I just read this from Brian Mitsoda (ex–Troika) on fave gaming site rockpapershotgun in an article about ‘which games made you the gamer you are’ and I agreed so furiously that a little bit of wee came out:
It’s impossible to separate my childhood from Pac-Man. If you were alive in the early 80s, you knew who Pac-Man was and like it or not, you were surrounded by Pac-Man. It’s the first game I remember being ubiquitous to the point that over a decade later, bars and restaurants still had their Pac-Man cabinets or tables neglected in a corner somewhere. Not only could the game be found everywhere, but so could the Pac-merchandise – stickers, sheets, cereal, Christmas ornaments, t-shirts, novelty songs, defibrillators – to the point that even someone who couldn’t tell a videogame machine from a digital clock perched atop a brick knew who Pac-Man was. Luckily, the game was fantastic – no, it was glorious – a thing that was unexplainable and unrelated to the natural world, simple enough to make sense to anyone who studied it for a few seconds but addictive enough to keep people glued to it for hours, even lifetimes for some. To this day, I find it incredible that some people’s entire gaming career consists of Pac-Man, maybe Galaga or Tetris. As a kid, I wasn’t very good at it, and I couldn’t put a finger on just what made me so fond of it, but I just wanted to play it. I was in awe of people who could last more than ten minutes and who had eaten more than mere strawberries and cherries and I probably bugged the shit out of a fair share while trying to watch them play. [emphasis mine]
So, the bit I bolded is about the birth of digital. Experiences and objects and real things that had no relationship with the estwhile real world whatsoever. Pacman was/is a new thing. There is no sense to it at all, judged from the perspective of everything you know about the physical world. But it created its own internal logic. It has goals and rewards and creates a state of mind that gives real pleasure, work and frustration.
Our recent emphasis on social media (‘our’ meaning people who write and/or think about the web) forgets some things. It tries to marry web experiences with understood social transactions. It proposes that the best of the web mirrors or augments things that already exist in the world. That’s good – it helps more people understand digital. Helps businesses in the sector be more profitable and successful.
But it helps us forget that this is still a new world, still being created. It maybe stunts our imagination. ‘Every new website has to have social elements,’ one highly respected speaker said at an event we ran last year. Does it? What about bodingers, reshfrops and zingies? What about stuff that’s totally alien to the offline experience of life yet completely changes that?
There are still no rules – we are still faced with a big box of LEGO and only imagination as the limit. Social may be easier to sell than zingies. But the person who finally invents zingies will be remembered for a lot longer than the people behind yet another social network.
[play Pacman again here.]
Share this post:
The social web is anonymous but still has its advantages, especially to meeting people with the same interessts like in the big community of http://www.tamundo.de where lover of stamps and coins as well as art and music meet.