I’ve been thinking about the concepts of game theory, play, and videogames for a while now – and they’re a lot more prominent in my thoughts considering the recent coverage of the success and controversy of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

Coincidentally, there seems to have been a rise in discussions about whether videogames and social networks are turning our youth into antisocial loners sat in dark rooms, existing on caffeinated drinks and sugar, and basically living up to the outdated stereotype peddled out every so often by media and politicians too old to bother actually spending some time experiencing this world for themselves (Obviously I’m generalising, and the fact most 30-40 year olds have grown up with computer and video games means coverage gets more balanced every year).

I started to think about my own 27 year+ love affair with videogames (Writing that made me feel shockingly old all of a sudden – I started young!)

My own introduction to videogames was via a family friend who had a 48k Spectrum – I have memories of sitting around chatting and playing various games, before investing my time gently persuading my parents I had to have one.

And from there, my gaming really splits into 4 distinct periods:

• Going to a friends house to play console games (This was the era of the Megadrive and the SNES, when 4 or 5 of us would meet after school and hangout whilst playing games for lengthy periods)
• Going to a friends house to hook up PCs for primitive LAN parties. (In the era of the 486, networked gaming meant a kitchen table creaking under the weight of prehistoric desktops and enough cabling to connect a small village)
• Having friends come round at university to play videogames (Having first invested in a Sega Saturn, I’d realised I should invest part of my student loan in a Sony Playstation. A better longterm investment than my donations to the Student Union bar).
• Hanging out with friends via Xbox Live now work and family mean I can’t visit/go to the pub etc as much as I’d like. (I’d dropped out of gaming until the Xbox, but being able to play online quickly, easily and without a PC was too much to resist – and since then almost all of my friends have succumbed)

Of course I also spent time playing single-player games when no-one else was around, but the idea of playing in a total social vacuum seems to me to be a myth – why else would you conquer a game or a high score table if not to share that triumph?

And during this period I played sports a lot (school teams, inter-mural teams at university and becoming a bit of a gym addict), played music, read a fair amount, had girlfriends, drank beer, went clubbing etc. All the things you associate with a well-rounded social teenager and adult.

The only real difference was that rather than hanging out listening to music, or watching films etc when we hung out at home, much of the time was spent sat chatting and issuing instructions, suggestions, commentary and insults towards whoever was in control of the console/computer at the time. And once I’d become addicted to the Xbox I became friends with work colleagues and other local gamers who I then met in the physical world to either play games, sink a few pints, or even work on ideas like the sadly dormant at the moment Disposable Media. Some of that gaming experience and the friendships I’d made also led to my first work experience in the media, and indeed my first paid freelance work published in a national magazine.

Obviously a sample size of one isn’t going to give much insight into gaming as a whole, but I figured that amongst all the other dangers of video-gaming, a career in the media industry hadn’t been highlighted yet!

Enough self-indulgent biography – I’m off to play some Forza Motorsport – which has more than enough community and social aspects to warrant a more analytical blog post of it’s own later in the week…