But is it gaming?

With the news that the Wii has now infiltrated one in four British households, the press is getting itself in a lather about our little island turning into a nation of gamers. But let’s just all hang on a minute. If we’re talking about using an interactive electronic device to simulate a sport or scenario then yes, we are all becoming gamers. But doesn’t being a gamer mean more than that?

 
I don’t want to get all precious about it, like a film fan who doubts the movie-loving credentials of a person who claims Titanic as their favourite cinematic experience, or a music lover who won’t have a discussion with you if you don’t know the lyrics to Pink Floyd’s The Wall. But I grew up in an era when to be a gamer meant spending a large amount of time getting intimately acquainted with the latest pixel adventure. It meant getting in from school, bolting your tea and then missing out on day turning to night turning back to day, just so you could go to school the next day and tell your mates you’d unlocked the Nismo GT-R LM after finishing one of Gran Turismo’s endurance races.

 
That technology has reached a point where we can get electronic devices to simulate just about whatever we want is awesome. So too is the fact that Nintendo has finally cracked what it seems to have wanted for years; that is a system which is based for the most part around good, clean family fun, rather than a fist fight with the young pretenders Sony and Microsoft over who can shift the most polygons.
 
But you have to ask yourself, does playing Sudoku on a Nintendo DS make you a gamer? Now I do sound like that film or music fan. But so what? I can’t help myself. If gaming equals your nan and her mates playing bowling and doing nothing else, or playing Scrabble against imaginary opponents, rather than taking the time to become expert in something that requires levels of physical and mental dexterity rarely found in other spheres, then I don’t like where gaming is heading. We are certainly all interacting, but are we all gaming?

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Posted by jamesyps3 on Nov 4 2009. Filed under Editorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry