When I find myself playing the newest bleeding-edge game with a friend, sooner or later I’ll feel moved to ask, “Can you imagine if we’d gotten our hands on this game when we were ten years old?”
At this point we turn to each other and say, word for word and simultaneously, “We would pee our pants, die, languish for three days before being resurrected by the glorious light of God (of War III), and then crap our pants and die again.” It never fails. Word for word.
As romantic as that scenario it is, I’m learning that it may not be based in reality. Over a year ago, I moved to the suburbs for the first time in my life, meaning I have access to actual neighbor kids who like to come over to play games. But despite my best intentions, none of them have soiled themselves or died yet.
In 1991, the Battletoads victory screen was the most impressive thing we could imagine seeing with our own eyes. It required the patience of a saint and the precision of a killer to be informed in plain text that the Dark Queen had "[retreated] into the shadowy margins of the galaxy to recoup her losses... until the next time..." Such was the price of briefly inconveniencing evil, and my generation gladly paid it.
By comparison, there’s the very first part of Uncharted 2 which looks and plays like a fully interactive Indiana Jones movie. A child of 1991 would explode upon contact with this game. My 13-year-old neighbor got annoyed at not being able to intuitively turn the first corner on the GIANT INTERACTIVE COLLAPSING TRAIN and then decided the shooting was boring.
And that was the 13-year-old. The 11-year-old and the 8-year-old are even harder to please. If they’re not immediately kicking ass and punching names, they’re not interested. Each kid seems to buzz through my collection at about 5-20 minutes per game, and then each time they visit after that they ask if I have anything new.
But as it turns out, there is a certain kind of game that captures their attention, and I’m relieved to say it’s usually the kind of game that can also capture their imagination. I witnessed the damnedest thing when two brothers came over to play Halo: Reach. They could barely tolerate campaign mode and hated playing online, but they’d spend hours in Forge, the level-editing mode, spawning weapons and vehicles for each other and testing implausible scenarios. For example, what happens when you drop a Scorpion Tank from a great height on to a Plasma Turret? According to our research, it causes your brother to hit you.
And every one of these kids had more curiosity and patience than I did about all the great level-building tools in Little Big Planet. I’d lend the disc to them for a few days and they’d come back knowing more about the game than I did, such as how to arrange the available pre-recorded sound effects so as to best emulate swear words.
It’s nice to know that it isn’t always the flashy graphics and the bloody gameplay that draws a young mind to gaming. There’s also the classic appeal of being able to do, make, and be what you want without being burdened by rules that have a discouraging way of saying bang, bang, you’re dead.
On the other hand, these kids also think that Flamin’ Hot Crunchy Cheetos are God’s gift to mouths, so they’ve still got a lot of growing up to do.
-Ben Freund
www.loadablecontent.com
Microsoft announced its financial results for Q3 of fiscal year 2026, including an update on its gaming Xbox business and more.
Not looking good. Hopefully Asha Sharma is able to turn Phil’s disaster around.
To me it's still quite remarkable how they can cash-in 5.3bn in revenue in a single quarter, since their hardware is basically dead.
The stock mark is what makes Microsoft remarkable, They have convinced every institutional and retail investor to just keep piling money into them. Like many big tech giants they are just a big growing pyramid scheme. As long as people keep dropping money into ETF's that cover the market Microsoft will always be liquid. At the same time it is completely stifling innovation and competition. People need to start being more discreet in how they invest their money as it's killing the system.
Riiiiight because people will just flock back to them for one or two games per year.
15+ years of bad performance is what they call irreparable in business. It is time for them to sell off the assets and get out of entertainment.
These declines are on the back of extra revenue received from releasing games like Forza horizon 5 on PlayStation. So I’m being sarcastic here when I said they should go back to exclusives. Killing off a revenue stream from Ps5 sales will only make things worse
The charity event will be streamed live from Gamescom in August.
Thanks to the slip-up of an artist working on the title, we now have more evidence that a new Injustice game is in the works.
Even though I just read it, I still don't know what your blog was about.
'As romantic as that scenario it is, I’m learning that it may not be based in reality. Over a year ago, I moved to the suburbs for the first time in my life, meaning I have access to actual neighbor kids who like to come over to play games. But despite my best intentions, none of them have soiled themselves or died yet. '
That whole paragraph just sounds so wrong for quite a few reasons.
EDIT:I thought it was a pretty good read as well, but that paragraph just stuck out and sounded a bit strange.
Have access to actual neighbour kids?
None of them have soiled themselves or died yet?
WTF?
Yh kids are insane like it, my little bro of 11 years old can't get enough of LBP create mode, he's slightly autistic tho so will make the same level over n over again in an almost identical ways making just fine adjustments
And these people say kid these days have no creativity or imagination. Kids do not want to imagine or create with sticks anymore they want HD graphics!
liked the blog
enjoyable read....looking forward to more blogs from you..:)