Over the recent years, a lot of people have told me that my English was very good. Pronunciation and grammar could still need some work but they thought that I had a strong vocabulary. I have books and Star Trek to thank for that. I watched Star Trek even before I could fully understand the language; it's people in colored uniforms shooting laser beams at aliens. As a kid, that's all I need! Reading books, on the other hand, I picked up much, much later during my college years 11 years ago (makes me feel old just thinking about it).
Anyways, I read a lot of books. Paper-back novels to be precise and most turn out to be of the fantasy genre. You know, orcs and elves. It's kind of a huge U-turn from colored uniforms shooting laser beams but, whatever. While not being the very first series I've devoured, R.A. Salvatore's "the dark elf trilogy" is probably the series of books I've liked the best.
Now a days, I tend to read novels based off video games. Games such as Diablo, Warcraft, GuildWars, Starcraft and even The Elder Scrolls. You know what the strange part of all this is? Every time someone sees me reading these books they get all curious until they see the title. "Oooh what are you reading? Tha-- Oh! It's one of your games isn't it? Bah!"
... And then they drop the topic. It's always the same thing. Why? What's wrong with my books? I get more interesting characters and story than any of these folks would ever get from their TV shows (which, for a lot of people, consists of nothing but drama - especially those reality shows) and on top of that, it keeps me involved in my hobby when I'm away from the computer and they're snubbing my reading?
I hate hypocrites!
Why is anything related to gaming perceived as this inferior thing? Those people never played a video game since PAC-MAN! No! Chances are they never even played that either! You know what's really stupid about all this, these people think that way because video games "are meant for little kids" and they're the ones complaining about video games being murder simulators...
To these folks, I say: "It takes an open mind to read my kind of books; that you're not reading these is probably for the best."
If you've never played PAC-MAN because, you know, some of you might be too young for that time, go play it now!
I just bought my first warcraft novel (Rise of Arthas) just awhile back maybe in august. I love it because its a world in which I feel like I have already been in and it allows for me to be MORE into the book. I dont know why people dont like books based of games.
ReplyDeleteHow funny, I've had similar conversations. Some sport fanatics I've talked to refuse to accept e-sports as a sport and I don't get the difference between sitting in front of your TV screaming at a football game and sitting in front of your computer screen or TV hooked up to your computer streaming a game of Starcraft 2 from the finals at Dreamhack for example. While it is true that you should get yourself some exercise every now and then, that doesn't mean that someone who watches e-sports or even participates in e-sports doesn't exercise, and it certainly doesn't mean that every sports fan does it.
ReplyDeleteAs far as I see it, this whole negative view on gaming is just something that people will come to accept in time. We've already come a long way from how it used to be for a while.
Reminds me of my school days - here in Germany, you may do a book report to improve your graduation grade at the end of college. I had a B average, so I wanted to do it - but could not find any teacher who would support me in doing a report on Lord of the Rings. I then tried Frank Herbert's Dune - but again was told that this was "not really literature".
ReplyDeleteIt was in the early 90s, and I just could not believe that there was no teacher in my college that would acknowledge LotR and/or Dune as considerably important books.
Even at university, where I studied American and English literature, books concerned with Science Fiction or Fantasy had a hard stand. I once heard one of my professors debating about the greatest British authors. After listening to him ranting on about Bronte, More, Swift, Blake, Austen and all his other favorites for a very considerable time, I dared to ask: "What about Tolkien?" He looked at me as if I had just sullied his honour.
I kind of find it amazing that, after all the success books like Harry Potter have had recently, there are still people having problems with this genre. I just watched a video from a fundamental christian, trying to make people vote for prohibiting such books in schools. Despicable.
Gix, I'm glad to see you voicing your opinion in a venue other than YouTube! After spending so much time watching you play video games, it's cool to hear what you think about topics that aren't strictly Elder Scrolls/Diablo related.
ReplyDeleteI thoroughly enjoy reading your blog to be honest, and today is no different, I would even say that I rather enjoyed this post more so than usual ^___^ specially since I went through mostly the same method of picking up my English. As a child I would watch a lot of American and British TV, music and lots of novels -my favorite still being The Hobbit- and thankfully developed my language at a very early age. At any case, good luck on everything you do, don't worry about youtube so much, and know that your fans will always support you in everything. I wish I can actually talk to you, there's so much that intrigues me about you, even my wife enjoys watching your Let's Play, and she doesn't watch gaming video and such.
ReplyDeleteAs a huge D&D nerd, I'm almost ashamed to admit I've yet to read Salvatore's work. I keep meaning to get round to it, but I tend to be quite stingy with money. Not to mention the lack of bookstores that have fantasy sections with more than a shelf or two for fantasy, never mind gaming-related stuff (and, indeed, bookstores in general, here in Scotland). The internet seems to be the only real place to buy gaming-related fiction, unfortunately.
ReplyDelete