Gaming is a strange form of entertainment, in many ways a medium still in its infancy and finding its feet. Hell, scratch that it's not finding its feet, it's finding its market and guess what? that market ain't you.

But but, I hear you cry, we're the hardcore gamers, we matter. Sorry but no you don't.

Let me put it another way, when was the last time you heard someone call themselves a hardcore movie watcher or a hardcore  music listener or a hardcore TV viewer? You think there aren't people who take, movies, music and TV as seriously as you take games? Hell if the Remember When podcast is anything to go by, you are probably one of those very same people but you don't define yourself in that way, and you don't expect special treatment from the people who provide the media. You know the companies are in this for profit and you understand they are dealing from a perspective of making money and the best you can hope for is that you strike it lucky and they come up with a cash cow that happens to be a Lord Of The Rings, a Dark Knight or a 24.

So you feel a bit miffed because you have been with gaming since the beginning, you pumped your money into the companies when gaming was a niche hobby. you think you're owed something for that? think again, nobody owes you a single thing. You have had your reward already, you were there playing Super Mario World, You remember when Sonic was cool, you got to see Joanna Dark when she was in a good game. That's your reward, all those cool memories.

So why all the whining?, you always wanted games to go mainstream and now they have, what did you think it was going to be like?

But it's not all bad you know, if we'd stop complaining all the time and think about this rationally, the future is pretty good for all of us. Mainstream gaming means that overall there'll be a higher number of people who take this hobby seriously and eventually the number of hardcore gamers will increase. Sure, we'll always be outnumbered by the mainstream audience but that's the way it is with our comics, our movies and our TV series.

Here's the really good part.  As long as gaming was a niche pastime we were always going to be easy targets for the Jack Thompsons and other people looking for a scapegoat. in one fell swoop Nintendo have completely demolished this argument by getting your grandmother to play games and we ought to thank them for this. As if this wasn't good enough there's something even better. We got the Dark Knight because eventually a fanboy gets through the net and is given the kind of budget to make something that true fans can relate to, and this is going to happen with games as well. Sure, the majority of product is going to be crap but as someone has famously pointed out 99% of everything is crap. how many crap movies are made every year? isn't it worth wading through them to get to the Dark Knight, the Lord Of The Rings?

So, to finish off, stop whining already and just enjoy the good stuff, there's plenty of it to go around for all of us.