Escape from E3

I Hate You, E3

Videogames come to worship at the shrine of LA because they share a lineage, some of the same genetic stuff. What makes the game industry matter, and matter in spite of the obvious corporate evils of sweatshop work schedules and amoral content programming; what makes it matter in spite of the overwhelming number of young men who make and cover games, and have no sense of style, or history or purpose; what makes games matter even in the face of fans who defend the medium's supposed virtues while dropping away from personal meaning and purpose to pretend to be an elf night after night; what remains is the central fission of the digital medium. All that code that makes all of those games go, that makes trees grow and suns set, cars roll and bullets fly, dragons soar and childlike men jump from box to box, is this plastic, sticky medium of the computer, the substrate of ideas.

Inside the computer, there is no difference between a rape and a rescue, between saving a life and taking one. It probably seems cheap to say this, because it sounds like you end up trivializing the notion of games. The point is, you can't find right and wrong in the code. It's not there. It doesn't parse, as the programmers would say. You have to find that yourself. You have to invent it with the machine.

That's what I love. I get hot and my heart beats faster to think about all those people, all those gamers - me - getting sucked into this vortex of living proto-meaning. It's like holding the secret stuff of life in your hands. Games are the Silly Putty of philosophy.

I know, I know. WTF? How could you spin something as trivial as videogames into something so big? You big faker.

All I can say is that's probably true. I like LA. But I love videogames. I just have to remember to forgive them for the little things and keep in mind what started this love affair in the first place, that craziness. Those happy times when E3 didn't really matter, and I couldn't or wouldn't see the flaws and blemishes. Those feelings might not be torrid any longer. That happens. But real love remains. It lingers.

David Thomas is the founder of the International Game Journalists Association. He also provides commentary and criticism at buzzcut.com.