Steve Jobs, RIP

When Steve Jobs passed on October 5, the world lost a visionary, the computer industry lost a creative genius, and videogaming lost an unintentional hero.

Though he focused on other forms of entertainment—music in particular—Jobs had a huge impact on videogaming through a little invention of his called the iPhone.

Maybe you’ve heard of it? It was the first of its kind, an elegant, one-button mobile phone with a high-resolution touch-screen, motion-sensitive accelerometer and integrated web browsing capability that revolutionized the industry and redefined the idea of what a cell phone could be.

The very aspects of the iPhone that shook up mobile communications also changed the way we experience videogames. Yes, there were mobile gaming devices before the iPhone—Nintendo’s DS and the Playstation Portable (PSP) in particular—but this was something new. This was a serious device, an essential tool for the businessperson, and indispensable to the busy commuter. You could call the office, catch up on email, check the latest news on the web, organize your calendar. This was a tool, a godsend to the type A+, zero-down-time, productivity-obsessed. Yes, you could play games on an iPhone, but it was definitely not a toy.

Which was exactly the point. The iPhone appealed to a segment of the population that had little to no interest in PSPs or DSs, but might bust out their phones to play a few rounds of Mah Jong or solitaire—or maybe even Angry Birds—between meetings or during the evening commute.

To no one’s surprise, the iPhone took off like wildfire. Game developers suddenly had a new and extremely popular platform for delivering their wares, and access to an enormous market of potential gamers. Yes, they’re casual gamers, but bear in mind that casual gamers make up the largest and fastest-growing segment of the game-playing population.

Apple followed up its iPhone success with the iPod Touch—a device actually intended for entertainment—and eventually with its big brother, the iPad—which may become the biggest mobile gaming platform in history. As other hardware and software developers scramble to catch up, more and more smartphones, hand-helds and tablets are coming to market—and there are games for them all.

For game developers and casual gamers, it’s a great time to be alive. And it’s largely due to the unintended consequences of an uncommon mind. So, Mr. Jobs, from those about to rock, roll, fly, jump, and drive, we salute you.

I Am, Therefore I Game

Photo by Tristan Morphew

Most of you reading this would describe yourselves as gamers. That takes no great intellectual leap; this is, after all, a blog about games and gaming. For those of you who don’t consider yourselves gamers, though, you’re wrong—and I can prove it.

First, I’d like to point something out: None of you needed me to define my terms. When I said gamer, you all read it as videogamer. Games became videogames, and gaming became videogaming. Am I right? Thought so.

There are at least a few dozen boardgame companies who would take issue with this. And rightly so: videogames have only been around for a few decades, while people have been gaming for thousands of years. Even as recently as the ‘80s, gamer typically referred to a lover of classic, die-and-paper role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons or Top Secret.

Videogames changed everything. In the mid-‘80s, video arcades became the hotspots for anyone too young to drink—and like the pinball wizards before them, within gaming circles, videogame prodigies became rockstars. But it was the rapid ascendance of PCs and home consoles that gave videogames the means to take over the world.

Thirty years later—not even a blip in human history—videogames are everywhere, in a dizzying variety of forms, and have so completely captured our culture’s attention and imagination that they’ve co-opted labels that have been around for centuries.

It’s precisely this reach and diversity that allows me to, with some certainty, call you a gamer. You don’t have to enjoy hardcore games like Halo, Call of Duty or World of Warcraft for the label to apply. Ever played solitaire or Mahjong on your laptop? How about Angry Birds, The Creeps, or anything else on your tablet or smartphone? Or even Facebook games like Farmville, Who Wants to be a Millionaire, or Mafia Wars? Well, you’re a gamer.

It goes deeper than that, though. Gaming, writ large, is an essential human activity. Every society since the dawn of recorded time has created and played games. Wei Hai, the oldest known war game, became popular in China around 3000 BC, Iranian and Egyptian excavation sites have yielded up dice and Senet boards older still; it seems likely that games date back even farther, perhaps to the beginnings of humanity. Like worrying about the future and obsessing about the past, engaging in gameplay is fundamental to our experience as human beings. So your weekly family game nights or regular Monopoly sessions are echoes of cultural heritage and genetic memory that hearken back to our earliest ancestors. Videogames are just a natural extension of this phenomenon, the next step in the evolution of gaming.

Call me crazy, but from this vantage point, gaming seems more than just a frivolous pastime. Like breathing, eating and sleeping, gaming seems necessary for human survival.