Not what the gaming industry needs

I can picture the article now:-

 

"With the PS3 network down, day upon day, you have to feel sorry for the everyday gamer with the average attention span and hygiene of a Springer spaniel. His life is firmly at risk our there in what I'll call reality for now.

 

The outside world is a scary place for the gamer – it resembles a horror platform, role playing, space trading, strategy adventure that he might not just survive. Out in the real world, things move slower for a start, much slower. Each passing pram, jogger or cyclist is the equivalent of acid flashback. Each seagull, magpie and pigeon is a golden eagle to be ducked on the way to the next level – or McDonalds. Every person in a uniform is a potential target. If this interruption goes on for much longer, gamers welded to their lightweight steering wheels will take to the real roads to get their fix and cause carnage up and down our high streets."

 

Or that's what the mainstream press will be having us believe if the PS3 network stays dead for the weekend. Such is the reputation of the games industry among those who've not tasted the Kool Aid. The  mistake that many detractors of games, gamers and the gaming community make – is that somehow, they, it and everyone else involved are dead set on turning their brains to mush and taking everyone down with them. Gaming wastes everyone's time, and guess what, the trash still hasn't been taken out and the car hasn't been washed. Games are bad, are young people are being turned in something we can't control and top it all off, now some other gamer is stealing all the money. What's to be done?

 

Gaming does have a reputation as a mindless pre-occupation. But I'd argue we don't scoff at trainspotters or birders, but given those two activities, I know I'd much rather be killing zombies or racing dune buggies. There are plenty of enjoyable activities that don't end in a tangible result. Can I just say the word jazz?

 

I think the reputation problem partly stems from the idea that there is a perceived relationship between video games and violence. The seed was planted and despite Nintendo's positive gaming campaigns and family friendly consoles, Killzone 3 will never replace Scrabble round the family kitchen table at Christmas. Partly it's come from a history of families owning a series of increasingly powerful machines – and let's be honest, not seeing any functional benefit and then there's the ongoing cost of the games themselves, the games that hog the TV and stop the normal discourse of family life.

 

Games and gamers are not all about chaos and destruction, despite what you might see your youngster blowing the shit out of. What is less understood is that the gaming environment is, more often than not, based around control rather than mindless destruction of people in uniforms and property. Gaming is about taking control of your own destiny in a world that is more defined and understandable than the world people find in their newspapers and on their televisions. Gaming is about completing goals and being successful. Gaming is about puzzle solving and impressing your friends. Gaming is about be enriched and being tired afterward.

 

So it turns out gaming is actually what life in the outside world should be about and why should we be surprised? Games come from life, so why treat them any differently to any other media? In theory, "I'm just going to watch a movie for a couple of hours" should amount to the same currency as "I'm going to drive roundNew York shooting and stealing stuff for a bit." We all know it doesn't. "I'm just going to watch the Godfather Trilogy" might be slightly more accurate, such is the depth of the gaming experience.

 

It would be noteworthy to discover how many young gamers have given up waiting for the PlayStation Network to grow a pair of legs and stand up for itself and indeed use their own legs to go outside and do something less interesting instead - like riding a bike, climbing a tree, breaking a collarbone, a wrist or two. Let's hope everyone who goes outside this weekend if the PS3 network is still down, can take some more control, complete some goals and impress some friends without being a total dick.

Childish

There's nothing I love more than a childish giggle. So when someone sent me the massive list of swear words we use to filter offensive Tweets on our plasma screens, naturally I spent the day scrolling.


Well here it is, swear away.

Losing it, hopefully

The art of putting less calories in your body than you have been doing to this point in time, is something that I've never really attempted before. When I've lost a few dozen pounds before, it's been down to exercise or a tape worm. It's been four, or has it been five days on a loose but serious diet - no it's nothing to do with Lent. Lola is attempting to convince me that more is actually less from breakfast to dinner, and I must admit I think I might be coming round. It sounds like a cliché, a wife putting her husband on a diet, but frankly, who else was going to do it? Someone had to tear up the menu of curries, chilli, spagbol, stir fries and lasagna with chips. She is extending my life expectancy, this is a good thing, I keep telling myself that.

And so it's happened. Eating more at breakfast seems to be the key to not tearing apart the nearest mammal at 6.30 each night to taste its blood. I feel better and the 'episodes' have stopped. Sshhh. I've probably eaten more of what you humans call "vegetables" in the last week than I have in the last decade. I'm not making light of it since it's probably healthier to pull sunflower seeds out of your teeth than a chicken drumstick.

St. Patrick's Day is probably a major spanner in the works tonight but I've always regarded Guinness as food anyhow. We'll keep it up but I'm worried that my new suit, which is a little big on me already, might start to flap in all the wind.

Look behind you!

