College Gaming on Chicago's Skyline

[Blackwolf]

Straight from the Windy City, Requiem brings you College Gaming on Chicago's Skyline (http://www.allgames.com/blog.asp?blog=chicago).

Delve into the world of college gaming as we present it to you, and as college gamers want to be presented. Come experience the culture and lifestyles of gamers as they see it, through personal opinions, polls, experiences and much more. Catch up on the view points of thousands of gamers and how they perceive the present and future state of gaming. It's just one click away.

We're also not just talking gamers here, we are talking about the big guys too. Publishers, programmers, designers all of whom work in the city of Chicago.

Got any comments or suggestions? Leave them in the comments section of the blog or in this very thread!

[Chinese_Fury]

Question: Why just college gaming? Why exclude the mass gaming public? I would imagine that college students would not have the freetime due to workload and studies necessary for gaming.

[Blackwolf]

I have a few answers as to why I accepted the submission, but I'm sure Requiem will have others.

One of the things I remember most when I was in college was the amount of free time I actually had. I wish I had as much free time today as I did when I was in college. (And yes, I did graduate with a respectable GPA in four and a half years. Would have been four if they didn't switch from quarters to semesters and not forced me to keep the quarter system requirements.) So, I played a lot of video games on my limited budget back in college.

The reason I pushed Requiem to stay on this hook is because, well, everyone has the same outlook you do. "Why exclude the general gaming public?" So, nobody really talks to the college students. At least, specifically. They'll talk to the general gaming public which might include a student here or there, but you never really hear much from the students themselves.

You're right, they have studies and budgets...All the better reason to see how they see the latest games.

[Chinese_Fury]

Bobby it wasn't meant as lashing out. Just curious as the general tag these days is more about the general gamer / casual gamer majority crowd.

The hard-core gamer is now the minority.

[Burr]

I think college gamers are a decent demographic to look at. Probably the biggest vehicle of Halo's popularity was college dorms. I swear when I was in college it was being played on just about every floor with a significant number of guys on it. Other college phenomenons were Mario Kart 64 (yes, even though it was last gen) and NFL Blitz.. There's definite trends there to blog about that maybe wouldn't be represented by the adult working gamer who sits at home and games by himself more often than with others.

[Chinese_Fury]

It's no wonder why U.S. college students rank lower than Asian students.

[Blackwolf]

Mario Kart 64 was our drug of choice in my college days. So many nights were spent in my dorm room with four people playing that.

And yes, the majority of us who were playing MK64 graduated with respectable GPA's. ;P

[Flavius]

Mario Kart 64 was our drug of choice in my college days. So many nights were spent in my dorm room with four people playing that.

And yes, the majority of us who were playing MK64 graduated with respectable GPA's. ;P

Funny that you mention Mario Kart. I remember playing the hell out of Super Mario Kart on the good ole' SNES during my freshmen year. We'd get into such heated matches that we'd...um..."call in sick" to class (a/k/a: just not show up that day)...and play, literally, a hundred or two battle mode matches (which by the way, the SNES version of that mode is still the best implementation of that feature ever!). Skip forward to my final year (I took 5 years to graduate, I'm not too ashamed to admit, due to switching my major about a dozen times ;)), and we were playing the hell out of Mario Kart 64 (hot damn did I ever love the stadium course with the feather!...lots of fists flying when you pulled that shit on someone).

I think it's a great hook for a blog, and look forward to living the good ole' days vicariously through it.

Best of luck, Requiem...enjoy it and tell us all about it! :)

[R3quiem]

Thank you Flavius for your kind words and thanks Bobby for backing me up. I'm not saying this happens in all colleges, but a good majority of colleges have a large gamer base (believe it or not). And so my mission is to talk to these college gamers, asking them all types of questions and showing off their culture and lifestyles.

Hell Chinese Fury, maybe one of the topics I'll talk about is "how gaming affected your GPA" and perhaps find out what are the majority races who play video games in college (asian/white/black/hispanic etc..)

Also interviewing future computer programmers should be interesting as well. Questions like "did you always want to become a programmer? Were games a big factor in your career decision?"

[Chinese_Fury]

R3quiem, also another idea may be to compare the various colleges and jr colleges in the suburbs vs the Chicago / downtown city ones. I can offer to lend a hand to you since I too am in Chicago, for the most part when I'm not on the road.

[therobd]

I think it's a great idea. It's interesting to see how Xbox Live alone has changed the college gaming landscape. Honestly, I really don't see people playing at each other's dorms anymore. It's been both a good and a bad thing for college gaming, and I think that aspect of it alone makes R3quiem's blog a worthwhile subject.