Radar Scope

Noticed something over the weekend. For the first time that I can remember, there's nothing that I excited to see as far as summer blockbusters go. I can pass by Tom Cruise, the X-men, and every animated film coming my way. I can wait for them to come to Netflix in 6-8 months, but there's nothing I need to see. Same for upcoming video game releases (although E3 in eight days might change that). Nothing's coming on my radar that's got me genuinely in the "I so need that" category. I know have a few titles on reserve at my local game store, but I'll be damned if I can remember more than one.

No pinpoint on the cause, but I get the feeling that for movies, I can wait for the aforementioned Netflix release. For the price of a going to a movie once a month, I can get a DVD sporting better picture and sound quality than the theaters. I can pause when I want, rewind, watch special features, or listen to commentary. When I'm done, I'll send the movie back and get another one. Lather, watch, eject, rinse, put in return mailer, repeat. I've grown into the patience of an adult to see marketing hype for what it is. I don't need to stand in line anymore for a movie. I know it'll be there tomorrow, playing five times a day, seven days a week. I also know that big budgets don't lead to greater enjoyment. Explosions and other eye-candy may have dazzled me as a youngin', but there's a law of diminishing returns with the wonder of technology. With CGI, I'm less dazzled than I was before. For as shiny and sensational the new Star Wars movies looked, they were as sound story wise as a Faberge egg. Same goes for the remake of King Kong, which lingered close to Uncanny Valley. The humans looked hollow and the effects were delicious.

Add to this, the general avoidance static I feel at movie theaters. I'm not comfortable in the chairs, waiting through 30 minutes of ads without the benefit of a mute button. Being ad-free by getting into sneak previews and watching DVDs have spoiled me. I'm not huge around crowds, and I'm getting to a point where I like being control of the media instead of it being blasted into my face as if Dick Cheney wielded a multimedia weapon. I can start and stop a video game at my choosing. I can put down a book when the phone rings. I can pause DVDs, TV, and my iPod. All of which makes me wonder if I'm an outlier or part of a growing crowd who isn't into the communal experience of cinema, popular for most of the 20th century.

As for games, I suppose I'm wading in the desert here, a drought common between the start of the calendar year and up to E3 in nine days. E3, that video game wonderland held in Los Angeles, is like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, where Santa Claus arrived at the end and it's officially the start of the holiday shopping season. E3 marks the clock for new releases between now and, well, whenever. It's an orgy of marketing, a blender of hype and lights and swag and the id run amok. It's for kids and kids who are in their late 30s and barely able to fit their pudge into their stretch-waist khakis. It's where millions are spent in a full Zerg rush to colonize the minds of boys and men to buy whatever Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft tells them they have to buy. It is to us testosterone vessels what beauty and fashion magazines are to the XX set. Without the latest sequels to First Person Shooter X or Generic Sports Title, the menfolk in this country are nothing, and without the latest consoles, you might as well hand in your penis at the Man Desk upfront.

I've been playing video games for 25 years, and I think I've reached that point in the timeline where I can see the patterns in the industry. Shooter games, sports games, Japanese fantasy RPGs, movie licenses as games, and the weird eclectic stuff that are like foreign films: You know they are interesting but are too out there for mainstream (read: American) consumption. Looking over the gaming horizon, there's little that's innovative or exciting. Like with CGI-laden movies, there's lots of eye-candy but little fun to be had. The two things that register on my radar is "Lego Star Wars II," which is a sequel to last year's title which put a cute spin on the Lucas universe using the durable plastic blocks. The second is the new Nintendo console, unfortunately still named Wii. Moniker aside, the abilities it promised, from backwards compatibility to a gyroscope, motion-sensitive controller, could make for gaming to be what it should have always been: an aside to life's activities, not the central core. Gaming has gotten far too serious and demanded far too much loyalty and cash from consumers to make them feel as if they are on the inside of the cool clubhouse.

No, sorry, it's a hobby. It's an option. It's meant to be fun, an enjoyable time-waster, not some status symbol that miraculously enforces someone's masculinity. Not so long ago, I got over the need to frag aliens, zombies and Nazis. Once you move beyond that, a lot of gaming becomes invisible. Once you decide you don't need to hunt and kill, trample or conquer, humiliate and swagger, there's little left to actually play. Times like this, I think about my wife, who has gotten more into gaming the longer we've been married. I wonder how an industry like video games can still make money when it primarily chases one gender every year. Maybe that's Massive Multiplayer Online titles do so well with women, where the emphasis is on communication and community and not fragging each other.

Maybe MMOs are the answer to the question the gaming industry is avoiding: Has the video game generation grown up? For us in our 30s, we are the first full-fledged generation born and raised with video games on the market. We grew up in the neon lights of the arcade and wasted hours in front of the blue glow of Atari, Odyssey, Intellivision and further down the line to now. We've play countless versions of shooters, rpgs, sports titles, and more. As we get older, we like the idea of a virtual watering hole to play, to talk, to flirt, and maybe adventure. Us older folks look out at the valley below, where the sounds and flash from E3 make an artificial media storm of hype, and we shrug. It's a high school now, where the cool kids determine what you have to play to be in. We grimace at what's behind us, and then we turn back to our online sudoku, our guilds, our Second Lifes or Warcrafts. We bid adieu when dinnertime or bedtime happens in our real world. We play on our terms now, because we're old enough to understand the truth. It's just a game, and important stuff happens outside of the screen.