I have always been a gamer; it first started when my grandfather bought an Atari computer for me and my brother as a Christmas present in the early nineties. This gift spawned an addiction that while having produced no tangible results per se, provided a level of escapism or ‘Zen’ to ensure my mental health and at the same time a skill in gaming that I used to impress, or challenge my friends of the time. Gaming would also invoke in my parents a level of contempt towards the computer/console medium, only matched their anger when I missed a homework assignment because of it. This would no doubt fuel the now cliché lecture of the ‘mindless addiction’ and how I should pick up a book.

I found these types of memories flooding back when I read Video Games and Computer Holding Power by Sherry Turkle. I found the segment titled The Myth of the Mindless Addiction resonated with me and my personal experiences, my favourite being the affirmation that mastering a computer game is anything but ‘mindless’ and necessitated a variety of skills, from memory, reaction, hand-eye coordination and ‘instincts’. It was like the article was able to articulate all the arguments that I could not when trying to justify my gaming time to my parents, or later, girlfriend. It provided a reserve of ammunition, a boost to my shield or gained me a level so when I am confronted about my gaming I can simply say that while it may appear that I am ‘just’ gaming I am indeed “assimilating large amounts of information about structure and strategy by interacting with a dynamic screen display [and that this is me] learning how to learn” (Turkle 1984). Not only that but with more inventive games such as Shadow of the Colossus I can now protest the art form of games and how the “design of subtraction” (Hayes 2005) opens the gamer to think about the motivation for killing, in light of the Colossi having to be goaded into fighting and how this reflects on the character and in turn the gamer’s psyche.