Trigger Happy

Shoot first, ask questions later.

- Steven Poole

A lot has changed in 25 years. Dating apps, the Docklands Light Railway, drill music, Google Maps, an entrepreneur blasting one of his own cars into space, the resurgence of the far right, five-pound pints. It is truly a technological utopia we live in, apart from the annoying lack of tricorders and flying cars.

On the other hand, some things haven’t changed. Extremely good videogames still have the words ‘Mario’ and ‘Zelda’ in their titles, for one thing. And for another thing, commentators still employ the hoary old line that some cultural product they don’t like is “like a videogame”, even as videogames themselves (titles aside) have vastly changed.

During the World Cup, for example, David Runciman, writing in the London Review of Books, considered the prospect of the next tournament being held in Qatar, of necessity in hermetically sealed, air-conditioned stadiums, and broadcast in 4K, with endless replays and machine-aided refereeing decisions. Perhaps, he suggested, the 2018 World Cup would be the last “when we are able to tell the difference between an international football match and a videogame”. Football, he argues, will become “like a videogame” once all the humanity has been drained from it, once it becomes somehow lighter than air, merely a spectacle of pixels beamed all over the world.