Warning.
This is a collection of my personal opinions. Somewhat of a rant.


I will update this whenever I can. Please comment and check out my other stuff!

In the following article we will be looking back on the most recent golden age of gaming (in my opinion). Then we will assess what happened that caused the community to fall into dark times. I am an XBOX gamer, however I do like Sony and have nothing against them. These are my opinions, and they should not be taken as an attack on certain games or consoles.

I remember the day I emptied my wallet for my XBOX gaming console. I can still see myself opening that box and plugging that beautiful thing in. To any of you who remember this experience as well, the next thing I say will conjure memories of some of the best years of your lives. Halo, that simple word meant nothing at the time but now we can look back on it and remember what things were like without that magnificent game. Things were dark and drab before the XBOX. Gaming was headed for a dead end.

Of course as time moved on we were given hundreds of great games. Then came Halo 2 with the invention of XBOX Live. This is one of the iconic moments that sparked the interests of thousands. Our real story starts here. Not because this is where the true gaming community started, but because this is where the most commonly hated things started to take hold in the gaming world. I speak of course of campers, squeakers, trash talkers, and the dreaded noob.

As we move closer to the present, we see even more great things. With the release of "Call of Duty 4" we were given a break from the rather repetitive World War 2 games which had just about taken over the market. This game brought many exciting things to the industry, but for the sake of staying on topic I'll move on to the more negative result of this release. Quick scoping, A term commonly used in gaming far before "CoD4" but this term was not recognized as well until this game.


For those of you who do not know, quick scoping is the act of entering the scope of a sniper rifle for less than 3 seconds and getting a kill. Sometime during the later years of this title that all changed. I am not sure why, but I have a theory. You see it was right around this time that a new generation of gamers were stepping up to the plate. These kids or "squeakers" as we commonly called them changed the community in more ways than one.

As the new kids on the block. Squeakers began taking over. They became much more prominent on popular games. Due to their inexperience, we took it upon ourselves to teach them the terms we gamers use. Of course however somewhere down the line many of these said terms were misunderstood. The definition of the term quick scope was changed. A new set of "rules" for this term had been made by these new kids. You were no longer allowed to even enter scope, only to raise the gun as if you were going to aim it but fire prematurely.

To those of us who remember this time period. Thinking back on this subject likely brings bad memories. These "squeakers" were often filled with rage and would have a small temper tantrum when faced with someone who did not abide by these "rules". They would constantly challenge people to 1v1's and quick scope matches. This however was only the beginning.

Most of these kids went through puberty and now populate the more mainstream games. Still challenging, still raging, still just as annoying. As these gamers became the norm, companies began making games to their specifications. Halo 3, which was made to be more fun than competition became halo reach which eliminated the majority of said fun in favor of competition. Changes like these happened all across the board as these more aggressive players became the new target audience of these companies.

The gaming world went from hundreds of fun games that everyone played, to two games that everyone plays. Halo and CoD, the two big powerhouse games of this generation. Being a halo fan boy myself I don't mind this. Call of Duty however is a different story. Activision feels its necessary to produce a new Call of Duty every year. Sure this keeps the games from getting too old and over played, as well as filling the producers wallets.

As games like CoD, and Battlefield take the spotlight, we see another change that will impact years of gaming to come. Its nice having things that others don't have. Game creators know this, and they have decided to capitalize on that. Recently we have seen a great increase in micro transactions. The most recent and best example is CoD: Black ops 2. Activision decided to test us with the introduction of skin packs. Some of us who are not part of this newer generation of gamers refuse to purchase these things we are offered. We do this because we can see the problem and where it leads. However these newer gamers cant resist. They support the idea without realizing the eventual outcome. With the support of these newer gamers companies will begin making us pay for things that should already be in the game such as skins, weapons, or characters. For the sake of this argument I'll leave map packs out of this.