Gamers' Jihad: The Console Holy War

I started this article last month as a testament of my relief for ridding myself of my Xbox 360 console. As I verbally meandered through the draft at various points through the Christmas season, I began to think about the state of gamers today and the ferocity with which console they pledge their allegiance.

It started as I became trading against the 360 and how Microsoft goes about managing their video game foray. Continue..

I'm sorry, but when a gaming console's colossal failures are indoctrinated and accepted into the social consciousness, a light bulb should have gone off in people's minds. Irks the living shit out of me.

But then I realized that not everyone who plays video games is as sanctimonious about their console decisions. And since Microsoft has offered a means to fix the flawed system, most 360 owners treat it like they would any broken pricey appliance and send off to have someone fix it. It's not that big of a deal to them. I get that.

And I'm not trying to shit on Seth's new toy (he got one for X-Mas, God bless him) nor am I going to decry the system no matter how sardonic my feelings are towards Microsoft a certain degree of mindless zombies they have heralding the thing like the coming of goddamn Thor. Until recently, I myself owned a 360.

When the dust settles, the 360 is by no means a bad or terrible system despite what hyperbole you'll hear from Sony, Nintendo, and the odd Apple supporters (who, I'm assuming, escaped from a top secret lab or alternative dimension in which Apple houses a gaming console).

I started this article the night I sold my 360, which I had dubbed "The Lawnmower," feeling free of the shackles of the system and angry towards Microsoft for knowing the 360's detrimental flaws in advance (and how could they not, really) and doing little to fix it before releasing the system.

But something happened between that night and now. I began to feel ashamed.

Why do we, as gamers, act like choosing a console is like choosing a Roman deity, doing everything possible to tear down another's system? Growing up, I had a Sega Genesis and my neighboring friend had a Super Nintendo. It wasn't as if we were on opposing teams at the fucking Super Bowl. He came over and played games with me when we wanted to play Genesis and when I wanted to play SNES, we went over to his house. Otherwise we shared our experiences.

So what the hell happened? When did buying a console become an act of drawling a line in the sand in this epic war for attention?

One theory I've come up with is the fear that "one ring will rule them all." I think that Sega bowing out of the console business after the unfortunate death of the Dreamcast placed the terrifying thought in the collective consciousness of gaming culture that whatever console one chose could end up meeting the same fate.

Gaming, as a result, has become another religion. Nintendo, of course, is Christianity. It is the most practiced and recognized. When someone thinks video games, Nintendo is what comes to mind to most people. Keep in mind, this includes non-gamers. To this day, regardless of what I'm playing, when an older relative or passerby comments on my gaming (console or portable), 80% of the time they ask if I'm playing Nintendo. While Nintendo fans do have evangelical sects, by and large, they are happy just spreading "the good word."

Sony remains akin to Buddhism. It is the enlightened path. It is the way. It is a meditative format that consistently achieves to shed itself of suffering and flaws. You may, of course, chose to delve into the other consoles if it will aide you on your path to enlightenment, however certain sects remain strictly exclusive and isolate themselves from all others with a slight scoff.

As for the Xbox 360? Islam. While not inherently bad by any means, a handful of screaming fundamentalist douche nuggets fuck it up for everyone and give the system a terrible reputation. In the name of their console, these close-minded zealots troll message boards, loudly argue in game stores, and spread poorly conceived untruths and misunderstandings. And while every consular "religion" is guilty of this, the 360's followers put the rest to shame in terms of blind devotion.

Are we that terrified that some great schism's going to come along and smite whatever system's making the least number of sales? All three of these systems are selling. Period. It doesn't really matter who's selling more so long as someone's making a sizable profit. That's like if someone handed Bryant a million dollars and then handed me 750,000. I'm not exactly upset, here nor am I hurtin' by any stretch of the imagination.

Maybe I'm aging, but I can certainly remember a time when playing video games was not an accepted thing to do. It wasn't cool. It wasn't trendy. After a certain age, it was deemed for outsiders, losers that stood around outside the arcade, and other various people who were often picked on due to their interests. A lot of kids playing now can't empathize with this, but I assure you, the social consciousness didn't always think video games were cool and finding someone who not only shared your interest but wanted to share it with you was sort of like looking for a vinyl copy of Blink 182's The Mark, Tom, and Travis Show.

Endlessly hounding someone for a console choice when you should be celebrating a fellow gamer just doesn't make sense to me.

So, it's a new year. Let's continue to play test the future in 2009...

...and let's do so without trying to take each others goddamn heads off.

Posted by Myles Griffin at 1:27 PM