Player of Games

A surprisingly good article - though with a rubbish headline - about the way video games have developed over the decades, to the point where they challenge more traditional literary forms in terms of plot, characterisation and philosophical content.

You might sniff, but while video games might not yet be Tolstoy, they are certainly beating Wilbur Smith ...

Cart Life is an equally effective study of contemporary life in America on the poverty line. As you scrape a living, selling coffee or newspapers, you begin to feel the grim pain of systemic unfairness and economic failure. The sense of injustice when one character is evicted from his motel room for keeping a cat is devastating.

Cart Life is a game, of course.  Though from the synopsis above, you might think it was a novel or a TV series - or an article from an unusually socially aware newspaper or magazine.

That's how debased our culture has become - where games can seem closer to capturing the grim reality of the times than the supposed established arts and media.