Welcome to Wayne's World of Gaming

Welcome to Wayne's World of Gaming, your shoe into the world of video games and my forum for talking about some of my favorite games and the video game industry. I'm really excited to be starting this and hope you'll join me on this journey.

My hope is that by sharing my thoughts about video games, I can not only come to a greater understanding about videos games, but also be a part of the gaming community and maybe even inspire people who don't game to try them out.

I've been in love with video games for as long as I can remember. What I have always been amazed about is the power of a video game to pluck you from reality, inject you into another space, and allow you to immerse yourself in a unique world. The interactive experience of video games gives us the means to manipulate a game's virtual reality and those experiences often influence our perception and handling of reality.

For example, I saw firsthand the effects of the introduction of a new product on the price of its component parts in the massively-multiplayer online (MMO) game Guild Wars 2. An update introduced a new backpack into the game. One of the supplies needed to manufacture the new accessory could be found while collecting wood. Rather than gather the necessary supplies independently, an activity that could easily take tens of hours, players instead rush to buy one of the supplies, the foxfire cluster, from the in-game trading post, a forum that gives players the opportunity to buy and sell commodities that they have acquired. The cluster, which used to be sold for about 1 gold piece, dropped down to 80 silver pieces because people kept undercutting the price of their competitors (80 silver = 1 gold for reference). Money can be fairly hard to come by early on in Guild Wars 2 and so what was once an easily lucrative method of earning money became less profitable in only a span of a few days. Update: the price has fallen even further to about 70 silver pieces per cluster.

With the recent technology boom of the past few decades, video games have risen to the forefront, gaining mainstream recognition with examples like the rise of E-sports, and popular franchises like the Call of Duty series as well as games like Angry Birds and Candy Crush. Video games have exploded in popularity and will only come to play a greater role in our lives as time goes on.

I'm excited to start writing. My first topic will be Sony's new 'Share Play' PS4 feature! Check back soon.