Video games are cool!

I believe this statement to be true for a few different reasons.

The Kinda Funny crew says this phrase a lot — mainly Tim. [Kinda Funny YouTube] I’ve watched every episode of Kinda Funny Games Daily since the beginning a few years ago. It’s where I get my news from — my daily gaming and nerdy news.

There are so many types of games to play for every type of gamer. It’s cool that I can think of all of the games I’m playing at any given moment and they are all so different from one another: Puzzle games (Tetris Effect), AAA games (Ghost of Tsushima), Battle Royales (Apex Legends), Story-driven games (The Last of Us II), Open world games (Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey), MMOs, RPGs and JRPGs. I usually have at least one big story-driven/open world game, some indies and some online games in my lineup.

My current lineup: Hitman (2016), Cyberpunk 2077 (on a break), Overwatch (always), GT Sport (always), Ori and the Will of the Wisps, Super Meat Boy, Puyo Puyo Tetris, Mario + Rabbids and some others that randomly jump into the lineup.

No single video game was made for every single gamer. But with all of the variety out there, there are games for everyone and that’s what makes video games cool. If we all liked the same handful of games the world of gaming would be so boring. It amazes me that so many online games have huge numbers of people playing at all hours every single day. That’s how many people play games.

Not too long ago new games, movies and music were all released on Tuesdays. I would go to Best Buy most Tuesdays to see what came out that week. It was usually just a few games. Now, we get multiple new releases each week — every day with digital releases.

It’s kind of amazing but also crazy to think that we have to skip great games we want to play, just because there are too many games in the wild. This is why I recently jumped into my backlog and started playing older games I had missed. Games that I know I will appreciate.

Games are also cool because you don’t have to be good at games to like them. It’s mainly about enjoying yourself and escaping from the world for a little while — sometimes for a long, long while. Maybe it’s about getting together with friends to play or connecting online with friends who live far away.

I’m not great at many video games. I sometimes play on the easier difficulties. I play some games online that I’m terrible at (Call of Duty: Warzone). Some games are purposely built to be incredibly difficult (Bloodborne, Super Meat Boy). Some games make you laugh when you fail, while others make you angry or cry. I’ve always been horrible at Madden, but I continued to buy and play it every year until this year. We can all play our own way and enjoy games separately and together.

What other hobbies do people enjoy even when they’re no good at them? It’s not fun to bake or cook if all of your recipes come out bland. It’s not fun to be a terrible knitter and try to make your friends guess what you’ve made them. Gardening is probably a fun hobby, if you end up with a nice looking garden.

Video games have also reached a place where they can look so realistic. NBA2K and many sports games keep looking more and more like the real thing. And now we have brand new technology with our next-gen consoles (ray-tracing and words I don’t even understand) and all of the recent PC gaming improvements. On the other end of the spectrum we have simply designed games and pixelated games (Celeste), that are still so complicated and beautiful. So much research and work goes into making games look and feel great today.

Video games are cool! And if you play games (and you’re not a jerk) then you’re probably cool too!