Womb Juice and the Rise of Gaming



Excuse the face; lambing
really isn't glamorous...

Finally! A free moment to actually write something for my blog... For the last three days I’ve been all wholesome and healthy out on a farm, surrounded by hundreds of highly pregnant sheep. My job has ranged from filling up their water buckets to wrestling them to the ground so I can help them give birth. Yes, my hand has been there. Multiple times. It was a lot of fun and really rewarding; there is something lovely about yanking (and it is a little brutal sometimes…) lambs into the world.

But just you remember that the images you get when you type ‘cute lamb’ into Google is about as far from what they start out looking like as is humanly possible. I am highly qualified to testify.

But now for something a little more on topic.

I remember the first time I saw the Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood promo on TV; I just about peed my pants and choked at the same time. I was so happy that video games were being advertised in primetime slots like films and TV programmes; you know… stuff that ‘normal’ people watch. It made me realise that video games have finally gained the acceptance they deserve.

They’re not something you have to be embarrassed about playing and they’re not just the territory of sweaty, emotionally-challenged boys. In a word (or a few), they’re awesome and everyone knows it. (Admittedly there’s still a ‘gamer’ stereotype out there but there are stereotypes for everything so we’ll get over it…. *ahem* and sometimes the gamer stereotype is true…)

They have launches where people queue for hours - days even - in a way that used to be reserved for huge movie premieres. In the UK, we even have an Oscars-style awards ceremony to give the developers the recognition they’re truly worthy of. I haven’t been gaming for as long as many people but even I've seen the huge increase in popularity and quality in a pretty short space of time.

I’m not what anyone sane can class as a ‘casual gamer’. More of an ‘obsessive’, ‘fanatical’ or ‘mildly unstable’ gamer so I’m not all that qualified to talk about casual gaming, but seeing the huge popularity of the handheld console and the plethora of iPhone games, it appears that gaming has entered the mainstream. I challenge you to find anyone who hasn't played either Angry Birds or Doodle Jump!

I think that’s something that gamers should be happy with, it’s great when people share your interests and enjoy what you do, and I’ll continue to be happy with the casual gaming wave, providing developers don’t turn away from the the epic, story and graphics driven console games.

Otherwise I’ll have to find a lot more to do with my day, and that’s just not going to happen.