Writing up talks is hard work. Anyhow, I thought you’d be interested to know that my talk from Gamecity ’08, the Nottingham game festival (which was, frankly, excellent) is now available online for you to read. I was due to give a talk to a more general audience than I normally do, so I decided to run with a slightly more general topic, and imagined a 45-year-old standing for office as a premier in 2018:
They’re 45 in 2018 when they stand for office – that means they were born in 1973. They would have been four when Taito released Space Invaders came out; seven when Pac Man came out. In 1985, when they were 12, Nintendo would launch the NES in the west. At 18, just as they would have been heading to University, the first NHL game came out for the Genesis/Megadrive and might consumed many a night in the dorm. At 22, the Playstation was launched. At 26, they could have bought a PS2 at launch, ; 22 when the Playstation came out; 26 when they bought a launch PS2. At 31, they might have taken up World of Warcraft with their friends.
They would have been a gamer all their lives. Not someone who once played videogames, trotting out the same anecdote about “playing Asteroids once” in interviews; someone for whom games were another part of their lives, a primary, important medium. Someone who understood games.
And if that was the case, what might they have learned?
The resulting thoughts were interesting, and led to some good discussion and (I think) some happy audiences. I hope you enjoy it too.
Read the full talk here; feedback, as ever, is welcome.