I was sitting around with nothing to do, so I flipped to TSN and saw a billiards competition in progress. It was US vs Europe in nine ball two-man team play, and whoever won the game I had started watching won the series. After the break, where a few balls were sunk, there was no good line-up for the two ball. So the teams went back and forth tapping the two around the table hiding the cue behind other balls. Until one of the teams screwed up their safety shot leaving a reasonable line on the two. At this point, the announcers essentially called the game. Irrespective of the layout of the table at this point, it was a foregone conclusion that they had won the game, barring some horrendous unforgivable fuckup on their part.

There’s something very discomfiting about this certainty. Obviously, pool is a game of skill but most games of skill have a bit of chance, a bit of uncertainty. The wind can blow in the wrong way, even in closed environment games like darts. But it seems that in pool, there’s no chance left. The friction of the felt, the bounce off the rails, the angle of attack, the position of the stick on the cue, it can all be planned out too well. With enough practice, the game transcends its nature and becomes rote mechanics. I like pool, but I’m not very good at it. If I line up a shot exactly the same twenty times I’d probably only get what I want once, but professional pool isn’t like that.  Professional pool is precise, perfect, sterile. And, now that I’ve shaped this opinion, utterly uninteresting to me.

Next gen gaming is hip. Until it’s the current generation. Generations are simply iterative development. The next generation of humans is the people who are alive after their parents are dead. The next generation of games is the gaming systems that are used after the current system of games. (Really, all this “next gen” talk is a bunch of nonsense by now because the next generation to which everyone refers is now.)

Will Wright recently made the claim that the Wii is the only next gen console which, beyond being an inflammatory statement, is false. The PS3 and Xbox 360 are next gen systems because they are the next generation of systems. A new generation does not imply a startling shift in how games are played. Did games really drastically change from N64 to Gamecube or from PS1 to PS2? Of course not, they go prettier but the games were essentially the same. If the Wii is the only next gen console then the definition of “current gen” has to define the Commodore 63 as equal as the PS2.

Beyond this idiotic rebranding of what a generation means in relation to games, there’s the even more idiotic need of this world to be buzzword compliant. Though rendering speed and resolutions can satiate computer and video game geeks, the layperson needs simple direct statements implying that something is better than the other (at least according to marketing douches). Ajax is just one of the buzzwords one must throw around to seem like they are aware of the current internet culture. Web 2.0 is another one though, unlike Ajax, it has no specific meaning.

But unlike Ajax or Web 2.0, generation is a real term that has been stolen and twisted until its true meaning is rendered archaic. I’ve ranted about fanboyism before so these kinds of idiotic statements are obviously distasteful to me, but that’s not why I wanted to write this. As much as I love to slap fanboys down for being more resolute than Franciscan monks in their views, the reason I wrote this is because the world needs “generation.” This is not impeding the growth and development of the language. This is not the actions of a greater mass slowly shifting the perception of a word, this is a marketing ploy that has managed to ingrain itself into gaming culture.