Sports are some of the top-selling videogames year after year. For a group of people who don't like/know/play sports, that seems awfully strange. Further proof the stereotype is not true.
Editor's Note
It may be tempting to wonder why The Escapist, the bastion of high-brow cultural commentary on games and media culture, would bother with fiction. ... Why waste our (and your) time with pulp and fantasy stories? Why indeed?
I figure I may as well share a legend of my own. You probably know him; obscurity has never been his strong suit. But in a way, he's a legend for everyone. I'm referring to Mr. Keith Richards.
The title of this issue, Weird Science calls to mind the mid-80s John Hughes film in which two less-than-popular teen boys manage to create the perfect woman ... using their computer. Seems far-fetched?
What to do with a work of editorial genius that doesn't quite fit any of our molds? ... What to do with the inspired oddball that's so juicy and de-lovely we can't figure out where to put it, but don't want to let go? What to do? What to do?
Most of the time a game flops due to some critical flaw - crippling bugs, a horrendous license, excessive hype, bad timing, hubris ... . But sometimes, there's really no explanation for a game not catching on with players.
[Gamers] might seem alone, sitting at their computer desks or staring at the television screen. They may even seem so absorbed in what's happening in those places they appear in another world. Well, they kind of are: the world of group play.
For 136 weeks we've been bringing you our enlightened view on games and media, each week tackling a different angle, casting the light through the prism in a slightly new way, attempting to capture the image as a whole. And yet sometimes we miss something. I know, it's hard for us to believe as well.
"The themes the genre tackles - fascism, love, war - are beyond your average 8-year-old. I was in high school before I really got back into speculative futures, due in part to the new Star Wars movies. And even though they sucked, they sucked in the right way: I didn't give up on the series, I just thought there was more out there. And there was."
"People are beginning to live the entirety of their lives in a virtual space. Some scoff at them for doing so, but let's take a look at many people's daily, real life. The larger our cities grow, the more spread out they become, making commutes longer. We have less time to make contact with people - the after work cocktail scene has all but died."
One of the dirty secrets of the entertainment business is most of us who make entertainment think you, who consume it, are idiots. We muse that without us, the hustlers of your candy, you'd be lost. We're wrong, of course.
That's right: MacGyver has cost me, to my estimation, over $50,000, and I don't even have the DVDs. From the day that Phoenix Foundation crusader used his Swiss Army Knife to save the world from terrorists, oil barons, corporate criminals and inner city drug trafficking, I've been hooked on the sheer possibility gadgets have.
You see, we're suckers for a great article, but we have designed, and love, our editorial calendar. It is the foundation upon which the whole of The Escapist is built. However, we have learned in our over two years of publishing The Escapist that sometimes it is best to have a little flexibility built into the mix.
And then it occurred to us: Who better to explore those issues than the gamers themselves? Why not cut out the middleman and let you, our readers, speak for yourselves? Seemed like a good idea to us, and we hope you agree.
"We've played kick the can, hide and seek, and tag since time immemorial, and as we've grown as a species, so has the way we play. Hunting parties evolved into sports teams. The educational games of our prehistory are playground games today. And if you think beer pong is new, you're sorely mistaken. "
