Pac Man Philosophy

I was watching this guy play Pac Man tonight. Yes, Pac Man. The little yellow guy who tried to munch all of the pellets in the maze before the ghosts got him. He had four power pellets in the maze, and after eating one he had to many seconds that he had the power to eat the ghosts for extra points…you remember.

Okay, I’m dating myself by writing this…

Anyway, it was one of those little joystick games that you plug into the television and it has like four classic video games from back in the day.

I remember the debut of video games. I remember my parents playing pong in the living room. I remember once I accidentally hit the reset switch while they were playing, and they were a little ticked off…

I remember being hooked on Frogger, and Space Invaders, and River Raid, and, of course, Pac Man. It’s funny….as a technology enthusiast (you say nerd, I say enthusiast), I’ve always told my friends that I was never much of a gamer. But thinking back on it, I suppose I was. I remember there being (at some point) a Pac Man cartoon. I remember the animated characters being in this fairy tale land of suburbia that was always bright and happy. I was blessed with a loving family that was very close, and so life was, for me, just as bright and happy at that time. I hadn’t a care in the world. In a word, there was innocence.

I have a friend who’s a hard core gamer. He had a PSP and the X-Box 360 within hours of them coming on the market…hard core. Spends money on his gaming like some people do cars. Its his major hobby. But I’ll be honest, I look at a lot of the games today, and I just don’t get it. I’ll admit, I had a momentary addiction to Halo, but overall, the games just seem…well, they just seem different than they were in my childhood.

In a word, violent.

Ironically, so is our society. America as a culture has grown more and more violent every year. Years after my Pac Man addiction, when I reached high school, I worried about what to wear to school that day and whether I had a date that weekend, not about the potential of being shot. We didn’t have to carry clear bookbags. We didn’t walk through metal detectors. I don’t envy those in our public school system today. Our children should never, ever have to worry about those things.

And I see very violent video games today (True Crime, Streets of L.A., for example). Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of great video games also (my friends were also spending a good deal of time with Tiger Woods Golf on the 360 tonight). But many, many games that are much, much more violent.

I think video games are artistic expressions. I don’t buy into the garbage that life imitates art for a second. As I’ve said before, I think artists see the troubles in our society before anyone else. And they express it. Different artists in different ways. But what some artists do with video games is just as valid as any Picasso, its just a different genre. These games, as with many other art forms, are imitating life. Perhaps we should take a good look, especially those of us who are sheltered from life on the street, and ponder the lifestyle and digression that these games are portraying. Because they are what our children face every day. They are what many adults face every day. They are a cruel reality that has been painted on the screen for all to see.

Our innocence has been lost, but perhaps, just perhaps, we could still reclaim a bit of it if we really tried. You think?

Long live Pac Man.