Gaming Has Changed

I consider myself a Gamer, I grew up with Nintendo, Sega and Sony systems surrounding me with tons of amazing games and experiences. Their was a time where I owned the best games and had the best systems, but eventually that ended. Its been almost 4 years since i've had a current generation system and the last one I owned was a Nintendo Wii. I spent most of that time in between still following gaming sites and seeing what was new. Last year I was given a Nintendo 3DS for my birthday and it intrigued me to attempt to at least continue doing what I once loved doing, I miss gaming but now I wonder if gaming is still how I remember or if i'm just a relic of a generation long past.

This Christmas I budgeted myself to get a Nintendo Wii U, the newest console from Nintendo, a company that i've enjoyed the company of since my first NES. I love to play Nintendo titles like Super Mario, The Legend Of Zelda, Metroid, Star Fox, F-Zero, and Donkey Kong. I also enjoy titles from other companies such as Final Fantasy (Square-Enix), Doom (id Software), Perfect Dark (Rare), Metal Gear Solid (Konami), Turok: The Dinosaur Hunter (Acclaim), Tomb Raider (Eidos), and Resident Evil (Capcom) just to name a few. Since i've been away I thought gaming hasn't really changed much but the more I see some of my "gamer" friends it feels like i'm less and less of a "real" gamer in this day and age. The reason for this realization is for a few reasons:

Number One: Nintendo is not well liked or considered "cool" by most of my friends (ironically they will wear Nintendo related memorabilia still though). Nintendo is behind in the current generation market, they support a more family friendly atmosphere than Microsoft and Sony do and it seems nothing Nintendo can do will appease to some of these people. A lot of what i've heard is this harsh view comes from the idealization that Nintendo betrayed gamers when they released the Nintendo Wii which in gamers eyes is a giant "fuck you" to the hardcore gamer market. So most of these gamers have flocked to Sony's Playstation 3 and Microsoft's XBOX 360.

Number Two: If you look at the game selection these days between a Nintendo system and any other system you will realize a disturbing inconvenient truth and that truth is that "modern" gamers play FPS games. If you look at the selection of killer IP's on the shelves for those systems you will notice most of those games are Call Of Duty: Black Ops 2 (Activision), Halo 4 (343 Studios), Madden NFL 13 (Electronic Arts), Borderlands 2 (2K Games), and Skyrim (Bethesda Softworks). These are considered some of the titles that are popular now, so out of these titles I named the only one I have an interest in trying is Skyrim because its a fantasy RPG and I generally like those type of games. But the rest of these, you will notice and even Skyrim will fit in this genre are FPS games. I can enjoy FPS games BUT what I don't think people realize is that, thats not all I want to play on my game console, I was variety and if all i'm going to be doing is shooting things in the face in different scenarios then what is the point?

Number Three: I'm a Single Player Gamer, I rarely play multiplayer games (until Guild Wars 2 and EverQuest 2 recently) but since I don't have friends that will be coming over I usually depend on great single player experiences. These days, most games are all about multiplayer and single player is an after thought. It annoys me because it forces me to play with people I don't want to play with and usually my friends never have the game I can play multiplayer so it comes out that not only can't I play with my friends who I would play with but I have to play with complete strangers who are either socially awkward, or completely rude, homophobic, and enjoy sucking the fun out of the experience for me.

I guess the point i'm trying to make is that it seems a lot of games these days are more pointed towards realistic violence which sometimes is fun but its not for all gamers. It especially isn't for younger gamers which unfortunately are playing these games and now I have "gamers" attacking me for my personal tastes in gaming which is sad. I play games to get away and have fun and if the only way to have fun is to shoot people in the face then I guess gaming has changed. So now the question remains, do I still buy the Nintendo Wii U and go with quality I know i'll enjoy or should I give in to my peers and get a Playstation 3 and simply learn to accept that games for me are dark and bloody and violent and thats how I should game now.