Video gaming goes back somewhat further than most people might imagine – all the way back, in fact, to 1952. Blithely indifferent to totally lame contemporary mainstream fads like rock ‘n’ roll music, post-traumatic stress syndrome, and casual misogyny, Ph.D candidate and dedicated proto-nerd Alexander Douglas over at the University of Cambridge wrote up a version of tic-tac-toe on the institution’s ESDAC monster mainframe. And not just the first video game, but also the first one played with a console controller. Or, in this case, a slightly modified rotary phone dialer.
Fast forward a couple of generations, and hardcore gamers will tell you it’s all dumbed down now, with stupid casual stuff like tic-tac-toe on iPhones. Meanwhile, back in reality, gaming is slip ‘n’ sliding on the very bleeding edge of the entertainment industry, pushing the limits of technology and moral panic. It’s come a long way.
We’ve got stuff like emergent AI, full-body motion control, and guns that shoot shurikens and lightning. We’re teetering on the brink of science fiction here – I’d expect holodecks, neural implants, and a Diablo III launch date are probably just one or two E3 keynote presentations away.
But in spite of all this progression, it seems gamers are determined to hold gaming back from ever realising anything like actual dignity.
It’s not only the fatuous, petty X-vs-Y-vs-Z platform wars, only just barely graduated out of preschool sandpit squabbles about whose dad has the most important job. And it’s not just the arrogant entitlement attitudes of pirates, who can pretend that downloading a torrent of the Humble Indie Bundle is somehow justified because of – oh, I don’t know – maybe Bobby Kotick. Nor is it only the spawn campers, the teabaggers, the sore losers, the whiners, the ragequitters, the team killers, the cheaters, potty-mouthed sociopaths in multiplayer game lobbies, or this.
It’s all of these things, and it’s also the way some gamers present themselves to the non-gaming public.
Recently, some terminally irrelevant woman suggested that games are responsible for an increase in sexual violence. That she was in some error is self-evident – no reputable study has ever managed to definitively correlate video game violence with subsequent real world violence, despite no lack of trying.
Intelligent people everywhere grunted with dutiful scorn over their morning coffee, and got busy with the rest of their lives.
Elsewhere, however, a self-appointed VIDEO GAME DEFENCE FORCE responded to the week’s most cretinous, pointless, and instantly inconsequential news by assaulting this twit’s Amazon book catalogue with negative reviews, and abusive emails. Because, you know, impulsive, sanctimonious rage isn’t the same as regular rage, and does absolutely nothing whatsoever to vindicate those otherwise unsubstantiated opinions about gamers and impulsive, sanctimonious rage.
On the one hand, I suppose there’s a certain sense of accomplished irony here – most of the “reviewers” have obviously not read the books they’re slagging off. Oh, I get it – you’re talking about something when you don’t actually have an informed opinion. Pot, kettle, black, etc. How clever. On the other hand, of course…
It was an article on Fox News. This is the same network, mind you, whose market demographic is entirely comprised of pathologically credulous, inveterately ignorant, easily alarmed morons. All you did was confirm their suspicions.
It’s like, for every developer trying to create a meaningful, emotional, and intellectually significant experience, there are a hundred morons issuing death threats and thoughtlessly, selfishly undermining it all.
My Gaming’s Chris Kemp recently asked readers if we’re ashamed to be gamers. I know I am.
Games, gamers and gaming having some teething trouble? << Comments and discussion
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