Waking the Dead inside

Last night's concluding scene of Waking the Dead highlighted the extraordinary differences between US crime dramas and our dreary UK versions. At the conclusion of each CSI Miami or New York come to that,  we see David Caruso (our household ginger hero), comforting a child or holding a victim in the creepiest way humanly possible, but nevertheless, oozing empathy. Even New York hard ass CSI chief Gary Sneezy (Sinise), as my mother calls him, turns on the sympathy as the truth is finally revealed.

Unlike Detective Inspector Boyd who at the end of Waking the Dead looked over at the two recently orphaned kids, who'd been subject to years of abuse from a delusional and murderous mother. It's not Boyd's style to hug and tell everyone it's gonna be OK, but was the look that said, "Here's looking forward to a lifetime of mental health damage and regret, best get on with it eh kids?" With that he got in his car and pissed off. End of. Charming.

In the UK, we rarely see silver linings in our murder and crime drama, or should I say when we do it becomes New Tricks, so that probably isn't a bad thing come to think of it.Which brings me to that idiot who claimed today that Midsomer Murders lacked ethnic minorities because it wouldn't work. I live down the road from Slough and personally I'd love to see John Nettles, poking round in disused garages at the corpses of homeless Polish tramps. We ignore non-British cultures at our peril and we're so damn good at it - Midsomer Murders isn't the only guilty show - see if you can stomach Doc Holiday. Britain is possibly one of the most multi-cultural countries in the world, like it or not. We don't have to be like Boyd, be as angry as Boyd, eat like Boyd or just get in our cars and drive away. If we in the UK were more open to more cultures, even the ones on our doorsteps, perhaps we might even wake up a little of what's dead inside them.

Japanese Smash

Watching events unfold in Japan with everyone else and wondering whether Godzilla and Mothra will turn up to make things even worse - I don't think they could for what it's worth unless they accidentally knocked over a water tower with a mis-timed swipe and cooled the nuclear fuel rods. 


Faced with such a wall of debris and water any imaginable survival is ridiculous. Sadly there's not much to learn in the face of such disaster, Japan is probably the most prepared nation on the planet and there wasn't much they could do when you've got big parts of the earth creaking underneath you. 


I find it tough to sit there an watch while everyone around me tinkers with their spreadsheets and their business cases. As they're firing off emails to each other and arranging who's gonna pick up the kids from ballet, I just want to say, "Yeah but what about Japan? Have you seen what's actually happening? Do you even care?" The answer I'd love would be "OMG, we have to somehow get there, we have to somehow help, it doesn't matter if we only get as far as the M4, but we have to surely try!" Sadly the answer I get is a dull, predictable, British "No, we've got our own problems, and have you seen the price of petrol?" So chin up Japan, no-one from our Slough office will be coming to dig you out any time soon unfortunately, but for what it's worth, there's a guy in my office who's genuinely upset and wishes he could help. Get rebuilt soon.


While watching today I answered my own question - why do people in earthquake prone countries keep so many rattling ornaments on the walls? Ah I get it now.

Gelato

The Incredible Zac, we'll miss you

Toothpaste Museum

The anti-social network

Aaron Sorkin’s pacy but ultimately frustrating Facebook drama, The Social Network is hardly a contender for film of the year. By the end it felt like I’d been watching a dreary Premiership score-draw – another bunch of millionaire bitches running round, shouting, “It was my idea, no it was my idea.” My guess is that the majority of UK users of Facebook will have had no idea that the site had such lofty origins as Harvard as we didn’t get our grubby hands on it until after it had been through the American Ivy League.

Facebook's origins are fairly irrelevant, as is the film and the fortunes made by its founders and would-be founders. The real problem we should consider is that I don’t feel as if this story has run it’s course yet - not the whole, who invented Facebook story but, the Facebook story as a whole. The whole film feels therefore unworthy of such attention. My first feeling was, why haven’t they made the Bill Gates or Steve Jobs Story yet – perhaps they have, perhaps they’re waiting for them to die. Perhaps there is a sense that Facebook has reached its pinnacle and it’s all downhill from here with the emergence and rise of Twitter and the Chinese new generation social networks.

If there isn’t enough subject matter for the film to cover, then at least beef up the lead - Zuckerberg has been in a relationship since he began the site, why make him such a one dimensional asshole if you’re gonna make him an asshole? We even found ourselves in a fantasy Henley meeting Prince Albert of Monaco just to make it interesting for five minutes. The only person with the opportunity to spice is Timberlake which he never really gets the license to. Timberlake’s role in fact sums up how The Social Network leaves you, coated in a thin film of shiny unpleasantness, ironically much like using Facebook itself. And if it teaches us anything, apart from how some people made so much money it’s unfuckingbelievable, then that lesson is be careful how you choose your friends and if you can at all help it, don’t join Facebook. Oh for a can of UBIK.