I love video games!
Can you imagine how complex video games are? Imagine all this experience and interactivity, how you can control a little character and move it around and watch it walk or run. Since processors are made of silicon, all this is essentially electrons being interpreted by a very smart rock. And we find that so much fun!
Games are like virtual lives. Someone out there designed a life for us, we just hop in and play. There’s such a vast diversity of games, it’s crazy. Through games: you can find love, you can kill people (FPS games), you can grow plants (Stardew Valley), you can domesticate strange creatures (Pokemon), you can get really scared (Five Nights At Freddy’s), you can reflect on life’s most profound questions (The Binding of Isaac), you can be creative in whatever way you can imagine (Minecraft), you can challenge yourself in whatever way you feel you need to (Overwatch), you can connect with your friends and have fun (Jackbox), and so much more!
All of this is essentially developed using code, which is basically English words in a technical grammar for computers to understand. Developers are pretty much casting a spell on silicon. The code is like an incantation of spells on this special rock, and this magical spell is meant to provoke emotion for people. It makes us happy, angry, fearful, come together, come apart, etc. It’s magic. That’s what it is. Imagine a group of game developers huddled around a processor on a table held up high, they’re all wearing robes and performing a chanting on this processor, then believing that this invocation will empower this special rock they mined somewhere in the world to spread love and happiness (or anger and frustration) to people around the world who choose to participate.
It’s crazy when you think of it this way hahaha.
But it’s kind of true, isn’t it? Code is really just words from the English language that developers string together in a way that makes the processor do what the developers wish it to do for them.
I had no goal with this post. I just wanted to write about video games and how much I love them. Now we’re all worshippers of magic spells and deified rocks.
The Mshary 