As a rule, I do not like to be struck with things. Bricks, garbage cans, foreign coins, pointy sticks, and especially toilets are a few among the many and populous list of things with which I do not wish to be struck. For one thing, a good striking usually hurts, but for another it's just plain rude and often complicates what are otherwise good and meaningful relationships. However, one thing I do not mind being struck with is a revelation, unless, as mentioned above, that revelation is wrapped around a toilet. A moment of great revelation, of realization, or, dare I say -- yes, I think I do -- epiphany can fill you with a wonderful sense of connection and elevate what might otherwise be an ordinary moment to an extraordinary moment. For me, however, I experienced an odd moment the other night where upon I was struck in a very negative sense with one thing, a toilet, and it led to being struck by a far more positive thing, a realization. And that realization was that video games are awesome!

Now, when I say I was struck with a toilet I am speaking of my avatar in the gamespace known as Half-Life 2 Deathmatch. I am not saying that I was walking down the otherwise latrine-free streets of Minneapolis when a wandering vagrant, for reasons complicated and terrifying, hurled a toilet-bowl at my noggin. Had this happened I would not have been so much inclined toward a revelatory moment as I would toward asking for immediate transportation to a medical facility, preferably one that deals with porcelain-based, blunt-force trauma.

The specifics of the Deathmatch incident are irrelevant; there were a number of people in the immediate vicinity flinging improbable objects (tables, exploding barrels, medical packs, debris, I think maybe I saw a Chihuahua go flying by at one point) at one another with murderous glee, and it just happened to be the iconic toilet that shuffled me off this mortal coil. What is relevant is how much fun it was to be hurled across a dirty and bloodied tile floor by a piece of plumbing propelled at extreme and unkind velocities from a "Gravity Gun". And, playing such a pure and visceral experience reminded me of something I think all too many of us all too often forget.

Video games are fun.

Having said that, I am stricken with a sudden, paralyzing fear that any moment a group of self-involved kids with bad hair, droopy eyes, and the self-torturing expressions capable only by someone who defines himself in terms of his MySpace page will bust through my door and secret me away to a very dark place where I will be forced to listen to the Garden State soundtrack and look at old pictures of girls I liked but who didn't like me until I promise to never ever be optimistic on the "Blogosphere" again. Despite that threat, I shall soldier on with my call for having fun, because if you're out there banging your head against a wall over a game, then maybe, just maybe, you've missed the point.

I freely admit, that I've spent more than my fair share of oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide (and, apparently, a trace amount of argon) in pointless lamentations over the silliest minutia within games that I probably played for a total of an hour and a half. I'm certain that somewhere along the way I spent more time talking -- and by talking I probably mean complaining -- about a given game than I actually spent playing it. Actually, that game is probably Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, and it really was not much fun, but I won't waste any more breath on it now or, with some self-restraint, in the future.

The point is, with so many other games out there to enjoy and immerse one's self in, why spend any substantial portion of time complaining, or worse reading someone else's complaints, about the games you don't enjoy? Why is there so much verbiage, be it commentary, editorializing, posting, blogging, or other such literature whining about everything that's wrong with an industry that is so desperately trying to entertain us? Sometimes, I wonder if we're just talking to hear ourselves talk; saying the things that we think you expect us to say.

Ours is a frenetically and fantastically fun past time, and we do ourselves a disservice when we forget. One need do no more than listen to the ravings issued across the Teamspeak network over the past weekend as we played this Deathmatch-with-plumbing to know and hear the power of fun possible within these games. And, it happens far more often than we might realize, particularly when we brew ourselves within our own Brownian motion of cynicism. As I casually think back across a few months, I recall a great game of Table Tennis online with Certis, the joy of first exploring Tamriel in Oblivion, the hard-rocking awesomeness of shredding licks in Guitar Hero, days lost to Civilzation IV, a hard-fought and won battle of Rise of Legends against Pyro, and yes, even a game of chess I won against a particularly tough computer opponent. And yet, when I've written my articles it sometimes seems too difficult, too trite to talk about the joy of gaming. There is this weight of negativity that beckons for complaint, and the fun is not even given lip service, much less center stage.

I find myself wondering; is there a market for optimism online anymore?

Of course there is! And it should be more fully explored. Not simply in terms of video gaming, it occurs to me that we might all be quite well served by regular and potent doses of optimism. As a reader and writer, I'm increasingly tired of feeling compelled to raise a big, sulfurous stink every time someone with a vocabulary and internet connection has the random impression that someone, somewhere is most definitely out to screw them. If the internet has done anything for, or perhaps against, mankind as a whole, it has been giving us all a giant medium for making everyone else's problems in the world our problems.

I realize that ultimately this whole article could be dismissed as complaining about other people complaining, and if there is a way to avoid that irony it is as lost to me as everything I supposedly learned in my second year of university Spanish. Dismiss it as such if you're so inclined, and maybe use the space below to take irony to some hypothetical alternate dimension by complaining about my complaining about complaining. But, I'm not suggesting we do away with criticism altogether, simply that there should be a little more cheerleading for an industry that is designed around the concept of the consumer having fun, and not just for ourselves but because a lot of the people making games are doing it for that purpose.

- Elysium