GGN Virtualgirl: Can you escape your inner-nerd?

 

 

In your rush to join the daily grind, you run out of the house after throwing on a t-shirt, jeans and a baseball cap to cover your bed-head and dark-circled eyes.

 

As you unlock your car with your keys clinging to a Nintendo lanyard, you realize you are wearing a Street Fighter shirt, a Mario baseball cap, and are toting a backpack blanketed in various buttons from your favorite videogame franchises. Adding icing to the cake, before you can decide if it’s worth changing clothes, your thoughts are interrupted by Final Fantasy VII’s victory fanfare coming from your phone.

 

OK, it might not have happened that exact way to you, but have you ever had a day when you realized that it might be impossible to escape your inner nerd?

 

I recently found that I might not be able to do so. I did my laundry this week and was impressed to find that gaming related shirts accounted for nearly half of my wardrobe.

 

When did that happen? Granted, a majority of them were freebies received while working in retail; but the rest — comprised of Halo and Gears of War duds, and Sonic and Mario garb — have been collected from various stores for the last few years. It seems every time I run in to a retail location these days, there are fresh new t-shirts and other merchandise to feed my nerdy addiction. While for the most part I need to shop in the little boys section to find shirts my size, they are readily available and I wonder to myself, when did this happen?

 

 

Just five years ago it would have been a major treat for me if I found some new gaming gear. Friends would direct me to one store or another, swearing they had seen something with Mario on it at that location. Most of the time it resulted in a wild goose chase at best. But now, the market is full of licensed goods from our favorite pastime. I guess it all comes down to this: It is becoming easier to be a nerd. Easier, or more acceptable? Clothing is not the only medium gaming is taking over.

 

Videogames are now present in all facets of our culture. The most notable trend is the rash of game-to-movie crossovers as we have seen in Doom, Blood Rayne, Alone in the Dark, Resident Evil, Dead or Alive, Silent Hill, the Tomb Raider series and even more titles that are currently being produced. But games are not only being made in to movies, they are becoming the subject of or large element of new films. From the 2006 horror film Stay Alive, about a videogame coming to life, to this years popular drama, Reign Over Me, about a man who deals with the grief of loosing his family by playing Shadow of the Colossus, videogames are everywhere.

 

 

 

Music has also been infiltrated. Gaming and popular music were not completely separate in the past; in 1994 the Notorious BIG rapped the line: “Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis / When I was dead broke I could never picture this” in his hit song “Juicy.” Today, the trend has evolved from mentioning gaming in lyrics to using actual background tracks from videogames in the composition of a song. Examples include Lil’ Flip’s single “Game Over”, which features a Pac-Man background track, to the more recent hit “Technology” by 50-cent and Justin Timberlake.

 

Videogames are even found in novels and theme park rides, cell phone ringers, shower curtains and other household items. We have the World Series of Video Games, the Spike Video Game Awards, and Video Games Live - an international concert featuring the best videogame music played by a live symphony orchestra.

 

 

 

And good or bad, videogames are now the hot topic in our politics and news. The general public wants to know where politicians stand on issues surrounding videogame legislation. The news often features stories linking videogames to outbreaks of violence. Published studies banter back and forth about the pros and cons of playing games.

 

 

 

Are these growing pains a sign that the industry is becoming more legitimate to mainstream society? While videogames as a medium have not grown to the point of acceptance that Hollywood has, the industry is growing exponentially every year.

 

There is a reason for bringing this up, I promise. As a lifelong gamer, I accepted long ago that a large majority of people I meet would not share my passion for gaming. It made it that much sweeter when I finally would find someone that I could talk strategy and compare notes with.

 

The rarity of it made it like a secret boys and girls club and to an extent and that was nice. But things have changed. Gaming does not have the stigma it once did. We now have casual gamers, hardcore gamers, retro-gamers, import gamers, professional gamers and more who cover the entire spectrum of society.

 

I personally enjoy the growth of the video game culture as the more people who play, the more money goes in to the industry, and the more innovations go in to our gameplay experience.

 

But my question to you is, how do you feel about this change from sub-culture to popular culture? Do you like where the industry is headed? Did you prefer the time when you needed to know how many extra lives you got for spinning three 7’s on the slot machine in Super Mario Bros. 2. In order to be accepted? Or do you like the way the trends project, where videogames have something to offer everyone?

Sound off!