The blinking green button of bliss is never far from my person or my thoughts. Of all the drugs I've tried, from home-brew with a soupcon of mildew to the auto-administered opium attached to my hospital bed, the button is the purest. It can take you up and it can bring you down. It will leave no trace in your blood or urine, though it can leave your eyes bloodshot and your bladder full enough to cut through steel. It is not only legal, it is available off-prescription. You don't need to smoke, inject or swallow it. It can make you a social pariah; not because you'll mug old ladies or contract Hep C, but simply because you'll cease to see the point of leaving the house or talking to anyone other than the postman when he brings you new thrills.
There is a moderately expensive start-up cost, but overall it's cheaper than any other addiction. Most impressively of all, it allows the user to achieve something that has eluded cutting-edge physicists: time travel. I don't want to overstate my case. The button cannot give you a ringside seat at the Battle of Agincourt or allow you to stay in and catch up on some grouting on the night you would have met your horrid ex. But it can magically turn hours into minutes without fail. The user might ask their partner for a nice cup of cha and, supposedly six minutes later, pick up a stone-cold mug of treacle and realise that said partner has been sensibly asleep for at least five hours and the birds outside are greeting the dawn with their usual dumb efficiency.
Of course, the true user will consider the motions of the vulgar universe as nothing set against the power of the button. Let this spinning rock to which we are pinned by enigmatic forces roll around its axis one more time. The universe is old, infinity beckons, and I'm sure if I return to the Cave of Mighty Draughts, I can secure the Brazen Dwarf's Boots of Escaping. Or if that's not to my taste, I'm sure to beat Schumacher's time around Hockenheim on my 93rd attempt now that I'm carrying 1% less front downforce and have scrubbed in the slicks. Otherwise, I'll recharge my depleted neutronium exo-skeleton and disapparate with my plasma rifle. I could stop, but who would save humankind then?
I am, of course, talking about computer games. I've been a gamer since as a thoroughly bookish and socially incompetent teen I played Elite on the BBC Micro and lost hundreds of hours blazing a path between distant stars as a privateer starship captain. I mercifully lost the habit at university, but only for want of suitable hardware. Gaming has never taken over my life, but that's just what an addict would say. Reality in the form of work, marriage and friends has intervened, yet a new exciting game will always provoke a binge response. Having recently taken months off due to a serious back injury, silicon truly became my opiate: while I was immersed in another world, I was deliciously oblivious to pain, worry, hunger and the need to urinate from time to time.
My personal jury is still out on the notion of social gaming. For me, the Xbox’s flagship Halo series, surely the zenith of FPS gaming (all glory to you if this if gibberish), has its best expression as a multi-player game. For my circle of addicts, this has entailed descending on the biggest house available with a console and a TV each, linking the machines with a viper's nest of cabling, then slaughtering each other with strange weapons in exotic landscapes to a soundtrack of drunken laughter, grinding teeth and language that would make Quentin Tarantino blush. While it does bring its participants communal joy, much as bear-baiting or bare-knuckle fighting might, it’s hard to make small-talk about Jessica’s new pony or Tony’s new camper van with a mere blip on the target acquisition radar of life.
Yet the degree of escapism currently afforded to gamers is just a whisper of things to come. Some new consoles offer cinematic beauty in three dimensions. Others offer physical interaction. In not very many years, computers will integrate and refine the two. Within a generation or two of teenagers flocking to arcades to gawp at green dots chasing other green dots across black screens, gamers will be able to choose the heroic or sordid life they wish they had and disappear into it. Will gaming become the new heroin? A new oblivion for the under-employed and disaffected to embrace?
Be afraid; but not very afraid because the uber-geeks will lose what meagre muscle-tone they had.
