Most things worth doing in life are best experienced alone. Sex, Scrabble and
morris dancing are simply exceptions that prove the rule. Which is why I for one have been greatly disturbed by the recent influx of family-friendly interactive games, on consoles like the Wii, that outwardly encourage gamers to compete in group gaming experiences that bring to mind some terrible family holiday as imagined by Philip K Dick.
But one can't help but feel somewhat prejudiced against group-centric games due to years spent crammed into crappy teenage bedrooms and student living rooms, watching all manner of halfwits attempt to outfox each other on the latest machismo themed release from those spiffing chaps at EA Sports.
Being a pretty uncompetitive person by nature, I've never fumed in impotent rage at loosing a game of
Pro Evolution Soccer, nor have I stormed from the room after having failed to drive a digital realisation of a souped-up motor car better than some other bloke. Yet on countless occasions I, and undoubtedly others, have born witness to the kind of frightening, unhinged, testosterone-fuelled gaming which can only be described as Dennis-Hopper-in-Blue-Velvet-esque.
Don't pretend you
don't find it perversely satisfying...
At first I put this kind of behaviour down to pent-up aggression on the part of the player, and there's no doubt that many a person who spends hours of their life bludgeoning pixelated versions of cops to death on
Grand Theft Auto could most likely do with some primal scream therapy, a hug or at least a lie down with a nice cup of tea.
Philosopher Slavoj Zizek has a point when he suggests that, rather than a person who is essentially weak in real life empowering themselves by taking on the role of aggressor in the virtual world of a game, the reverse is true. I mean, haven't we all felt a tad uneasy at viewing a close friend or relative take giddy pleasure at turning into a big dragon and beheading someone at the bequest of
Mortal Kombat 3's "Finish Him!!" voice? Not to mention one sick former classmate of mine that took Josef Fritzl style amusement from creating a character in The Sims that bore his ex girlfriend's name and visage, who he then trapped in a windowless room that he gradually filled with chairs until she died in her own filth.
Indeed, what Zizek describes as the "reality of the virtual" perhaps gives us a genuine insight into an individual's true personality. And as Dr. Freud proved all those years ago, that is a scary proposition indeed.
So the next time your friend challenges you to a quick game of
Mario Kart and squeals with delight as they destroy you with one of those heat-seeking red shells, or a Wii controller is smashed against the wall in fury at failing to break Nadal’s serve on
Top Spin 3, bear in mind the deep well of psychological pain and vehemence that lies barely concealed beneath the surface of even the most affable of gamers.
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