I’ve become a gamer!

I’ve become a gamer.

Me, at my age. Coming on seven decades on this planet.

Yes, I now play video games and I’ve become obsessed.

I used to think that playing video games was a senseless waste of time. Why not use that time to read a book? Or write a book?

Why not use that time to watch a great show on telly. Or watch the Swannies, or a game of cricket. Now that’s not a waste of time. Watching The Ashes for six hours a day for five days straight. That’s certainly not a waste of time.

I don’t know what triggered me to start gaming. It was a few months ago now, and I went to my son, Henry – my eldest son – and asked him what do I need to do to start gaming.

Henry is a walking Wiki on gaming. He’s been a gamer most of his life. I could never understand it. I always used to think he could be using his time more productively.

Now I think differently.

Now I realise that gaming is a form of storytelling that is totally unique unto itself. Gaming tests and challenges you on so many levels. I now realise that watching sport, even reading a book, is passive, while gaming is active. Participatory.

Not to mention the art, the music, and the genius of designing games that take you to places that other more conventional forms of storytelling – even films – can’t possibly venture into.

I knew nothing about gaming when I started. I installed Parallels into my Mac laptop so I could use Windows to access games off Steam, a website that sells games. I bought a controller and a mouse and I had to get Henry to tell me what all the buttons were for on the controller.

You have to understand, up to that point I had zero knowledge of, or interest in, gaming. All my life I’d been sniffy about games, and gamers. But suddenly I became immersed in Journey, my first game. It was transcendent. Deeply mystical, a work of real art. It didn’t surprise me when I discovered that the game was featured in the New York Museum of Modern Art.

Here’s a YouTube trailer for Journey – LINK

I began to seek out more games like Journey. I discovered a whole world of wondrous storytelling such as Ori and the Will of the Wisps, Myst, Monument Valley, Samorost, What Remains of Edith Finch, and others.

But I’ve also begun playing Dirt Rally, Portal 2, Hollow Knight, and Henry has even put me onto Hitman, Mass Effect, Grand Theft Auto and Skyrim. Great fun, but boy are they challenging.

Many of these games are way above my current skill level, which can best be described as baby trainer-wheels – but I’m eager to learn. I have a birthday coming up soon and I’ve asked my family to buy me a Nintendo Switch, so that I can play Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I believe it’s magnificent.

Not long ago I found an academic treatise on video gaming as art, published by Oxford University Press, called Games: Agency as Art, written by C Thi Nguyen – a Professor of Philosophy at Utah University. Here’s part of the Amazon blurb on the book:

C. Thi Nguyen argues that games are an integral part our systems of communication and our art. Games sculpt our practical activities, allowing us to experience the beauty of our own actions and reasoning. Bridging aesthetics and practical reasoning, he gives an account of the special motivational structure involved in playing games. When we play games, we can pursue a goal, not for its own value, but for the value of the struggle. Thus, playing games involves a motivational inversion from normal life. We adopt an interest in winning temporarily, so we can experience the beauty of the struggle. Games offer us a temporary experience of life under utterly clear values, in a world engineered to fit to our abilities and goals.

I’m reading the book at the moment and I’m realising that gaming isn’t a senseless waste of time after all. It’s a legitimate art form that can bring benefits not possible from other art forms.

Not only that, but in my taking up gaming it’s brought me much closer to my son, Henry. And you know what? It’s worth it just for that alone…