From GamePolitics.com
Richard Bartle, a co-creator of the multi-user dungeon (MUD) game format, has a go at anti-game types in an energetic op-ed for yesterday’s Guardian. Bartle writes:Thats gotta be the best "In your FACE!" critic i ever read, pretty sums up imo what to expect for the future...I’m talking to you, you self-righteous politicians and newspaper columnists, you relics who beat on computer games: you’ve already lost. Enjoy your carping while you can, because tomorrow you’re gone…
Half the UK population has grown up playing computer games. They aren’t addicted, they aren’t psychopathic killers, and they resent those boneheads – that’s you – who imply that they are…
Dwell on this, you smug, out-of-touch, proud-to-be-innumerate fossils: half the UK population thinks games are fun and cool, and you don’t… Scared yet? You should be: we have the numbers on our side. Do your worst – you can’t touch us. We’ve already won.15 years from now, the prime minister of the day will have grown up playing computer games… Gamers vote. Gamers buy newspapers. They won’t vote for you, or buy your newspapers, if you trash their entertainment with your ignorant ravings. Call them social inadequates if you like, but when they have more friends in World of Warcraft than you have in your entire sad little booze-oriented culture of a real life, the most you’ll get from them is pity…
When not smiting game critics, Bartle is a teaching fellow at the University of Essex.
