Have you ever played a video game series, and the dates of release uncannily correspond to life events? I take this as evidence that I am of the gamer generation, not simply here during a time in which video games exist.
Back when I was in Jr. High School, I had a friend who was obsessed with Fallout. He talked about it endlessly, and I admit that it sounded bad-ass. But, my family was not only opposed to video games (of the generation that considered them mind-rotting indulgences (you know, the Victorians complained about their children reading too many books–some things never change)), but we were an Apple-using family–back in the day in which it was considered counter-culture and what I considered cool, but therefore excluded from the PC-gaming community. So I never got to play it.
A couple years out of college, and into the beginnings of my disillusionment upon experiencing the workforce for the first time, I used my newfound full-time salary to escape reality. It was during this period, 2008, that Bethesda, having now acquired the rights to the Fallout franchise, published their first game under that title: Fallout 3. And, it was fantastic.
At the time, something I didn’t realize, was how appropriate the narrative was to my circumstances. In a very abridged plot synopsis: a young man gets involved in some local politics, enters the bigger world in an attempt to find his father and the work he was entangled with to better said greater world, and in the process achieves his noble victory at great personal loss. How strongly that resonated. How much I wished that my own suffering was for some greater cause.
In 2015, Fallout 4 came out. By that time, I was married and had a daughter. This time, the plot involved tracking down my spouse’s murderer and child’s kidnapper. Ouch. It was a bit of a different emotional pull. Plus, this time the game’s theme involved trying to rebuild the world and take care of the populous, rather than generally ignoring or using them to further personal objectives. The protagonist, in these regards, was far more mature.
Some consider me a part of Generation-Y, while others define me as at the older end of the Millennials. What seems to be apparent, however, is that I am at the exact age during which video games evolved from simplistic novelties into powerful forms of emotional media.
–Simon