Initially, I wanted to write this blog in response to the Gamespot article titled "Atari movie to star DiCaprio". In the article, it describes how DiCaprio will play the part of Nolan Bushnell - the outspoken father of video gaming. What intrigued me was not so much the article but the many comments made to it.

Many comments stated how the movie, Nolan, or the history of games doesn't matter. Many of the ones who commented on the article didn't really care about the old man or that old-school should stay old-school. This is a huge contrast from my many face-to-face encounters with gamers offline. I've been playing games since the heydays of Atari and it is really easy to find someone close to my age to know our roots. While I was going through my usual game collecting at the nearby Gamestop, I heard two kids go at it about what their favorite games were. Expecting to hear echoes of GTA, Halo, and other recent games, I was suprised to hear two distinctive titles: River City Ransom (NES) or Super Metroid (SNES). What suprised me is seeing these young gamers talk about how much fun they had playing these games. I couldn't help overhearing them so I approached them and asked how old they were. They were 17 and 18 respectively. These guys were playing games that debuted before they were even born. They asked if I could recommend them some classics and I did. They were very respectful young men and I got the gist that they simply just wanted to play more fun games. I asked what got them started playing some of the older games and they credited the Wii's Virtual Console. They mention that they have many friends their age that do more retrogaming than their older counterparts - their parents! During my second visit to Gamestop, they mentioned to me that they ended up buying the original consoles on Ebay and wanted to play the games in their original form. I asked why they aren't playing any of the newer games. They mention to me that they do play them but they also told me that "there's just not enough variety anymore" and "the really good games only come out once every two months."

Game companies take note. To see gaming move to the next level, game companies need to take more risks in new experiences otherwise gamers like these will just default to the old-school games to fill time.