"It's Just a Game" (Arngh)

Since I began gaming, during the mid-nineties, the entire experience has evolved in quite a spectacular way.  I remember when the graphics of Final Fantasy VII were acceptable.  I remember when loading screens were acceptable.  I remember being tricked into believing the Sonic was a multiplayer game, which wasn’t acceptable.  I still have a fondness for Tails however, though I was never actually controlling him.

Though I started out with a Megadrive and SNES, my love of gaming was set in concrete via Sony.  I have owned all incarnations of the Playstation, and I have noticed a trend in what is modified with each +1 that gets added to the name.  They get a lot bigger every time, which is odd as other consoles try to avoid this, or go the other way completely.  The colossal Xbox shrunk for its 360 evolution, and all of Nintendo’s consoles have been roughly the same size; small.  The Playstation’s desire to swell and grow makes it seem like the gaming world’s equivalent of Akira from off’ve Akira, or The Blob that Ate Everyone from off’ve The Blob that Ate Everyone.  I fear that upon reaching the PS12, alongside having a console which sounds like a sniper rifle, we’ll have a console which is the size of a wardrobe, and you’ll have to actually go inside the Wardrobestation in order to play any games.  I just hope that by this point I have enough room for it.

The main emotion that I remember accompanying the gaming process is pure, unadulterated fury.  There is nothing quite like the caustic incandescent wrath incurred by a ‘Game Over’ screen which represents hours worth of effort, now lost.  No other human emotion can match the feeling of heartbreak that occurs when a console is switched off when you haven’t saved for hours.  If this has never happened to you, consider yourself lucky.  You are the primordial perfect human being, unsoiled by the torturous loss of data that this process causes.  The faeries help anyone responsible for turning off a console when I haven’t saved.  Such a termination causes a reaction of Elfen Lied proportions.  I’m talking proverbial entrails.  There is only one situation that is worse than having the console turned off purposefully by a human being, as when this happens you have a target for your fury, the other possibility is so hurtful, I can only convey it through haiku.

Up, Down, Down, Right, Left,

A power cut, my game; reft,

I am left, bereft.

In the oldie, olden times, there was a way of having some measure of conclusion after having your game inequitably wrenched from you, and this was to furiously slam the off button or switch.  This process went some way to alleviating the sense of loss that was suffered due to the loss of game, giving a sense of finality and closure to the event.  Developments in consoles, however, have now rendered even this shallow revenge impossible.

After losing several hours of gameplay recently, whilst playing the PS3, I was left irate, and in an attempt to take out my rage on the console, without breaking it or damaging it (that is important – they are expensive), I reached to vehemently switch the ‘Off’ button.  I then remembered that the ‘Off’ button on the PS3 is a touch activated LED device, and so was left feeling like a prat as I held my finger impotently over the device.  I had originally thought that the touch activated business was nifty, but now I am obstinately in favour of big fat plastic buttons which I can give a pounding to when furious.

Another aspect of technology that seems to have been designed in order to obstruct game induced fury is screen thickness.  Back when I was a furious youth, televisions and computer screens were ponderous hulking behemoths, the screens were tough glass, with enough plastic on the back to ensure that it could successfully earn a second income as a wrecking ball.  What this thickness and hardiness ensures was that it was able to easily withstand retribution, be it from a punch or a headbutt, such as might be warranted after having a third player sent off on Championship Manager 01/02 or being beaten for the billionth time by Strife on Soul Calibur 3.  The flimsy screens that parade their cool-dudedness nowadays, I am sick of them even though I purposefully bought one and they are better than the old ones I take it all back.

Every controller is now wireless, which is a double-edged, albeit wireless, blade.  I remember well the tyranny of the wired controller, keeping the gamer constrained in its despotic circumference, perched too close the screen, truly a dystopian way to game.  Now however it is possible to bowl cyber-strikes from out in the passage, or shoryuken Dhalsim from in the kitchen.  The trouble with this is that where the controller used to be an extension of the console, it is now an auxiliary standalone aerial retribution delivery system.  Which is not a very cost-effective way of sating anger.

Of course, the true satisfaction for an obsessive (compulsive) gamer was to have not only clocked a game, but to have truly completed it.  The evolution of gaming into the internetosphere now dictates that it is near impossible to complete anything, with online multiplayer becoming the focus, rather than the bonus, and with the purely online games designed with no story or conclusion, so as to maximise the moneyz it can vampire out of your stupid gaming face.  The gaming fury of the naughties comes not from having to wait hours for loading screens, or having your save data corrupted (argh), but from being slowly ground into the dust by 11 year old little Brett’s on the internet who, presumably, don’t receive formal education as they must spend all of their time honing the angulature of a tossed grenade on any given game to perfection.  The universally accepted reaction to this occurrence is to stare dead-eyed at the monitor, ignoring any friends that may be present, as the Brett then proceeds to banshee-wail cacophonously into the headset which, for some reason, you have put on your head.

Some people believe that for every Ying (Brett) there is a counterbalancing Yang.  In the case of online gaming, the Yang is John.  John comes from Birmingham, usually, and is able to function as part of a team, not as a lone and crazed maverick, looking to be killed, and costing you serious points.  John is also agrees that Peep Show is amazing, and is more than happy to join in with an a cappella rendition of ‘Soda Pop’.  It is wailings of this kind that I prefer.

I was recently ground into the dust whilst playing Super Duper Supersonic Rocket-Powered Car Football Extreme on the internet, but thankfully I wasn’t subjected to pre-pubescent jeerings from my opponents, as the PS3 doesn’t include free headsets as does the 360.

And I was glad.