I've been a gamer since I could form coherent thoughts. I can remember playing "Pitfall" on the Atari. I can remember being blown away by "Mario Bros. 3." "The Legend of Zelda" had me so fascinated that I can remember reading the booklet that came with it over and over again.
As I grew up, so did the video games I played. New technology gave rise to new styles of gameplay, and each one had something that I found incredibly attractive. I can remember playing "Halo" as a teenager and thinking it wouldn't get better than that. Then I played the "Dark Souls trilogy" and thought that I'd experienced something close to transcendent. The gameplay didn't just get more complex; the creativity in terms of storytelling did too.
Today, when I want to feel comfortable and relaxed, I'll put a video game on. The funny thing is, these games don't get me to relax. I love games with difficulty angles that are higher than most, such as "Escape from Tarkov" and from Software games like "Dark Souls" and "Elden Ring." I enjoy games that truly make you lock in and focus to get to the best ending, like "Return of the Obra Dinn" or "Hollow Knight."
From the outside, this might look like an addiction. In fact, older generations have been saying that for some time. To be sure, there's an element there, but that's picking up a book and saying chapter 4 is the whole story. I think there's something much deeper happening here, and I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that so many men play video games because it's the last place a man can be a man.
To understand what I'm saying, let's look at a man as an animal.
This is an animal that loves to play to win. It likes being decisive and to achieve goals, even if it means wreaking destruction on the things standing in the way — and sometimes especially if it means we can do that. We're an animal that loves to achieve goals and see rewards for them, to be celebrated as the hero. We want to build, destroy, protect, lead the charge, pull the trigger, and swing the sword. We want to compete, to team up, and to conquer. We want to save the damsel, create the legacy, and underneath all that, be appreciated for all our efforts.
In the real world, that's denied to men at inexcusable levels. Gynocentrism has become the standard at so many levels of our society that masculinity has been labeled outright unwelcome in various parts of it. There's been work to destroy spaces reserved for boys, and they've been monumentally successful. The court system is incredibly biased toward women to the point where men hardly stand a chance, especially in custody or financial fights. The corporate world and universities cater to women and often treat men as if they're problems waiting to happen. Commercials are released encouraging everyone, including men, to see their most innocent behaviors as "toxic" or "problematic." Even the dating scene is filthy with minefields.
The world men live in isn't the same one from 50 years ago. It's hardly the same one from 30 years ago, so dramatic was the shift.
So more and more men have retreated into the last place where their nature is rewarded. Even boys spend their time playing games because it's one of the few places where they get pats on the back for doing what boys do: go, fight, win.
I don't think it's a mistake that you often see "experts" and advocacy groups attempting to bend the corporate video game world to their whims to make it more "female-friendly," and it's something they've been largely successful at. Just last week, I reported on another "research group" that pointed out the same "issue" they've been pointing out since GamerGate: that women are largely underrepresented in video games. They make it sound like they're concerned about economics, but in reality, it's just more feminization of something typically enjoyed by men.
It's just another attempt at destroying another one of their spaces.
Read: Focusing on Trying to Include Women Is Destroying Everything... for Women
To show you just how much of an issue this is, another attempt to pressure a developer into including intersectional nonsense into a game they were playing was answered with a hard no, resulting in massive celebration from gamers everywhere and a host of rage from the left.
The video game industry's corporations may have fallen to the same gynocentrism you see in other spaces. Even "Halo," one of the most masculine games to ever be created, has now become a feminized mess of intersectional politics and anti-masculine virtue signaling. Bungie, the developer behind it, is about to go under because of it.
Indie developers are the ones still providing a space for men to be men. They aren't even creating games to appeal to men specifically; they're just making games where the main objective is to overcome and win without making it a commentary about something.
I think it's really interesting that so many of the male species gravitate toward gaming to such a degree that the vast majority of the male population plays regularly, at a whopping 77 percent for those 19 to 29, and 53 percent for those 30 to 49. Women are by far less invested in gaming, especially if you take out casual phone games.
It's a retreat for men, but honestly, the more I look at the situation, it's more than just a haven for masculinity. In a way, it's keeping it alive in a world that's less than kind to it.
