Mobile phones take away the majority of our daily lives, making mobile media the most prominent medium in the dispersion of information. A lot of things transform with the technology available, mostly transitions that make for more portable devices; creating accessible opportunities in different fields may it be to make money, play games, or even both. I remember growing up watching my brother and my cousins play Dota, I even went with them to the computer shops just to watch them while I either play GTA or watch YouTube, I admired how much joy the game gave them but dreaded the waiting being a child that you could never expect to just sit in one spot. When we got home I would then watch them get scolded for staying too long and for wasting their time on those damn stupid games, I thought to myself, I’m never wasting my time on those games, they’re not going to help me. I only played games on my Xboxes and Playstations because I had this stigma that computer games were only for those who want to waste their time, I guess it was a bit elitist of me to be like that.
Then came the age of mobile games, I got to play with all the birds, from Angry Birds to Flappy Bird, the running ones from Subway Surfer to Temple Run, and mostly everyone’s mom’s favorite, Candy freaking Crush. That era was the first season the mobile games boomed, letting developers show us that gaming no longer needed big computers or expensive consoles, but of course the complexity of the games we’re far from what the latter could emulate. But it took over the world, the smallest device to play on was also the one that had the stronger grip on mankind, mobile phones had us well… by the hand. It was quite ironic how much power those little things we voluntarily choose to carry in our pockets and even wear around our necks had over us, we were all in denial of the real-world impact it had to offer.
I guess after a couple of years of being in that rabbit hole, the common “kakacomputer mo ‘yan” from your mother turned into “kakaselpon mo ‘yan”. Society has identified changes and patterns that they no longer want to honor in the age of mobile media, but the gaming industry said “not too fast”, around the time that Dota and League of Legends were starting to be respected as actual careers, E-Sports was established. Opening doors for those kids who spent their school allowance in the computer shop wearing just their black pants and their undershirt, unwittingly creating a path for the future breed of gamers.
Mobile was starting to become the name of the game and it ended with Legends, as much as improvements in political and socio-cultural life are debatable, gaming had no question marks tied to it. It turned society around, rather than seeing these mobile phones as a tool in commercializing media and imposing control on young people, it let the younger generation capitalize on the skills that they developed in doing what was typically seen as a waste of time. Doors opened and scholarships were made available, giving as much recognition to mobile gamers as they gave the other E-Games athletes.
This only shows that there is no denying that there are opportunities in the most unconventional things and that technology is the number one medium that the elderly need to stop villainizing. We live in a world where some are making less in professions that are seen as admirable than younger people that live to play games at a highly competitive level, kinda weird if you ask me, but I’m all for it.
NVfromSpace 