Video Games Feels Unholy

This post is part of Agora Road's September 2024 Travelogue.

I was born in 2000. While growing up, gaming was not exactly a new thing for me, after all the concept of video games predated my existence. Like most people on the internet, they were a significant part of my childhood. Back in the day, everyone had a Nintendo DS Lite. Video games were everywhere. By all logic, it is something I should consider normal.

That being said, they feel weird. Unholy even. I am not a religious person, but unholy is the best word I can use to describe this feeling. I guess "eldritch" could be used to. They feel like something that should not exist. Something implemented in this world by an outside force to create chaos.

In my eyes, video games exist in a category outside of "traditionnal entertainement", that music, radio, movies, TV shows and books fall into.

Take for example a book. Those are typically just a very long sequence of words. Should the physical copies of a given book were to suddenly disappear, people would not give a damn if the book still existed as an ebook.

For movies, it does not really matter which format it is on. Watching a movie on a DVD, a Blu-ray or on a streaming service, generally results in the same experience.

One thing that "traditionnal entertainement" subjects have in common is that they are platform-agnostic. Video games break this pattern, and I think this is why they feel weird.

Video games are intrinsically tied to its hardware. One cannot simply put a Wii game on a PlayStation 5. While a port might be technically possible, it requires the source code and way more effort than a simple format conversion. While I suppose it might be possible to put a Wii emulator on this console, you will likely run into bugs, glitches, emulation issues, etc.

Another thing I dislike about games is the concept of "running a game". For instance, you never hear "man, I sure hope my iPhone can run this new song". It just feels so weird.

Even if one wanted to make a platform-agnostic game, I don't think that would be possible. The closest thing might be to make a game in Java, but then that means that some computers/operating systems can't run the game.

Historically, games were a social activity, sports being the prime example. The concept of "a game you can play alone" would have likely been seen as a bizarre sentence that did not make any sense. Yet, here we are.

I suposse that my true concern is with computer technology in general. Although computers and other "advanced technology" was a part of my childhood, I can't shake that horrible feeling that something is wrong.

I think that the worse part about this is that, I have never heard anyone voice a similar opinion. While I saw many people discussing the hurdles of game preservation in general, no one ever points out how weird gaming feels in general.

Written by manpaint on 08 September 2024.