Millennials and electronic vices
Tom Pinney
Last Tuesday, I woke up at 6 a.m. – a full hour and a half before I usually wake up for work, to play a video game.
As you sit there and ridicule me, I promise there’s a reason. But, if you’re easily bored or not really interested in video game lore, or you want to avoid spoilers for Destiny, go ahead and skip two paragraphs.
It’s because Destiny, currently my favorite video game, released its year three expansion called “Rise of Iron.” The story of the Iron Lords is finally revealed, as Lord Saladin takes us back to the Plaguelands at the edge of the Cosmodrome, where Fallen Splicers have taken over due to help from regeneration technology called SIVA.
Meanwhile, we begin to understand why the mysterious Iron Lord keeps to himself and the demons that plague him, as we learn his compatriots were brutally murdered by the initial SIVA invasion. We learn his best friends (including a possible lover) closed Saladin on the opposite side of a blast wall which separated the Cosmodrome and the Plaguelands.
If you skipped those paragraphs, I don’t blame you. Don’t worry, none of the rest of this column dives deep into video game lore.
So I, a 25-year-old adult, not only woke up early to play this game at launch, but I played it once I got home from work that afternoon until I had to go do stuff, then I did the whole process again through the rest of the week and into the weekend. When I was at home, I was playing Destiny.
Meals were skipped, personal grooming put off, bedtime moved. Wake up, Destiny, shower, work, Destiny, the occasional meeting, Destiny, sleep. Lather, rinse, repeat.
My generation is the worst about video games, mostly because much of my generation saw the advent of video games through young eyes.
Atari and Colecovision were a couple of years before my time, but I was born the year before the Super Nintendo Entertainment System came out. My kid years saw the Gameboy transform into the Gameboy Color, then the Gameboy Advance. I watched as the Sega and Sega Genesis came out. I played on the Nintendo 64 and the first Playstation before I was 10.
In my adolescence, Sega went under, but Nintendo and Sony morphed into giants. Microsoft jumped on the train soon after with the first Xbox, and we had ourselves a three-way fight for supremacy.
(It should also be noted that PCs gained the ability to play games other than Solitaire in the late 90s as Microsoft began to tread water in platform gaming, but as a platform gamer, not a PC gamer, I don’t really care. And yes, GenXers and baby boomers, there is actually beef between platform gamers and PC gamers.)
In my life, I have played on every video game system, from Atari and Colecovision to every Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft platform which has been released, including all seven Nintendo handheld devices and both Sony handhelds. I currently own the PS3 and PS4, and have a save-up project to purchase the PS4 Pro and Playstation VR.
I’m not proud of it. No, wait, yes, I am.
The thing about generational vices is that they’re easy to own up to because you have an endless amount of people who relate to your “pain.” In our case, that pain is actual joint pain, as we’re probably more likely to develop carpal tunnel syndrome in our lives because of all of the handheld gaming action and texting.
Speaking of texting, millennials have another generational vice: smartphones. By and large, millennials existed before commercially available cell phones, which means it’s still new technology for all of us.
Smartphones will be ho-hum for our children because, whatever, smartphones have always existed. As we get excited for the next new iOS or Android software releases, our kids will be less enthused because, whatever, smartphones have always existed.
When we regale them of times gone by, where flip phones existed, our children will call us liars.
Truth is, every generation has something they’re proud to not be proud of, but eventually we all get one vice in common: complaining about how things aren’t the way they used to be.
Gen-Xers and baby boomers have joined forces to complain at millennials because the world used to be different. But don’t worry, millennials, pretty soon we’ll be able to join with Gen-Xers and whine to the next generation about how things used to be.
“Back in my day, we had flip phones and we had to climb to the roof of the house to get cell reception.”
“Back in my day, we didn’t have Wi-Fi. We had dial-up.”
“See that iPhone 32S in your hand? I had the first one.”
“I remember when Microsoft had a mobile operating system and a cell phone developer.” (And yes, that is a prediction.)
We have to remember, however, that our vices only divide us if we let them.
Millennials, if you want to play video games, keep playing video games, and do so with gusto. Even if we’ll probably all need glasses and arthritis medication at some point.
Your collections, your vices, don’t make you any less adults.
