Nerd Mentality

Why I Don't Care About Game News Anymore

Posted February 27th 2008 by Adam Glasgow.

A handful of years ago I was addicted to video game news. Pretty much every day after school I would sit down on my computer and mash F5 on more than a few of my favorite game news sites, and often times I was rewarded with important, breaking news. It was a great time to be a fanatic - Sega was losing ground in the console wars and making frantic attempts to stay in the game, Nintendo had likewise lost respect in the industry and was struggling with their image, Microsoft was putting together a system of some type (holy lord that thing is HUGE and what's going on with that controller?), Sony was dominating but had made lots of enemies, the GameBoy Advance was a badass piece of machinery, development studios were getting bought out, franchises were selling out, Squaresoft (remember that name?) had more wacky drama going on with Nintendo than can be found between two given characters on any day time soap opera, the N64DD was still fresh on everyone's mind, &c, &c. In short the industry was in a transitional, booming time period, and there was more than enough going on to keep my interest.

Fast forward to now, and things aren't nearly as interesting. Two generations of game systems have proven that there is indeed room for three coexisting consoles. Square merged with Enix and made pretty with Nintendo. Even the portable arena has evened out and Sony shares some of the market with Nintendo, and things seem to be going okay for both companies. Video game sales are higher than ever, and everyone seems to have learned how to coexist. E3 has essentially disbanded. Buyouts are existent but not as rampant and far from as interesting. Long story short, the industry explosion is over and from here on out it looks like a steady incline, at least for a while. Before following game news was like watching an all out no holds barred street fight. Now it feels like watching a boxing match with eight referees to every two fighters. Punches are pulled, fighters are hugging, and what the hell, why not simply share the championship belt? It's plenty big enough for everyone.

Now I follow news very loosely and I usually wait for someone else to tell me if something "big" has happened, but I'm rarely impressed. I still love games, don't get me wrong. I still play way more games than is probably healthy. But the bottom line is that Sonic has not only appeared on a Nintendo console, he's made a comfortable summer home there. Now that Hell has frozen over, nothing will ever seem quite as exciting. At least to me.

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