The Guardian, a UK-based newspaper, available online, published an article yesterday in which author Richard Bartle sends a clear message to all the grey-haired, ancient-thinking, anti-gaming journalists and politicians in the world. That message is that gaming is here to stay, and pretty soon the resistance to the medium will be dead and gone.
The piece is entitled "We’ve won: get over it," and opens with the following lines:
"I’m talking to you, you self-righteous politicians and newspaper columnists, you relics who beat on computer games: you’ve already lost. Enjoy your carping while you can, because tomorrow you’re gone."
Bartle goes on to cite the fact that the median age in the UK is now 39, and that the members of that demographic have grown up in the ubiquitous presence of computers and videogames. The collective mindset of the general population is changing in favor of gaming, and it is these people who now control the vote, and will soon control the very offices now occupied by all those neophobic dinosaurs.
"Half the UK population has grown up playing computer games. They aren’t addicted, they aren’t psychopathic killers, and they resent those boneheads – that’s you – who imply that they are addicted and are psychopathic killers."
"Dwell on this, you smug, out-of-touch, proud-to-be-innumerate fossils: half the UK population thinks games are fun and cool, and you don’t. Those born in 1990 get the vote this year."
The entire article is a bit biting and as Bartle notes, resentful, but it delivers a message that simply can’t be ignored: the rational-minded gaming community is all grown up now, and expanding every year. All in all, the article is quite refreshing to any passionate gamer, and is definitely worth a read. I’ll leave you loyal GN readers with one last excerpt to relish in:
"Gamers vote. Gamers buy newspapers. They won’t vote for you, or buy your newspapers, if you trash their entertainment with your ignorant ravings. Call them social inadequates if you like, but when they have more friends in World of Warcraft than you have in your entire sad little booze-oriented culture of a real life, the most you’ll get from them is pity."
"So we’ve won: accept it. Huff and puff if you must, but your audience grows smaller by the day. Your views are mortally wounded, and soon they will be dead. Games are mainstream. Drown, or learn to swim"
[via The Guardian]
