Game changer

Ten years ago, the average quiet night in would be soundtracked by the clink of bottle on wine glass and the gentle chatter of a Hollywood rom-com on DVD. Now, it’s more likely to be the ominous “twerple, twerple” of approaching aliens or the agreeable “KERPOOOOKHKHKH!” of a helicopter being hit with a rocket-propelled grenade.

Video games, according to new figures from the Electronic Retailers Association, have become the biggest entertainment sector in the UK. Last year they accounted for £1.93 billion of sales, pushing the £1.80 billion spent on DVD and videos into second place, and leaving music a distant third with £1.07 billion. This is the sort of result conventionally saluted in the gaming world with a pumped fist and an exclamation of: “YESSSSS!”

It has to be said, though, you wouldn’t generally know this from watching the TV or picking up a newspaper. The ascendancy of video games has sneaked up on mainstream culture. Big-ticket games rival Hollywood films in financial terms, in technological artistry, and increasingly in originality and narrative sophistication. Many now even share the same actors — Star Wars’s Mark Hamill, for instance, has played the Joker in two highly acclaimed Batman games.

Yet where pages and pages of newspapers are dedicated to film, and to publicising the medium by scrutinising the private lives of actors, the video-gamer is still lucky to find a half-page of capsule reviews once a week. Everyone knows Martin Scorsese but I doubt many readers of this paper would have the first idea what Hideo Kojima or Jason Jones do with their lives. (Kojima created Metal Gear Solid, one of the most acclaimed games of all time; Jones created the blockbusting Halo series.)

Likewise, the conversation at governmental level about how they should be classified (punctuated by the occasional shrill yelp from Keith Vaz MP) continues to regard them as a sort of embarrassing mutant offshoot of the film industry.

At present, games are still certified by the British Board of Film Classification — which is like asking Fifa to oversee a tennis championship. Video game-makers are rightly cheesed off, too, at not enjoying the governmental support that the film industry gets. A lot of UK talent (and we have a good deal — we’re good at making games) ends up in the US or Canada. The industry has spent six years campaigning for the £50 million of tax relief announced in this week’s Budget.

In the public conversation — weirdly, conventionally, anachronistically — video games are still toys for kids. Yet in the world the public actually inhabits they are the most important part of the economy of fun. We play them on Facebook, on our computers at work, on our phones, on the Xbox in the living room. In any carriage on the Underground you can see strap-hangers playing Angry Birds. The young woman who just stepped out in front of your car? She’s one ball away from Ultra Extreme Fever on Peggle.

Who plays them? The industry is now too big for that to be a meaningful question any more than “Who listens to music?” or “Who watches films?” Teenage boys, I dare say, will log more time playing dumb-as-a-stump shooters like Gears of War. But the Wii — with its intuitive interface, arm-waggling controllers and easy party sports games — became an all-the-family thing.

Women have always played video games more than they are given credit for. I know many couples who play the online game World of Warcraft together, and there are hundreds of in-game guilds for parents who like to play together once the kids are in bed. There’s even talk of a “greystation” phenomenon — oldies keeping sharp by playing video games.

At one end of the industry there are casual apps to while away a two-minute wait for a bus. At the other there are giant space operas like the Mass Effect trilogy, hailed for its moving and sophisticated story.