Video Games and Their Effect on Our Future (A Cynical View)

This article comes from a passionate place. It comes from the heart people. Its about my love for video games.  Yesterday, the Xbox One was revealed. I’ve never been a fan of Xbox, nor have I owned one, but this might be the first time I jump ship unless Sony delivers some gold. Me and my cousin got on the phone and were turnt up about this system. I mean we can Skype while playing a game together. Talk about bringing families together.

The main feature of the system that appeals to me is the voice activation of the system. From early reports on the system, they are saying that you can run your cable/satellite box through the system and can talk to your system and change the channel to specific networks or even shows. You can simply say, “Xbox On”,  “Xbox Watch Walking Dead” and boom.  It will also provide updates and overlays onto your screen about other things you care about. For instance, if you can only watch the fucking Redskins because you live in DC and you really want to watch the G-Men whoop up on some ass, you can receive live updates on your screen about what you really care about. Sounds sick to me. I’d probably just get my lazy ass up and go to a bar like a real fan should though. Or steal it online. But this sort of leads me into another point.

We’re fucked. America is screwed royally. Like as cool as the aspects of the system are, how LAZY are we? I mean 90% of the exercise some Americans get is the “Remote-A-Thon”. This consists of 3 couch cushion curls, 2 standing rotations, 1 look-under-the-couch-on-knees-pushup, a 20m walk around the living room  and finally crossing the finish line when they realize the remote control they’ve been hunting for was behind the lamp on the end table.  This system allows you to sit on your fat ass and bark orders at your system to aide you in being a bum for life. If the damn thing made a pizza it’d be a rap. If it could blow you, the streets would finally be free of adolescents. I mean the Skype feature I mentioned before will be damaging. No more getting up and deciding who's house to play video games at on a Saturday. We can all play at home and not have to physically interact and develop social skills! How awesome is that!?

I’m a gamer. I can admit. But I’ve trained myself into a life of balance. Gaming, job, working out, boozing, sex, and grilling. Balance. Kids don’t have this balance, and parents nowadays suck. I saw a little girl down at the harbor in DC dressed in a dumb ass princess outfit, complete with one of those princess cone hat things, probably because she refused to wear anything else, sit down on the sidewalk because she “didn’t want to walk that way”. Her parents then stood there for 10 minutes as I stared and pleaded for her to move. This bitch was 3 years old and 35 pounds soaking wet with $40 worth of nickels in her pockets. Pick her ass up and make her go. Be a parent damnit, YOU OWN THAT SLAVE. You really think these types of parents are going to stop their son from playing Xbox One all day? I mean you no longer have to go into stores to buy any games for the shit. You just order them and download them online. No trips to the store, no need for social interaction, no need to learn how to bargain fools down in Gamestop to throw in a free subscription of GameInformer.

I say all of this to say, while I will most definitely be dropping upwards of $600 on a next generation system (yup), we’re in trouble. Technology will continue to impress and make life easier and simpler for us. In turn, we will become more complacent and even unhealthier. We will sit on our fat asses, eat food that we had delivered from aforementioned gaming system, smoke our blu electronic cigarettes and lose the ability to walk and talk. Then the Japanese will invade. They are the creators of the PlayStation. They will walk in and kill us all. But we won’t really care. Why? Because we just reached 4^th Prestige in Call of Duty 6 and FINALLY became a level 10 gamer. Double digits baby! What a fucking accomplishment. Boom. Pow. Bang. Kazuo Hirai and Bill Gates just won.  I’ll probably take my bullet from a Japanese soldier while running an iso dive left with David Wilson in Madden ’19.  Turnover on downs.