they need a big personality and plenty of fan interaction to give them the feeling that they have something tied into each individual or team. Better branding for each team, get their names out there, have them go on shows like ESPN's "First Take" and kind of explain to a broader audience what professional gaming is all about. Once people become emotionally invested, then explaining the small stuff becomes secondary and people live and die with their favorite teams.

There's plenty of potential in professional gaming to become a bigger draw for television, but there has to be a shift in the focus of what content is important. It won't happen overnight, but if competitive eating can make it, I'm sure video games can!