Introduction

I am tempted to ape Kuhn, or Marx, and describe the history of art as a succession of paradigms, the last and most triumphant of which, no one may doubt, is video games.

The comparisons with poetry, theater and film are strong, not least for historical reasons. Video games is as ubiquitous, amorphous, dangerous, sexy, debilitating and overwhelming as its predecessors; it has all the hallmarks of a promising medium.

Some observers characterize video games as the culmination of centuries of human development. John Sharp observes a gradual movement of society, like a great leviathan, from a primarily static and visual culture to a dynamic, ludic one. Systems thinking is in vogue. Such analyses are stimulating, but they are not of immediate interest to me.

My own vision is no more modest, if less dramatically put. Video games can agitate powerful messages, thoughts and emotions. It can teach us about new things, help us to understand each other, and grant us greater self-knowledge. Video games is worth talking about.

It is worth getting excited about in itself. It isn't interesting for being a corollary of film, or for being culturally relevant right now. Our relationship with video games is infinitely more visceral and immediate than that. Let's do it justice. Let's not get excited because it's the right time to get excited. Let's just want to play.

The future is unclear, but I love video games, and I'm going to talk about it.

London, December 2009