The First Videogame to Toy with my Emotions

Source : Google Images

I am 29. I started playing videogames at age 5 with a replica of a SNES that was sold at those fairs, very typical in my region on a monthly basis with all kinds of counterfeit products. I remember it had 500 or so games, including the classics Super Mario, Bomberman, Duck Hunt (still makes me chuckle to this day) and a bunch of others that I'd play every now and then. After that came the usual progression of videogames for most individuals, I would assume... GameBoys, PlayStations, Sega Saturns, etc, etc... Out of those I had a GameBoy Color, an Advance and then the PlayStation 1, 2 and for some reason I got the slim cause I was young and stupid. Trust me, if I knew what I know today at that age I would never make my grandfather buy me a PS2 just because it's slimmer with maybe some improvements. Anyway... PC, of course was the majority of my gaming ever since the year 2000. Started playing PC games with Quake 3 Arena, Worms Armageddon, Warcraft 3.

All of this essentially to give you a little bit of a background that I have been gaming pretty much my whole life and I love videogames, they're misunderstood (by the mainstream media anyway) forms of art and expression that allow an individual to live through the dreams, thoughts, desires, fears, you name it, of others. It's amazing! Plus it can exercise one of the most important muscles of our bodies, the brain.

However, there is one game that makes me feel like i've never felt before. I mean, honestly... I am not even joking. This game should quite honestly be picked up by psychiatrists for psychological evaluations on temperamental issues because I have never seen anything like this. I'm sure you've heard of League of Legends, Counter-Strike, etc... But I have played all of those and nothing has ever felt or made me feel like this one does. And it is super intriguing because it makes me really wonder whether the fault should go towards the community, the development or a conjunction of aspects that generate this. And now for the grand reveal, drum rolls please... and the game is... Overwatch! That's right, Overwatch. This game makes me feel like i've never felt before. And I hope I can explain myself because it's not due to levels of skill or individual capabilities.

So, if you live under a rock and don't know what Overwatch is, it is a 6 versus 6 player hero based first-person-shooter. What does that mean? Well, usually a first-person-shooter has generic characters and is simply dedicated to weaponry that is spread across the whole game. A hero FPS tends to have more personable characters with abilities.

I love Overwatch, I think it's a fantastic game in regards to the story, the design of it... but, the more technical and community aspects of it seem to make me feel like I have some radiation inside of me that could go off at any point. But worry not, I am medicated! This game has some of the slowest development i've ever seen and then it's always something different than what the playerbase asks of them. As if they're always trying to be the ones who know what's best and know what should be done, but in 4 years of doing this the game keeps getting worse and worse. I mean, there's the occasional : "Oh wow, the game feels a lot better now", which is quickly ruined within weeks because people would complain even if the world was perfect cause of human nature. But sometimes it feels like they ignore important notes provided to them by players who spend hours and hours playing their game and not only that but come from a background of first person shooters. Blizzard has gotten this corporal mentality that their the innovators and that they're the only ones who can invent and anything else that's been done, they can't really touch or they have to do it differently because otherwise it's not their creation. At least that's how it feels to me.

Then, the matchmaking... I don't know what kind of matchmaking they created but I feel like in 8 games I get, only 6 or 7 are fairly matched. I can't judge the people who play the game casually just for spending some time here and there but how about perhaps I don't get the teams that drag me down all the time? I mean, I know Overwatch is a grind but there is only so much mental fortitude on can withstand with random people yelling at you, swearing, throwing slurs, gratuitous racism, xenophobia, I mean the list goes on and on... And they used to warn when action was taken against someone, so they either took that away or I have been reporting some really disturbed individuals who should take a break from the internet ( a long one ) or they're simply ignoring the reports because their bots don't receive enough so it's to disregard. I understand it's impossible to manage EVERY report, plus the possibility of exploiting the reports is very much a thing to but please. Some folks really need to be banned.

Given that, this was mainly a rant of mine that was hopefully introducing technicalities for those that might not be inside of this world which is very much growing every day. Gaming is such a good thing but it's ruined by too much freedom given by anonymity, which is a really sensitive case because without anonymity, things would be really awkward as well.

But that will be an article for another time. Thank you for reading and hope you have a great day.