What makes a game cool?
If we are to believe the corporations that most of the uneducated world trusts for its gaming experience, a cool game is something with a war theme and lots of pixelated blood, or hidden sex scenes couched in the winnowing threads of a plot trying desperately to be the next sequel for a Bruce Willis franchise. However, one should remember that these corporations must, by definition, appeal to the lowest common denominator, meaning that they must reach the shared brain capacity of you, your neighbor, that idiot across the street, and every one in between. But you can not even get along with that moron in the next cubicle, so why would you want to share a common denominator with him?
What makes a game cool isn't what the idiot in the next box says. What makes a game cool is the memories that it creates. The memories of Sonic the Hedgehog running through the Marble Zone. The memories of the first time you played Pac Man. And the binding thread in all of these memories is that they were created by trailblazers, not huge companies looking to make a buck. That kind of independent thinking used to be enabled in games like Commander Keen and Apogee, but those days are over. You can't get paid for doing games like that anymore - games with feeling. Fortunately for you, and me, there are game designers who don't care about making a buck. They make games for free. For the memories.
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