The year is 2013. I am in college. Life is fucking incredible.
I went to school for engineering which most would think is a daunting degree to pursue, but little did they know that it’s just a bunch of fucking math. Engineers do not know more than you. We went to school solely to learn how to solve problems that some people deem “too hard”.
Guys…we literally just get taught how to use a formula and that gravity exists. That’s about it.
I feel like when I tell people I’m an engineer their brain immediately goes to this.
When in reality, it’s much more like this.
Except without the suit and big office window. I just wear jeans and a hoodie and sit in a office with no windows until I forget all memories of the sun.
But in school, man they really put you through the wringer. I mean these teachers expected you to actually READ the textbook and understand what it means without almost any instruction. They’d just scribble a few practice problems on the board that we’d not pay attention to in class and expect that to be enough.
Ya know, like a psychopath.
Instead, I spent the nights before an exam studying the last few years of exams from that professor that I got off a shared hard drive passed down from post-grads every year. But the other nights…
I was gaming my ass off.
I lived in the fraternity house for the last two years of college. For the first year, I did not have a TV in my room so I had to set up my Xbox in the basement. Originally, I didn’t mind this at all because we had a fucking 80″ plasma TV, and everyone would come down to watch me pwn noobs all night long like Lionel Ritchie. But then others started to discover that I did not in fact play my Xbox 24/7 as they’d previously suspected. So they started playing MY Xbox without me.
My first thought?
But thankfully cooler heads prevailed on that fateful day and I decided that instead of being an ass and telling them “THIS IS MY XBOX MINE MINE MINE GET OFF YOU POOR PERSON AND GET YOUR OWN”, I would join them and play along with them. And we had a ton of fun destroying noobs and noobettes around the world.
Except in sports games. I sucked at sports games.
Listen, there are two types of gamers in this world: the casual “Adams” and the hardcore “Arnolds”.
You see, the “Adams” don’t play games that are too complicated or require large amounts of brainpower because let’s be honest, they didn’t exactly get the lion’s share. They’re the people that only play basic shooters like Call of Duty or sports games like Madden and FIFA. These games appeal to their alpha male tendencies because they require you to literally beat the fuck out of people. You know, really cripple their will to live by destroying them with chopper gunners and forcing them to rage quit. At least, that’s the feeling you get when you win in those games.
The “Arnolds” though, they’re a bit different. Sure they enjoy a good ole fashioned pub stomping as much as the average “Adam”, but there’s so much more to them than that. You see, they find joy in things outside of the testosterone pumping through every vein in their massive cocks (because in case you didn’t know, true nerds are fucking hung). While the “Adams” of the world may avoid a title with orcs and warlocks on the cover out of fear of judgment from their peers, the “Arnolds” happily dive into a world of magic to discover what’s in store. They enjoy those curious puzzles and long cutscenes of beautiful artwork with soothing music floating through the air. The appreciation for the art of gaming is what causes them to boot up their devices every day, not the anticipation of hearing the tears of fallen warriors.
Me? I used to think I’m somewhere in the middle. But then I noticed the hammer in my grey Champion sweatpants and, yep, I’m an “Arnold”.
But in that basement of a fraternity house when I was suffering through my identity crisis, all we played was CoD and sports games.
When I think back on 2013, it was probably the last great year for sports games we had. NCAA Football 2014, Madden 14, FIFA 14, NBA 2K14; these were some of the best entries in their respective franchises. I was never really that good no matter how many hours I put into each title. I mean I think in FIFA 14 alone I put in nearly 500-600 hours A SEMESTER and still would get my ass whooped as Real Madrid by a guy playing with Boca Juniors who played maybe 3 hours a week.
But I do remember having a lot of fun playing them and thinking “man if these games are this good now, I wonder what they’ll be like in like 5 years.”
WELL SIKE BITCH, THEY’RE THE SAME FUCKING GAME.
How in the absolute hell is this a thing? How have these companies gotten away with scamming us for the last half of a decade? Fortnite came out in 2017 and it’s basically been 4-5 different games over its lifetime. Meanwhile, Madden, FIFA, NHL, and NBA 2K come around every year giving us literally the exact same shit with a slight graphical upgrade (sometimes) and brand new rosters expecting us to just dish out our annual $60 membership to play their “new” game. What the fuck is that shit?
And then I realized…IT’S BECAUSE OF THE ADAMS.
You see these dumb fucktards? They aren’t like you and me, my fellow nerds. You see, they haven’t spent years of their life experiencing the leaps and bounds that gaming has improved over the last few decades. They haven’t experience the twists and turns of games like BioShock, Red Dead Redemption, and Silent Hill. They don’t know the pain of losing characters like Joel’s daughter, Dom Santiago, or that alien scientist from Mass Effect. And they’ve never built incredible mind-blowing worlds in games like Ark or Minecraft.
No, they haven’t done any of those things. They just play sportsball and gun shooty shoot.
In short, they’ve been eating the same vanilla ice cream their entire life while us “Arnolds” have been riding the rocky road of wonder. So how can you get mad at companies for making the same vanilla ice cream for nearly a decade when that’s all the giant population of “Adams” has wanted every single night for their entire lives? Why reinvent the wheel when the wheel is being used by a bunch of fucking chimpanzees who are just happy to have a slightly refurbished toy in their miserable cage of a life?
So are you one of the people who are sick of playing the same sports game every year? Are you finally ready for change?
Then join me. And together, we shall
