Why oh why did you say yes to that last shandy? The kebab seemed like a good idea but your mouth now resembles the inner lining of Phil Jupiter's underpants. And to top it all off, you're stuck in a lava filled dungeon and some b*****d has kidnapped your princess. Where did your life go so horribly wrong?
I've got news for you, it's much, much worse. It's not that you're hungover playing Super Mario Brothers, it's that you spend your life "working" at a computer located in a sterile office surrounded by drones. Your only escape? A Friday night binge drinking session down in Clapham, tonsil tennis with a rather suspect femme fatale and bouncing around 8-bit levels crushing the skulls of Goombas with your immense chubby Italian plumber girth the next morning (she didn't come home with you).
Computer games started out as something completely innocent. I remember my cousins having a version of Pong that despite being an absolute nightmare to plug into the telly, was good fun for ten minutes. Bouncing the ball around with the paddles was hardly Wimbledon. What was, was the 8-bit version of the AELTC's prestige tournament which was one of the first games I played on the Master System. Still to this day the game mesmerises me, with added career mode, I can't help but feel I'm there on Centre Court. Especially as I couldn't play tennis for toffee.
These days, games such as the Grand Theft Auto and Halo franchises take escapism to whole new levels, allowing you to explore entire cities and indulge your wildest fantasies whilst piping hordes of bad guys. There's a magazine on my desk right now emblazoned with the word "hero", if only. And whilst escapism is almost at its absolute peak (barring virtual reality), it started way back in the 80s and had as much of an impact then as it does now.
Adult life fundamentally, hasn't changed much in the last thirty years. Despite numerous advances in technology, supposedly to make life easier, for most of us it's the usual 9 to 5. Slaving away to line someone else's pockets only to come home at some ungodly hour completely exhausted. Eat your dinner, stick on the telly, sleep, repeat. Rather crudely, I hypothesise life requires five different needs: achievement; relaxation; emulation; competition and belonging. At the moment, sitting here in a non-descript office I feel tense, bored, lonely and as if this is just another day to kill on a road that is seemingly going nowhere. No need is being fulfilled, I want to be at home playing video games.
Achievement is the easy one. Those who are successful in life and who feel they are living a good life can point back to a string of achievements. Whether it's continual progression through the ranks at work, bringing up offspring or jumping out of a plane, nothing beats feeling a sense of achievement. For those starved of such events, video games offer up an easy alternative and its impact is almost immediate. Going back to early arcade games such as Pac-Man and Asteroids, you're instantly rewarded with level progression and score accumulation (sometimes to reach the feted leader board). Home entertainment systems such as the ZX Spectrum brought games like Manic Miner to the fore. This rise raises the other point that these needs don't just relate to adult life but to children as well. For kids growing up, a sense of achievement can be gained from doing well at school, well at Physical Education, being praised for good attendance etc... How often would this really happen? Sometimes at primary school, I would feel a greater sense of accomplishment after nailing a few levels of Sonic than at anything I'd done during the day. With the xbox360 console, Microsoft brought the "Achievement" points system based on unlocking hidden secrets or even just by completing levels. Why did they do this? We all love rewards, even more so when they're obvious. As unnecessary as this development was, it adds another level of achievement to the subtle one already existing.
