A Land Before Games

It’s just a game, that’s what they say. It’s not real life. It doesn’t matter.

Okay, so your best friend’s made off with your copy of Mortal Wombat as well as your limited edition wombat-beater peripheral. What’s the big deal? You can go beat some pensioners down the post office with their own walking sticks just as well.

But it’s not just a game, is it? It’s a whole lot more than that to you. It’s a drug. It’s your escape. It’s your time machine, your cultural plaything or your portal to another dimension. Face it: you’re not interested in beating anything these days unless the arterial spray is a simulated one.

This is the premise on which Nintendo has built its entire corporation, after all. You want to play tennis? Do it in your living room without silly complications like rackets and balls. You want to look after a dog? Do it just for Christmas. You want to compete in the Olympics? You’re shit! Stay indoors and play Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games instead.

It’s hard to believe that a medium so engrained in our lives has only existed for less than half a century. Gamers are only in their second generation. The first arcade game only came ten years before I was born, yet by the time I was plopped into the world in ’81 you couldn’t walk five feet without bumping into one.

Now look at the bloody place! 40 years after Nolan Bushnell’s Computer Space, and only 50 years after Steve Russell’s Spacewar!, the first interactive computer game in existence ever, the world spends more on interactive gaming than it does on both music and film combined. Hell, people even let me write my opinions about games on a website for other people to read, people who subsequently develop choice opinions of their own regarding my choice opinions and in voicing them make me wonder what’s so fundamentally wrong with these people that they actually care what I think about anything.

It’s crazy to think that gaming is so new to the world. I game every day. As soon as I’m finished writing this blog, in fact, I’m off to play Portal 2. Then write my opinions about it for other people to read.

What must God think? He turns his back on the world for five minutes to help some seraph civilisation increase its altruism efficiency rate and when he turns back we’ve turned the place into a games room. He must be livid. Last time we got in trouble it was for eating an apple. Man, he must be real pissed this time.