And now… a word about gaming

A word? Hah! Never use one word when 634 will do! (Yes, that is correct; I counted them… and now I have to recount them since I added this goddamn parenthesis)

I have been absent from this blog for quite some time now, and, if you bear with me for just a week or so more, I will be happy to explain some of the reasons why (because ALL the reasons would be too many for your puny, human brains). So, although I had planned to return with a long tirade about Sweden and what it takes to live here, I came across an article about game engines whilst perusing twitter, and it tickled my angry bone in a way not easy to ignore.

So… here, instead of an angry rant about Sweden, is an angry rant about game-consoles! Aren’t you lucky?

I have been a video-gamer for longer than many of the kids in my local video-game store have been alive. And, while that is more likely to qualify me for a hearing-aid and a bus-pass than it is to get me a discount at GAME, I feel it must at least entitle me to a word or two on the phenomenon that is gaming. As I settle (use of the word “settle” might be worth remembering for when I return to this blog in earnest and tell you the whole story) into my new life in Sweden, I find my mind turning to the simpler pleasures I have neglected these many, many months; namely gaming and its associated… guff! Since microsoft have now started the circus of announcements preceeding the release of their latest console, I feel I must say a few words.

Whenever we are threatened with the release of a new game-console there is always a lot of talk about “what gamers want”, and such talk always begins with game engines, and which game/developer will push the new console to its limits.

Now… pushing any new technology to its limits to see what falls off/melts/explodes certainly has merits, but unless you’re a game developer, or some other kind of person who sleeps, eats, breathes, and has nightmares about, binary code, I don’t think I’m going too far out on a limb to say that “what gamers want” is a game which will excite them without melting the f***ing console!!!

What, after all, is the point of creating a game which gamers will want to play for hours and hours on end, unless the console is up to the job of running said game for more than five minutes without super-heating your living room to the point where your beer evaporates and your console begins dripping pellets of black plastic onto the carpet you promised you wouldn’t spill beer onto?

“What gamers want” is finally to reach the point where console/game symbiosis means that you can stop sending the console in for repairs at least a full year before the next console is released and you have to start the process all over again.

“Pushing a console to its limits” must be very, very exciting for those who make their living from doing just that, but I’m afraid it will never be anything but tedious and uncomfortably warm for the poor suckers who paid money in the foolish hope that the gorgeous new game they waited a year for will not crash the goddamn machine in the first 10 minutes.

A console that works will be quite sufficient for the moment, thank you.

…just sayin’.

Sleepless Knight will be back to his old self (or hopefully much, much more interesting than his old self) in the very near future. In the meantime, I hope none of you bent over for the soap while I was away.

*bonus points for anyone who counted the words to see if I was correct… SHIT! I did it again! 1… 2… 3… 4… 5…