My Rite of Passage by Lucas Suffield

Oh, hello there, I wasn’t expecting anyone to actually read this. Well, now that you are, I guess I should tell you what I'm writing about. As you can tell from the title of this, this story is about a rite of passage. That passage in question being video games. Yes, you heard me, video games. Now you might be thinking to yourself “How in the gosh darn are video games a rite of passage.” And technically they aren’t rites of passage but the impact they had on my life is. The way they made me mature, grow, and change me for better or worse is probably one of the most important things that’s ever happened to me.

I first discovered video games when I was about 4 or 5 years old. What happened was my uncle, who was more like my brother because of the fact that he is only 6 years older than me, got a 3D DS, and it was magnificent. Now, I only played it like twice, but both those times were magical. Because of this, I begged my parents for a DS, and after a couple months of constant begging, I got a DSI for Christmas. On top of that, I also got Mario Cart 6, so I was quite happy. I played that thing constantly, every minute of every hour of every day. The only time I didn’t play it was during school and when I was sleeping. It got so bad that I would have dreams where I would wake up and start playing it and then when I would actually wake up, I would get confused on why I wasn’t farther in the game.

Soon though, something terrible happened, something that would scare me for the rest of my life. IT VANISHED! I honestly don’t remember what happened to it, which in weird because I just went on rant about how addicted I was to this device, but for some reason, I cannot, for life of me, remember what happened to the darn thing. It was fun while it lasted though! I had many amazing experiences with it that I will cherish forever, but like most things in life it had to come to an end.

Wow! That was a long-winded rant about a DS. But it's nothing compared to what I'm about to unfold! Now yes, the DSI was my first gaming console/device but it's nowhere near my favorite; that honor goes to my old Xbox 360.

My addiction with that started when my dad and our roommate at the time came home with a mysterious box. It was the Xbox 360 as you can probably, but my five-year-old mind didn’t know what it was and assumed that it was nothing important. Oh boy, was I wrong! My dad pulled the console out of the box, and I who was about five years old at the time, had absolutely no idea what it was, and because of that, my curiosity started to grow. They plugged it in, and what happened next would change my perspective on life for years to come.

They turned on the Tv and the console started up, and that ridiculously loud starting screen that popped up. It was very loud, and, if you don’t believe me, look up Xbox 360 starting screen. After that faded, they popped in a game (the game being a racing game of some sort) and started playing, and I was just mesmerized. I kept asking to play but kept getting shot down, but, after some more begging, my dad got an old Nintendo 64 controller and told me that I was controlling the obstacles in the game. Now, even though I wasn’t playing, I was still having fun and glad that I was spending time with my dad.

Soon though, I stopped falling for the tricks, and my dad, for the most part, stopped playing video games, so, in turn, I was playing that system as much I, my seven to eight-year-old body, possibly could. It was amazing, and I got quite good at many different genres of video games, and, because of this, I tried to soke up as much knowledge about every game in existence. I learned a lot; an example being how to properly research things, which helped me a lot in school. This also helped me come out of my timid shell because, at the time, I had very few friends, most being friends I made though sports. But when it came to talking about video games, well, let's just say that I probably would lose a lot of calories just from the movements of my mouth. I made a massive group of friends, some of which I am still good friends with, and became much more outgoing and positive.

I played and loved many different games, but my favorite, if you want to know, is a game called Red Dead Redemption, which is a western type game, but it takes place right as the west is dying and modernization is taking over. But that’s not really that important. Now, that was my favorite video game, but there was one game that had a massive impact on my life, the holy, the great, the magnum opus of video games......Minecraft.

Minecraft was extremely influential in my life. If you don’t know what it is, it’s a game where you can either basically be a god and do whatever you want with massive selection of blocks to build stuff from, or you could spawn into a world with nothing and try to survive and craft things from the resources that the world provides. That’s a bad explanation; its best if you just look it up.

I discovered the game when my uncle (the one I talked about earlier) got the game for his Xbox. It was such a cool concept when I first played, and I had to have it, and, luckily, I got it that Christmas. It helped me flesh out my creativity and even helped me become more responsible with trying to survive the hellscape of the world I was spawned into.

Well, I think I'm done ranting, so I'm going to wrap this up. So, in conclusion, video games changed me and my life in more ways than I can count. They helped me become more outgoing, creative, and just overall, made me a happier person, and I could not be more thankful. Well, since you made it to the end, I guess you deserve a thank you of some sort, so thank you for reading this, and goodbye.