"It can be nice to think about the past, but the more you try to hold onto that past the more that past will consume you. The past is best thought of in moderation and definitely not to be seen with rose tinted glasses, because then youre just looking at a lie. Never forget the past, but dont live it either" - Reina Beaumont

~

The good old days, when life was about school, cartoons, playing outside, dreaming of the unknown future, toys and for those of us of the video gaming generation video games.

They were simple days in many ways, we did not have the stresses of the adult life that would later come. We didnt think about bills, taxes and work. We didnt have things like love, families to take care of and the stresses of the work place.

We had stresses, aye, like being bullied at school, the school work and other concerns, but that was when we were a lot younger and still very much unaware of what life held in store for us.

Compared to being an adult, life as a child fairly seems a lot more carefree when looking back on those days.

Well those days werent exactly care free for me, but thats something I would rather not get into at this time.

Back in those days every video game was an experience, a world to be played through and a score to brag about, well if you had any friends with which to brag about the score with.

Each game was magical in its own way and the challenge didnt put us off, it only made us more determined to improve. Back then games were to be enjoyed and beaten as best we could.

Games that allowed you to save your place were rare, every extra life and continue you could get was like something to be treasured, every small step forwards in the game was an adventure in itself.

The good old days Maybe.

~

As we've gotten older and the industry has moved into the cinematic games that are so common place today, it hasnt been hard to notice as we've grown up that games have become so much simpler than they used to be.

It could be because we've only gotten better as we've gotten older or it could be that games really have gotten easier, which is probably true when you consider that games today tend to rely on hand holding mechanics and increasingly simplified game play in order to market to the younger generations who tend to be unable to play a game if its too hard and too challenging and cant be completed very quickly so that they can rush into the multi player and scream their little hearts out in racist, sexist insults towards other players across the world.

With games getting increasingly shorter and easier to play and many games lacking anything even remotely considered a challenge then what does the future hold for video games?

Will games continue to become so easy that a one eyed, one pawed cat with a cat nip addiction could complete them? It does tend to look that way.

Thankfully there are games coming out that do have a challenge to them once in a while, they are few and far between, but they can be found.

Games like Demons Souls, which is said to be an extremely challenging game, Dark Souls, Dragons Dogma, the new XCOM: Enemy Unknown and Sonic Unleashed are games designed to be challenging and to give the player the kind of challenge that is sorely lacking in the majority of todays games.

But such games are, as I said, few and far between. Todays mentality towards defeat and doing badly is seen as automatic failure and damaging to a childs developing mind instead of a learning experience to be learned from, where once we would learn from our mistakes and try again, today such a thing is seen as a bad thing in things like schools, video games and more.

Were the good old days really as good as we remember them to be? Was having our egos and confidence crushed by defeat and mistakes enjoyable?

I think it was, although I dont think the good old days were all that great, they were still an important time in our lives that would shape us into who we are today.

Without defeat and mistakes there is no way of learning where you went wrong and how to improve so that you don't make the same mistake again. Learning from the past tends to be looked down on in todays society.

How can a child learn from their mistakes when they are being told that its important to be successful, instead of it being important to learn?

~

Is the current direction of consistently simple games a good thing for the industry? I dont think it is, there is little moneys worth in a game that doesn't at least give you a challenge that was memorable.

Without a challenge to test our abilities, then how can we ever learn to face whatever challenges await us, be they in a video game or in real life?

'As a child, we learned and we made mistakes which we learned from. As an adult we still make mistakes, but if we are not willing to learn from those mistakes then we will only end up repeating them'

I think we need games to have more of a challenge these days, they tend to give a much richer experience than the ones that lack a challenge.

~

"Dont be worried about falling on your backside, if you do then just pick yourself up, dust yourself off and try again. Youll get there eventually" - Reina Beaumont