(Pictured above: The average gamer) 6. Brain Clutter/ Useless Knowledge
I could tell you the difference between a Phoenix down and a Phoenix pinion, or name five differences between Claude and Dias' respective "air slash" attacks from Star Ocean 2. I could tell you five different ways to mix a Nectar smoothie in Dead Rising or the evolved forms of all basic Pokemon (from the first 150).
At the same time, I wouldn't be able to name more than 10 words I learned from 4 years of Spanish classes, or tell you anything more about my year and a half of trigonometry besides "it involved triangles". Maybe I'm exaggerating a little, but the point is, after playing so many games, I feel it's begun to replace information that I should be able to recall easily, and even begun to compromise my common sense.
In time, I'll no longer remember how many ways to look before crossing the street, or what series of actions to take in the even of a fire. However, I will be able to tell you what levels you get all the perks in Call of Duty 4 or know the map of Liberty City by heart.
They say the average brain can hold about a million pieces of information, and I'd estimate that the average gamer brain contains about 900,000 pieces of useless garbage.
5. Poor Starting Job Options
(Pictured above: Approximate quality level of an average game-related position)
If you're seriously into video games, it's likely you;d consider a career in the business. The video game market is by no means small, and being relatively recession proof, it still thrives during times of economic stress (like now for example). There are plenty of high paying jobs in the industry, but in order to get to any of them, you're going to have to deal with a whole lot of s**t first. Let's break it down:
Game Critic:
Many kids dream of reviewing games for a living and I can tell you first hand, it's about 100 times less glamorous than it sounds. Say you make about $150 (U.S.) per review. That sounds pretty reasonable, especially if you get the game for free as well. What you have to realize about the gaming market is that a great game comes about once every 3-5 weeks, and considering you're likely to be working with a team of people, you'll likely be paid to play a game you would actually buy maybe 2-3 times a year if you're lucky. For the rest of that time, you're in hell. And, even when you get a game that's actually good, you're getting an "advanced" copy, a.k.a. a glitchy, unfinished, bug-riddled copy. If you actually plan on playing said game as God intended, you're gonna have to take the money out of your own paycheck.
Now, be prepared to spend15 hours of your life slogging through a crappy experience just so you can tell the world it was crap, when everyone likely knew it was crap in the first place. Factoring in time to write up the review and finding any additional information, screenshots, and the like, that $150 is now just about minimum wage for a seriously mind-numbing experience.
Game Tester:
Wow! This sounds even better! It's like being a reviewer but without all the written work. Well let's see...where to start? Let's say your playing the first level of a game for 15 minutes. Hey, this is actually fun! Yeah? Well, are you still going to be thinking that after you've played that same level 86 times, each time making a note of every tiny little glitch and inconsistency? You might not even be able to finish the game, as a company's likely to assign people to specific levels, so enjoy playing those first 25 minutes of the game again...and again...and again...and again, for the next 3 weeks straight.
Imagine watching a movie based around the concept of repetition, like Groundhog Day. Now imagine having to watch Groundhog Day 20 times straight. Now imagine Groundhog Day is a really, really sh**ty game. Okay, that last part doesn't really make sense, but you get the idea.
Also, throw any notion of not having to do any write-ups out the window. A huge part of your job will be compiling a formal assessment of all the bugs and problems you've found to be submitted to the dev. team. Still sounds like fun, right?
Game Journalist:
This one actually isn't so bad. You have to do a ton of research for your articles, but at least it doesn't kill as many brain cells as the previously mentioned jobs. However, where it really starts to suck is when you have to try to work with or get feedback from the online public. The gaming online public are of a different breed than say, that of news or politics. If your working online as a journalist for a world news magazine, for example, you'll be dealing with intelligible people, capable of forming educated and comprehensive opinions.
The gaming world is the world of flame wars, 1337 speak, and excessive fanboyism. If you are so unfortunate as to have to cater to the online community, you'll be handling the exact same people who allowed Icanhascheezburger.com to become the 8th most powerful blog on the internet. I hope you're all proud of yourselves.
4. Disappointment
(He just paid $60 for Alone in the Dark)
There are few things more disappointing than being super hyped about a game, pre-ordering it, counting down the days until its release and finally popping it in, only to find it average at best. It's easy to look at all the media buzz around a game and all of the very positive reviews, and think that it's going to blow you away. Even though I enjoyed GTA IV very much, I couldn't help but be disappointed after it received one of the highest overall average scores on gamerankings.
Well, now you're probably thinking, "Say bro, doesn't that stuff happen with things like TV, movies, music, and whatnot?" Well, inquisitive reader, I have constructed the following chart based solely on mathematically fact that evaluates the suckiness of disappointing games compared to other forms of media:
Bob's Chart of Dissapointment
For the purpose of this data, I have used Bob, an average male gamer who makes $25 dollars an hour, and I take into account that he could be making money while wasting his time.
Money wasted from...
1. Bad TV Show: $0 (cost) + $12.50 (30 mins.) = $12.50 wasted [Bob's slightly annoyed]
2. Bad Song: $1 (cost) + $1.50 (~3.5 mins) = $2.50 wasted [Bob couldn't care less]
3. Bad Movie: $10 (cost) + $50 (2 hours) = $60 wasted [Bob's somewhat angry]
4. Bad Game: $60 (cost) + $250 (10 hours) = $310 wasted [Bob's F**king Pissed!!]
Therefore, buying a disappointing game is over 5 times more sh**ty than the next leading form of disappointing entertainment. That's a lot of suck, especially since that 10 hours is being conservative. Play through a disappointing RPG, and you've just wasted the equivalent of about $1000.
Alright, look for the rest of this list tomorrow if I still have nothing better to do.
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