Turning 18

So yea, I’m now officially –by law- classed as an adult.  And let me tell you about how that is.

It’s the same.

I’m seeing little to no difference at all.  Every kid looks forward to this day so you can now do anything you want (within legal boundaries, that is).  But nothing magical happens.  A fairy doesn’t appear at midnight to spray some fairy dust on you and take you to magical adult-land.  Although, admittedly, that would be kinda cool.

Great, now I’m thinking about how adult-land would be like (and btw, I have no reason why I’m typing adult-land in italics).  I’m imagining a world where the internet isn’t full of douche-bags and Xbox Live aren’t full of 12-year olds playing 18+ games.  Wow, that tells a lot about me if the first thing I think about are the internet and XBL.

Anyway, I digress.  Hitting the magical 18 feels no different than any other day.  Ok, sure I don’t have to go “Erm… er… yea… about that…” whenever someone asks me for ID when buying a 18 game or trying to get into an 18 movie – which is cool, but I guess I just expected more.  Like my brain just explodes with the sheer awesomeness of being an adult and everything that I didn’t really understand before just becomes shockingly clear.  That might be a bit naive but all I’ve gotten is the fact that I sort of missed being young and in school.  Things seemed were simpler back then, someone could point me towards a patch of grass and I would play in it for hours.

Oh great, I’ve just become an adult and now I’m starting to feel too old.  People have always said my mind is more mature than my actual age, but I didn’t think I’d be thinking I’m growing too old now.  I thought it’d be about the time I hit the 30 mark – which everyone seems to fear… for some reason or another.

Turning 18 has brought some perspective into what I want to do in the future.  In the immediate future, I suppose I want to get into University this September – which promises to be an awesome experience if it’s anything like I think it’s going to be like; which it probably won’t be.  But what about the future future?  Like where I’d like to see myself 5, 10 or maybe 20 years into the future.  It may sound crazy, but I haven’t really thought much about it before.  I’m more of a “in the moment” guy, I find it hard to think past tomorrow.

Strangely though, I see myself playing video games for a long time.  I just find the interactive medium really tantalising, it’s at the forefront of technology and it’s always changing.  Always improving itself (supposedly).  I’m not just talking about the mainstream video game scene either, sure they churn out some of the biggest hits and the biggest sellers.  But, for true innovation, you’ve got to turn towards the indie scene and the flash game scene.  That’s where you find true variety and not just endless sequels due to the fact that flash games don’t use hype and they only become popular if they are fun.  That’s why I’m liking this trend where flash games are converted into XBL/WiiWare/PSN games.  It’s great to see this happen and arguably, Behemoth paved the way for the industry with Alien Hominoid and they haven’t looked back.  Castle Crasher’s is amazing fun and I’m loving the idea of co-op platformers.

Wow, I guess I really went onto a tangent there.  But you understand where I’m coming from.