Video games used to teach children where their place was in a group of friends. If you were bad at video games, then you were the group’s bitch, plain and simple.

When I was a child I often had to hop on my bike and ride uphill three blocks to my best friend’s house so we could hang out in his basement with nothing more than Star Fox, 007 and our imaginations to keep us company.

If you don’t believe me, that’s your problem, because it’s completely true. I lived on a large hill in the town of Oregon, Wis. Google Map it. I dare you.

Everyday, one of us would bike to the other’s house to get our video game grind on, and if our parents kicked us out we would bike on over to the other’s house and resume where we left off.

Unfortunately, the video games of today and their unblinking acceptance of the Internet have destroyed the physical and communal activity of children today.

What is with all this online play? What happened to a massive group of kids descending on one house to spend hours playing, laughing and having a good time?

What has happened is online play and the result is kids spending the night in a dark room with a 12 pack of Mountain Dew, a few boxes of Pizza Rolls and no one to share them with.

Video games have reached a sad state now that anyone can play video games with anyone else. It used to be a bout being better than your friends, not being better than a random group of strangers from across the globe.

No longer is it necessary for friends to head over to one another’s houses to digitally fight it out. They just have to power on, log in and off they go exploring their virtual world. What happened to spending quality time with friends?

Video games used to teach children where their place was in a group of friends. If you were bad at video games, then you were the group’s bitch, plain and simple. Thanks to the Internet, kids are making random children throughout the nation their respective “bitches.”

Lost is the camaraderie and the kinship that video games created.

I learned more about my friends by watching them chuck a controller through their TV then I ever would have by playing ball or doing something else outside. If players aren’t there to watch and look out for each other, who’s going to do it? Plus you can’t even cheat over the Internet.

When there’s an online “Mortal Kombat” there had better be a button I can hit that will remotely unplug my opponent’s controller or spill my soda on their pants during my most dire moments of need.

No wonder children are losing their way. They think they are the masters of kids miles away when they aren’t learning their place in a more immediate surrounding.

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