Gamergate sucks. Literally as well as the other. So here's why I have loved video games, currently love video games and will no doubt love video games until I'm 50 something. I doubt I'll ever know better.
I have walked. Through the Los Angeles of the 1940's, across the dessert of the Wild Wild West. I have run, nay sprinted for my life as dragons so big their tail ends have dwarfed me have desperately tried to wear the robes from my back. I have shot holes in floors and ceilings and floors and ceilings and believed that the cake is a lie. I've captured untold flags, both blue and red in hue. I've driven Cadillacs and the sweetest singlespeeds. I've flown aeroplanes and spaceships, ridden Sabretooth Tigers. I've drilled and quested and drilled some more so that the other teeny tiny avatars gathered around me do not die today.
I have dreamed. Of beautiful vistas and wastelands. I've dreamed of tactics and keypresses. I've bunny hopped and cheered as 'Headshot!' has blasted through my crappy little Creative speakers.
I've commanded armies and revived friends. I've made friends and lost them. I've met them and drunk with them. Some of my friends have met their boyfriends in these other lands. Some have honed epic leadership and organisation skills. Some learned to walk tall, some to walk small.
We have all learned.
This is what games mean to me. Those little packets of plastic that contain a disc? That little black box beneath the amp and the Sky box? Portal. Window. To laughter, freedom and friendship. To being good at something when today sucked. To belonging somewhere when life looked unfriendly. To colour when it looked grey.
Video games are beautiful. The sheer scope and scale of something like Assasins Creed. You may only see the blood and the killing. I'm clapping with glee as Venezia is rendered before my very eyes, a playground to explore, every architectural detail sucked in with eyes wide in wonder.
I am not a normal gamer. I don't chase completion (though LA Noire is stuck on 99% cos bug. Oh wait no sorry, cos feature), I don't chase achievements. I chase experiences. The gleam of chrome on a beautiful car. The reflections in the pool of water my character just stomped through.
The click clack mechanics of a new gun. All of this is beauty, and all of it rendered, just for me.
This is what gamergate can try to take away from me, but it never will. Video games are my wonderland. I play them, I am female. Hear me spell cast/assassinate/backflip/coin collect/case solve. Over and out.
Note. Tapped on my pad. Mistakes inevitable. Sorry.
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