Han Shot First

Many facets of gaming culture are starting to rear their heads in popular culture. It wasn’t until I found out about G4TV and their segment, “Attack of the Show,” that I really began to comprehend the movement forming behind video games.

Luigi in There Will Be Brawl

Across the internet, there are series like “There Will Be Brawl,”“Alice and Kev,” “Mega64” and “Pure Pwnage” that are entirely focussed on games and gaming culture. The web comic “Penny Arcade” recently began a web-documentary as well.

I think the best part about all of these is that it connects you to other people that share the same intimacy with video games. I can remember a time when there weren’t many people that were really appealing to the gaming community as a whole. Now we have guys like MC Chris, MC Frontalot, and even Basshunter really representing the gaming community musically.

I cringe with joy everytime I find myself looking at a stranger donned in clothing from a familiar website, and attempt to squeeze in a “I Understand Your Struggle” nod without overtly exposing our connection with members of our respective parties who –for lack of a better term– may not truly understand the importance of a public sighting of an unfamiliar gamer.

And I’m not talking about your typical I’ve-played-COD-and-Starcraft “pop-gamer,” but rather, the type of person that  lives and breathes the medium. These are the type of people who’ve picked up a few words in German from the several thousand (give or take a few) WWII shooters on market, or that have fallen asleep at their desks, the words, “one more turn,” barely escaping their lips. These are the people who truly connect about the topic of video games, and unfortunately, a group that doesn’t have many public places to interact with each other.

Apart from computer cafes, game retail stores and maybe comic book stores (though comic book and gaming nerds are TWO DISTINCT breeds, they do occasionally mix), gamers don’t really have many public places to meet. There are expos like Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) in Seattle, Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in California, Montreal International Games Summit (MIGS) and many others in Europe and Japan that serve as kind of the big events of the international gaming community.

But, other computer cafes (and they aren’t really the best), there are no casual places for gamers to get together. My major problem with computer cafes is that they’re quite expensive in a lot of cases, and many gamers have completely capable systems where they live.

What I guess I’m really getting at, is the idea for a really casual, inexpensive place that gamers could convene and do what they like. I’m not trying to build a business plan or anything, I just think that, if done right, it’s something that quite a few people would be interested in, and as long as someone could make the venue worth more than just playing games on a network without being too ridiculous on the prices.

Yeah, and might as well throw world peace in on top of that, right? A man can dream. Anyways , I think that’s where I’ll sign off, but, just remember: Han shot first.

That’s all folks…