Wednesday, July 03, 2002

Klastrup's Cataclysms
Lisbeth doesn't gaze longingly at games and wish to play them again, and I have to admit that I don't either. But the CD-rack of games is always either empty, or filled with games I have no idea where they came from. And if there's a game I want to look at, I have to book it sometimes a week in advance. Because in this house, where there are two teen-agers who grow up in a household and a time when games are like books and comics, part of the cultural environment, games are things to swap, to borrow and to lend, to copy, to test out, to comment on, social and cultural objects that float around together with the videos and dvd, the music CDs and the copied minidisks.

Ben, one of my interviewees, told me that he prefers the classic, simple games, and he used to help maintaining a classic gaming site. I think it's just a matter of time - I feel a nostalgic longing towards that special feeling when I pick up a certain book or perhaps a comic strip. The feeling I long for is not so much the experience of the book as what that experience reminds me of: a moment of innocense, a time of transcience, a period of tranquility or escape, and for that to happen the object must have been part of your life through these periods. I suspect that over the next 20 years we'll see adults who pick up and install their favourite game when they need to re-encounter such a time of their life. Let's just hope technology becomes flexible enough to make it possible.

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