Is Gaming Still Accessible?

Have you ever thought about what really constitutes a ‘hardcore gamer’? Over the weekend, i felt more like one than i have in weeks. A few of my non-gaming nerd friends were over my house recently and since we had to kill some time, I thought it would be fun to pop in some Gears of War 2 into my xbox. Since all my friends are between the ages of 20-25, i figured “hell, theres no way they can’t play Horde, this will be fun!” Boy, was i wrong.

What I saw and experienced when actually playing the game literally blew my mind(no, really, literally). I kept repeatedly getting my head stomped in by locust because my friend was to busy making himself dizzy trying to look straight ahead. Another one, when telling him to change to the shotgun by using the d-pad, didn’t even know what i referring to! It was so frustrating to try and get these guys good enough to just actually play the game, never mind be good at it. So frustrating to the point where I just was not having any fun at all. How could I focus on killing locust horde when I couldn’t tell my partner how to stay in cover? Or even aim at the enemy right in front of him?

This experience got me thinking; maybe gaming isn’t as easily accessible as i thought it was. Besides the Wii and its target on the casual audience, ‘hardcore’ games seem to be more and more complicated and excluding to most average players. Even people who are in the prime target range of the title and could be interested in the story lines, like my friends were when explaining the story of Gears of War to them, seem to be lost in the complex mechanics that our generation of gaming has developed into.

So what is the solution to this problem? One answer: Guitar Hero. And snacks. Lots of snacks.