I didn’t think it was over until Mark and myself got the xbox 360 flashed a month ago… then, I knew:  my gaming days were finished.  Interestingly enough, in large part, it isn’t even due to the impending arrival of Little Doodle, more this unsatisfied feeling and bad taste in my mouth with the current state of games/gaming/gaming community that has left me hanging up my towel.

Like many gamers around my age, the journey began with the original Nintendo Entertainment System.  I was four, and I remember what it was like to engage in that “other world” shown magically on the TV screen.  Now, 20 years later, that magic feeling is replaced with feelings of mediocrity, some of which is the gaming industry’s fault, some of it mine.

We burned nearly a dozen games for our newly flashed 360 and one after the other, as we put them in to play, struck me as being just carbon copies of the last:  Bayonetta, Dante’s Inferno, and the like all felt like God of War rip offs, in which only the character and the setting having changed.  They brought nothing new.  Prototype and games like it felt like I was doing nothing more than transporting the character from cut scene to cut scene, a mere guide inbetween movie segments.  Even the transporting of the character to yet another cut scene wasn’t a challenge, as they conveniently marked where you should be going on the map every step of the way.  And I asked myself what was the point? It wasn’t fun, it wasn’t free roaming, or free will, or even a challenge.  Game after game that we burned went into the 360 and back out again, with nothing but a sigh and shrug.

Of course, there have been a few games which have completely captured my imagination and attention in the last couple years: Fallout 3, Oblivion, Guitar Hero, just to name a few of the games that I truly loved and enjoyed.  I have fond memories of the N64 and older systems. I’ve always loved MMOs and RPGs.  But it now seems so inconsequential, nothing more than a good time here and there.

World of Warcraft, my last gaming hobby, will not last much longer either.  After all, alts can be fun but when you’ve “been there, done that” on your main character you find yourself asking, “what’s the point?”  Lately I have found myself wanting to watching videos on how to bathe a newborn or read an article on breastfeeding than log into WoW.  I want to get out and do things more than sit indoors and get that next level.  I suppose this new evolution was to be expected as the weeks went by in my pregnancy.  I just never thought that I would feel like I’m ready to be done with it, ready to move on and ready to embrace this new phase in my life.

And then there is gaming as a whole.  At the risk of sounding like a hipster, a part of me feels done with it now that it’s become “Like totally awesome, dude!” to everyone.  Everyone has their own podcast, everyone has their own website (including me, at one point), 12 million people play WoW, and sometimes it all leaves me wondering if people are actually enthused for the release of the next mediocre title or are they just playing it up in order to match the status quo? Gaming since you were born? Step in line, so was everyone else our age into gaming.  It’s become too chic for my tastes, too mainstream.  Release parties and the like are for movies and vapid celebrities, not the things we used to play in the dark by ourselves.  Not the things we were picked on in school for liking.   Mainstream gaming ruined the MMO genre in my opinion.

And then there is my fallacy, as well.  I’ve been an MMO addict for the last ten years.  I regret my senior year in high school because, instead of hanging out with the people I was about to move 1000 miles away from, I spent most of it locked in an addiction to Everquest.  Countless sunny days and opportunities have gone by in the last ten years that were completely missed. I don’t want to continue making this mistake.

I won’t be getting rid of my things, and it’s not like I think that I’ll never ever play again.  Who knows, once Little Doodle is a bit older and that next hot MMO comes out I may give it a go.  But the days of marathon gaming,  late nights and morning energy drinks, the obsession with the next level,   the new game release must-have, the ten thousand gaming community boards,  are over.  And I am not sad in the least.

Life is moving on, in new and exciting directions.  92 days to go.