Big Fat Phonies

Being a self-righteous,self-acknowledged uber gamer , I constantly find myself validating and verifying the element of video games in today’s mainstream media. What does that mean exactly? It means when your favourite sit-com character nonchalantly says “Hey, me and Ted are gonna stay in and play video games” or “It’s Halo night tonight”, I immediately wonder “Which game?” or “Which map?” (Okay, Halo night is a bad example, cause I actually don’t like Halo, but I digress).

I’m eye-ing the way these characters grip the controller, focused on the mashing of the buttons, the lack of thumbs on joysticks, and listening to the blips and bloops that are supposed to represent the audio five generations of advancement in the video game medium, and it kills me every time: The world still doesn’t understand gaming. “But Jon,” you say, “you’re overreacting to a mainstream representation of a hobby which has no direct effect on the situation or context.” I don’t think it’s an overreaction, merely an observation.

It would be like watching Uncle Jesse play his guitar upside down on Full House, or Steve Urkel playing his accordian backwards (ok, most people wouldn’t know the difference, but still god damn it!). It’s like seeing Bill Cosby read a magazine from right to left , or George Costanza eating a chocolate bar with a knife and fork (wait a sec…). But my point is this… okay, I don’t have a point. I just wanted people to notice how video games are being represented in other mediums.

Also, for those that care, we’ll be resuming podcasting shortly – we’ve had a number of scheduling conflicts and issues, and vacations, that have been holding us up. But we’ll have lots to talk about soon enough. Stick around … if you’re still there.