Recently, in one of their Netflix binge-watching marathons, my kids discovered a show called Video Game High School. Most of what they watch is aimed at younger teens, mostly Disney (teenage soap opera) drama and comedy. This looked pretty promising at first, but as the series ran on, I started not liking what I saw.
The show centers around a kid who unintentionally ends up at an elite high school for competitive video gamers. It’s filled with the usual action and drama, but I guess I was expecting more of the traditional cheesy comedy. I ended up pulling the plug when the show’s main antagonist started dropping 4-letter words (cause my pre-teen kids were watching it too).
The problem is, in typical drama show fashion, VGHS shows unrealistic caricatures of what real gamers are like. If you didn’t know better and only went off of what the show presents, you’d think all skilled gamers are egotistical jerks, they all have some weird accent/slang dialect, and run in weird cliques. But from my experience, the people that have the dedication to drag a computer setup to a hotel ballroom somewhere just to play video games for fun and prizes are much, much nicer than that.
Twenty years ago, I used to be pretty big into gaming. I had a dedicated LAN party rig, and I went to competitions a few times a year. I gave that up to be able to raise a family shortly thereafter, and for the most part, I never really got back into it. Here’s a shot of my last custom LAN rig: Continue reading “The Prodigal Son Gamer”