Intro blog and plans going forward

So you may remember me from last week as the guy that randomly posted a blog here as if I was just one of the regulars all along, and meanwhile proceeded to casually shit on all your favorite multiplayer games. I now return to make amends and offer up this humble apology:

PS. Rocket League is shit too.

In all seriousness, it was not my intent to say that multiplayer games are bad. I myself enjoy a lot of them, including Overwatch and Battlefront which I criticized in my previous post. I actually haven't even played Rocket League either, so I have no opinion on it other than that it looks kinda fun and I'd like to try it sometime. My main point was to draw attention to the fact that I feel like exclusively multiplayer games are stuck in an outdated design philosophy that prevents them from competing on the same level as I view single player games. This isn't to say that they aren't fun; they just aren't living up to their fullest potential from my perspective.

Still, a lot of fair points were raised in the comments, so I decided to go back and add in a couple paragraphs to my post to better clarify things and hopefully address some criticisms. Speaking of which, I am very pleased already by the amount of activity I saw coming from only my very first post. I was half expecting that I wouldn't receive any response at all, being a random nobody on the Internet that has yet to establish himself here. Though I thought this place looked promising, to receive feedback so immediately goes beyond what I'd hoped for. Incidentally, this is actually the main reason I decided to come here. I originally started out blogging on GameSpot, but after they killed their Featured Blogs section, blog activity across the site started to dwindle and I ultimately left it behind. Since then, I've been trying to find a place that supports their community and encourages activity, and I believe now I have found that place, so thank you everyone for all your responses and thank you Destructoid for doing the blogging scene right. I think I will be here to stay.

Going forward, I would like to re-post some of my old blog entries from other places here in addition to new ones that I will hopefully find the time to write, so expect lots more to come from me.

Now actually a little about myself. I've been a gamer all my life. Recalling my earliest memory, I was playing Super Mario Bros on the NES at the age of 2 when I was at my babysitter's house. How I am still able to remember that, let alone play at that age without ragequitting in under 5 minutes still remains a mystery, but the fact that I do still remember it probably says something about how much of an impact those early days left on me, because to this day at the age of 27, I continue to maintain a great passion for the medium.

Ironically while growing up though, I didn't much like to try new hardware. I was more than satisfied with just going back and forth between my NES and SNES, but my brother was always insistent on needing the latest thing, in spite of having no truly reliable means of determining whether he'll actually like it or not. So we got an N64 for Christmas, and while I initially scoffed at the lack of necessity for it, popping in Mario 64 and experiencing the full 3D graphics for the first time entranced me all over again and quickly shut me up. To this day, my brother still has a penchant for spontaneously getting swept up by hype and splurging on things that he often might end up disappointed with, but nonetheless his craving for the new and unknown has taught me an invaluable lesson that I think many people don't realize: We are all terrible at understanding our own taste. Not just with finding out the bad apples, but the good ones too. As a result of the wide variety of exposure I had to different entertainment growing up, I've come to realize that at least half of my all-time favorite games, movies, and shows came from products that I either had no expectations for, or fully expected that I would hate. There's a lot of games out there that market themselves just right to look extremely fun, only to be met with equally extreme disappointment upon release, but there's also plenty of games out there that look like they would be no fun at all, but turn out to be amazing. I thought that farming the countryside sounds like the most boring premise for anything ever, until I played Harvest Moon 64. I picked up Aquaria as part of a Humble Bundle on a whim and went into it with no expectations only to discover that it belongs to one of my most beloved genres, metroidvania, and was very pleasantly surprised by its incredibly atmospheric soundtrack.

So it has become a growing pet peeve of mine as of late that I see many people judging things before they've given them a proper chance, whether it be dismissing the entire medium of anime, or the unfair panning that the Wii U has received. People are often locked up in their own little box and so sure of themselves about what they like when they haven't even considered opening the box and seeing what's actually outside. I still struggle with my own biases as well, but I think being more conscious of them can help prevent yourself from staying trapped in that box too long. If there is one thing I hope to accomplish with this blog, it's to expand people's perspectives on subjects that they may have overlooked. If I can do that much, I will consider it a success.

That was kind of a long tangent, so I'll just wrap this up with a couple more things about myself. In addition to writing and gaming, I also enjoy hiking, swimming and biking. I can sorta be super opinionated and overbearing at times, though I always try to back up my opinions with some kind of substance, and I'd like to think over the years I've gotten much better at not needlessly antagonizing others for disagreeing with me. If I offend, please understand that I criticize things for the love of the medium. Unsurprisingly, I also would like to break into game design as a career someday, but that's a long work in progress. I may not have much to my name at the moment, but if anyone is interested, I do have a level created on the StarCraft II Arcade which you can play for free right now entitled Drizen 10-Way Defense. Check it out at your leisure. You can also download my small Knights of the Old Republic mod here if you have the PC version of the game.

Looking forward to participating on this site and getting to know more of you.

Oh, and because I apparently got nominated as a failblog candidate last time, I decided I'll go 2-for-2 while I'm at it.

LOOK WHO CAME:

Kutsufatmo   

Retrofraction   7

Gajknight   5

BruceZ   5

nanashi   3