What I Miss About Being a Gamer

I was born in 1976, the ripe age to be a gamer my whole life. I took advantage of it every chance I got. From playing in arcades to playing at friend's houses. If we could possibly turn our time into video gaming, I would. I remember typing in programs out of Compute! and Compute!'s Gazette, Ahoy, and many more magazines of the time with my friend @JerryPerkinsII who is a member here on Steemit. There is one key thing I miss about being a gamer though.

I miss the sense of all-around an adventure that video games used to present us. Today, we have the Internet and millions of pages of content that we can digest covering every aspect of video games. When I was growing up, we didn't have that.

We had to depend on our network of friends and gaming publications back up till about the late 1990's. That is over 20 years of relying on "professionals", the chosen ones of gaming that got paid to play games and write about their experience.

We couldn't stand in front of a shelf full of games at some random video game store and look up hundreds of thousands of reviews and opinions on a game in seconds prior to purchase. We had to trust our guts, we had to remember what friend gave great advice on that last $50+ purchase and what they said about this title, or which friend proved to be an idiot and to ignore their suggestions.

Today, gamers have it quite easy. I know this, I appreciate this. I know because I grew up when there was no return policy on opened games. You opened it, you owned it. There was no return for an exchange, there was no return because it sucked. It was yours. Today most stores will give full refunds or at worst, charge a modest restocking fee but none will bitch about you returning a game. Hell, you can find a game rental kiosk at nearly every major retailer today. Cound't do that back in the 80's. Want to rent a new game? Get ready to hike uphill both ways in eight feet of snow just to see if that store was open because your parents didn't trust "games" and the telephone for fear of mysterious charges and such (ah, what a time to grow up).

Magazines back then were more prevalent. Somewhat like websites are today. We relied on them. We relied on the stores being open so we could purchase the latest issue of whatever magazine we wanted. Today, if you still buy magazines you can have it delivered within two days thanks to services such as Amazon Prime. What a day to be alive and be a gamer.

Online play is mostly teenagers yelling obscenities at each other and stating what they did with the mother of their opponent the night before. Not a great atmosphere for recapturing that feel of playing with friends.

I wonder though, is that sense of adventure lost? I don't think it I a large portion of gamers but for me, it mostly is a figment of my imagination and described in words here. Maybe I am just old. Maybe delusional and that sense of adventure was never there in the first place. Maybe it was just friends with people that were like-minded and we thought we would rule the world. Who knows. I know I miss it.