Video games are a lot like Saturday Night Live or The Simpsons. They all typically have audiences who form bonds, and then by virtue of simply getting older suddenly find themselves having moved on to new forms of entertainment, like Bob’s Burgers or cocaine. By the time they’re in their late 20s, those crusty aficionados have wizened edicts about when the thing they loved peaked, exactly when it became irrelevant, and can tell you why what they’re into now is way better instead. What many of us are blind to, though, is that we simply “aged out” and stopped being the audience. It isn’t supposed to appeal to us anymore.



In the case of video games, this is harder to identify, because they have on the whole not really changed much in the last few decades. If you think E.T. for the Atari is any different from Overwatch, you’re the wrongest wronger who ever wronged. If you haven’t been keeping up, just imagine that every big band is Guns N’ Roses and every big album coming out is a single of “November Rain.” You can only shoot a guy in the face so many times, in so many countries, in so many time periods, and in so many dimensions while Slash plays a wicked guitar solo before shooting one guy in the face is just like shooting every other guy in the face.

Look at the video game titles that make the most money and what’s in them, and the correct framing of the video game industry isn’t that it’s forgotten to change – it’s that it doesn’t want to. The video game industry is the South, sitting on the porch with a Confederate flag, sippin’ sweet tea and not giving a good goddamn. And if you grew up playing video games, cursing out titles like Battletoads for being dirty, cheating pieces of garbage, and wonder why in hindsight nothing seems to interest you anymore, there are plenty of good reasons that isn’t at all your fault – and a few that are.