The Thing About Gaming

Gaming is fun, and gaming is good.

You can spend 3 minutes playing, say, Call Of Duty on PS3, shortly before having to hurry off and do something constructive. And of those 3 minutes, you can say happily to yourself: “6 kills. I got 6 kills. That’s good, because I got 6 kills”.

Bless us and our ‘6 kills’. We really are adorable in the strange things that matter so much for so short an amount of time. In the monumentally short-term, those 6 kills are everything to us, aside from the likely proximity of snacks. But it is merely short-term, as we do not reminisce about our 6 kills later that week:

1: “Dude I totally got 6 kills on Tuesday night!”

2: “Oh. Good.”

Does not happen.

There would also seem to be a gap in the game market for saving people. Perhaps it is because they aren’t real, and that somehow equates to them receiving a worthy death, or maybe it is because we know that although they die- they will be coming back.

I am glad re-incarnation is only suspected. Otherwise the death-rate would soar and instead of guys sitting in their homes thinking their ‘6 kills’ mantra- they would be sitting there saying to their wives: “Hey, y’know what? I didn’t get butchered today! Isn’t that a pleasant thought before bed!”.

Murder would seem to be the only thing the gaming world offers that has that feeling of being constructive. As if though they’re real terrorists that you kill six times.

What I think needs to be created is some translation of energy, so that the amount of hours that are put into games can have some off-shoot potential. So, say that if you could play a game for two hours, you power that games unit for both those hours, using a pedal mechanism that further goes on to store further power as well as keep your arse in shape whilst you sit on it.

It was often said that if kids actual spent that time learning how to play guitar, rather than tapping buttons on an computer imitation guitar, then they’d be pretty good at it by now. So perhaps making games as realistic as possible is the way forward, so that we actually know how to dismantle a terrorist should the occasion arise, or play guitar.

The thing about gaming is that it permits failure of grand schemes. People, in games, attempt and fail- sometimes dying. And they keep playing. And they keep going. Very few of us attempt this in real life during the minor moments, let alone the grand scheme, as failure is tragically unacceptable and success is the only thing that can ever be permitted to happen.

Lack of a decent amount of failure will make you sick and lame, and although we can not ‘save’ in real life, we should hold that one life precious and spend it because tomorrow might now happen. You don’t want to end up at that tomorrow that shouldn’t come as the pussy that didn’t jump out the window because you have some sort of pussy reason that your mind has desperately mashed together to permit you to not have to act up here and enjoy life for some fucking reason that seems so important at the time. The minute you’ve jumped, you want to do it again. But you won’t jump, and you’ll think of a bad reason why not when it comes to it.

Jump out of more windows. It’s good for you’re choice of shoes in future. You’ll want the sturdier pairs.

And find people with a grand scheme, or get one of your own. Then leave the house (preferably by window) and take that scheme down to city hall and slam it against the side of the building and say: “I’m 5 foot 8 and I have a scheme today”. You may attract attention, but that is a good thing because you have a scheme and you’re only 5 8″.

All in all, at least you won’t be playing irrelevant video games (they’re all irrelevant)- you’ll be making a scene downtown, with a scheme in your hand. And 5 8″.

With any luck you’ll fail terribly.

And then do something else till it works.

Sam