Elitism (or, How I Learned to Stop Worring and Love the Games)

In The War of the Worlds, the entire world is covered in these blood like veins, almost looking similar to vines, or a spiderweb covering the entirety of the world in a beating mesh of fluid.  The reason I mention this is, while dramatic, it feels like a good analogy to how easily a feeling of superiority can destroy any sense of enjoyment. How it essentially covers any enjoyment of media with a mass of judgement thats constantly beating, feeding negativity and ruining something thats supposed to be enjoyable, an escape.

In general, sometimes I feel like online discussion of things like games has become a "I need to prove I'm right or understand art better than you," and in some ways that has elevated and improved general conversations around these topics. Personally, I think video game discussion as a whole has gotten better as a whole, but there's something... Missing now. There's almost an expectation to be able to explain every small facet of something, to understand it front and back just to simply enjoy something. To be able to "defend it in the marketplace of ideas," so to speak.

So you try to "get" it. Try to figure out every little theme and what every little piece of dialouge means. To find colors and visual details. Watching things to tell you what you missed. You don't want people to judge you after all, do you? You end up playing things less, and discussing things more. The mass grows as you try desperately to prove you KNOW better. 

You're not one of those people who play things just to play them. You're not like those people you see in your life who try to tell you what they've been playing. You're better than them, you know what things REALLY are. You haven't actually played something in days, your new major hobby is consuming things ABOUT games. Telling you what they're supposed to mean, people giving you personal stories about games in an internet video is much better than people giving you personal stories about games in the real world, you don't care about THEM.

In War of the Worlds, the evil threat is stopped by somethikg extremely unexpected. Their own hubris: in their haste to take over the planet they didn't realize that they couldn't handle the bacteria in this new world. Just like in the War of the Worlds, something simple can destroy this entire process. Just listening, and playing something for yourself. Not worrying about catching every little thing, but rather catch the things that mean something to you. Maybe something that the man from the internet didn't like will connect with you, you know? Piracy is so normalized anyways these days theres literally no harm in trying things anyways. 

The reason I broke out of these thought processes was a friend really wanted me to play a silly game, Fallout 3 from 2008. A game I have heard pretty much only negative things about in the "online critic" space, and I was very against trying it. But they bought me a copy, so I felt obligated to try it. And I fell in love with absolutely everything about it, it quickly become one of my favorite video games, something I put hundreds of hours into.

That led me to try things I've heard a lot of negative things about in this deeply elitist space, and while I haven't liked everything I feel like I'm finally forming my own thoughts, my own tastes. Its good to compare your own tastes to others, and its entertaining to hear people's opinions or personal stories.

Just don't let other people decide what you think.

-Rachel May