Hunt the Wumpus?!

Earlier in the week at Evil Avatar, I noticed a newspost that got quite a good deal of attention: Time put together a spread on the top 100 video games ever.

My initial reaction was quite similar to many commenters: TIME did not feature games that I considered to be pivotal.  They left out games I consider to be pivotal, missing out on Baldur's Gate, Baseball Mogul, Battlefield 1942, Descent, Dungeon Keeper, Fallout, Magic Carpet, MechWarrior, RollerCoaster Tycoon/Theme Park, Syndicate.  Their choices in series were also suspect: they picked Oblivion over Morrowind/Daggerfall, Mass Effect 3 over the first two, Half Life 2 over the original, SimCity 2k over SimCity, Arkham City over Asylum, and Call of Duty 4 over Call of Duty 2.

As I considered their choices, it dawned on me -- this is one of the first widely published articles from a "normal" news source that validates my feelings about a hobby that has been largely misunderstood.  I agreed with more choices that they made than I disagreed with, and overall I was happy with the article.  This was much more unusual, and much more unexpected.  The media has presented the genre as a whole as jumping from PacMan to Mario, straight to Doom, and then to ultrarealistic modern shooters where gore explodes with every click of the mouse, with no evolutions or other developments in between.  The industry is generally shown in the light not of creating fun, but creating shocking displays of horror.  The consumer is portrayed in a similar light, seen as an overgrown obese man-child consuming not enjoyment, but craving a needed influx of brutality to satisfy some sort of primal bloodlust in some sort of modern gladiatorial environment reminiscent of the movie Gamer with a healthy splash of strippers.

While the article does fall into the trap of the perception that there was never any length of time between classic arcade games and the console revolution, it shows a significant change in attitude. I would certainly have included a good deal more, but in the end, this article does show that society is acknowledging us as a legitimate market and not some sloth-encumbered unwashed fringe that's only slightly too lazy to go on some sort of whacked out shooting spree.