Even the adults, who do not think high of this phenomenon -since with the word "game" involved, it simply recalls the world of children-, are now playing games all around the world by spending tens of millions of money. I would like to remind those who have still reservations and anxiously ask "What if friends see me playing games? Wouldn't they look down on me?" We are not talking about games like playing a sort of "mock-construction" in which we used to infest the toy-lorries with sand by colourful rows made of plastic. What we mean by computer games are in fact works of arts which are products of tens of artists, authors, painters, musicians, graphic designers getting together and then passing their designs on to mathematicians to be programmed and transformed into the computer language, then ultimately be reflected on our screens.

Game Theory

It is vital here to remind those who have had a contempt for the word "game" the fact that the principles that determine the world economy, social life and the balance of world are actually based upon the "game theory", a theory in maths that was, some fifty years ago, not taken seriously simply because there was the word "game" in it. Perhaps "game" is a kind of keyword that triggers our fears and complexes which even tempted us to smoke since we obsessively wanted to look like an adult, and maybe that is why the word has had really bad connotations. But now, that derogatory tone -- valid in those days in which the world was a big stage and all the men and women merely amateurs-- have been replaced by a sort of admiration and interest. Nowadays computer games are starting to be spelled with a well-deserved respect. If you are a complete stranger to these games or biased against them, the examples I will give can make you put that god-damn't-cigarette aside (Look, you made it, well-done!) and start thinking "Oh, maybe I am wrong!"

In May, the biggest video game fair of the world, E3, was held in Las Vegas and it showed how important these games are and will be in our lives. Game industry which creates a huge world market of about tens of billion dollars used to spell the term "billion dollar" with hesitation, but today the budgets of computer games have reached levels to be envied even by Hollywood.

The Computer Game Player: "Thick Glasses, Pimply Faced Antisocials"

Since computer games, which are considered as rivals to movies in entertainment industry, have turned out to be big productions with huge budgets, artists are also involved in them. Time was when pimply faced antisocial adolescents with thick eye-glasses (these were their features 25 years ago) were absorbed in the very first generation of computer games with their constantly alarming beep-beeps in their PCs. Today the process of creating a game involves making serious job proposals to famous writers for them to develop a plot, write up dialogues and come up with a proper setting for the scenario. The elitist artist or musician of the past who used to be stiff-upper-lip against all criticism now plays his/her cards diligently to be the blue-eyed boy of these game producers. Those famous actors and actresses whom we give big applause in movie theatres are now playing "parts" in these computer games both prestige and money. And the result is inevitably a work of art produced by the collaboration of artists and scientists, namely mathematicians. Artists who are inspired by the writers' script transform the verbal images into visual ones. Musicians interpret the atmosphere and redefine it in musical terms. And actors and actresses spend long hours in studios to make the characters speak and read thousands of lines which lasts for weeks and weeks. Eventually mathematicians, software programmers and experts in the digital world decode this universe of meaning and translate it into computer language for us to see the games on our screens. Thus becomes a computer game an activity, completely different from the sand games we used to play by seaside with our toy-lorries and all that. Instead, it becomes a sort of experience that gives us the artistic pleasure similar to the one we enjoy when we visit an art gallery, listen to a symphony orchestrated by many players each performing his/her part, or read a moving novel on a sofa and be engrossed with it.

In fact, when our favourite films, not necessarily Hollywood productions, are made into computer games, we get the chance to participate in the story. We are even provided with most of the details that are not available in the film versions of these games due to time and budget restrictions, which enable us to see the story line in the order we like. We confront many riddles and witty questions designed by the creators of the game, artists, writers and musicians, which make us enjoy the feeling that we do interact with these minds. After so much said about them, you must have already started to see how satisfying and enjoyable the long-despised computer games could be!

The Return of Natasha  

Of course, computer games are not only about entertainment or about the claim it could measure up film industry; they also play a vital role in terms of keeping cultural diversity alive in the face of the comic and melodramatic Hollywood productions. Do not forget that there was the complaint that Hollywood was a means of cultural hegemony of the USA. It has been evident that Hollywood could easily pacify and stun the world via its romantic comedies and stupid action films and produce a youth brainwashed to purchase only the US-made products and consume only the US-made politics. But today thanks to the computer games, everybody who can work their minds reasonably well can stand against Hollywood without having big sums of money. People from Russia, Czechoslovakia, namely those from ex iron-curtain countries who, in Laleli or Aksaray, Istanbul, try hard to trade their goods among the cunning merchants, who sell their bodies as objects, who are treated as cheap women, the humiliated "Natasha's of the Black Sea" , and who complain about the 10-dollar offered to hem as salary in their home countries seem to have finally challenged Hollywood thanks to the collaboration of young writers, designers, software engineers to create low-budget  games stimulating people. Today the producers of the most popular, the most favourite and the best-selling games almost always come from these countries, and each game is consumed just like an intriguing novel or a mesmerising film.

The average age of players has been getting higher and higher. Of course, one reason for this is that the boys and girls who used to be content to play those funny first-generation games 25 years ago are now older; but the real reason is that adults reaching computers who used to hate the term "computer game" now cannot resist the charm of the world these games open for them.

You must have certainly known a person who hated books, thus never read, and upon hearing the word 'book' who would only think of the tantrums they had in high school when they were forced to read the old classics like "Yaban" by literature teacher, the crack-pot, reading a book one day, a 'real' book, a book of his interest, and turning into a book-worm! I used to have such a friend; let me remember few things about him! I say I "used to have", because years ago, when I was the editor of a game magazine, unwilling to see that the magazine was one of the four or five best-selling magazines of the country then, he would despise what I do and say it was a "childish" thing to deal with such things adding his sarcastic: "Who on earth reads these things!" But unfortunately we do not often see each other now, and I feel obliged to use the past tense when telling about him due to the drastic change he went through in years: he started as the enemy of those 'childish' games and magically turned into a fan of that very 'childish' Star Wars which is part of the 'Star Wars Galaxies', his new dwelling place. "Star War Galaxies", which I am also involved in and which I wane and groan about when I cannot find the time to play, is a big-sale on-line game available for the players from all around the world who could interact with one another. (http://starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.com/) Some seven years ago, when I suggested the title "Devasa Online Oyun" for the Turkish version of the game known abroad as "“Massively Multiplayer Online Game” (MMOG)" and made it the cover news of the magazine, I remember getting some criticism saying there would be no point in translating this title when there are lots of much more essential words kept in English, thus no one would use that. But today thousands of Turkish game players call online games like Star Wars Galaxies or Everquest " Devasa Online Oyun", and game distributors in Turkey also use this title in their news bulletins. (Years before this, we had realised the fact that translating the word 'online' would have no sense since people were made to accept and use 'online' via banks and high-frequency ads, so a title like "Devasa Bagli Oyun" sounded weird even to us.)

Just like this discourse claiming the translations would be no use, the claims that these online games would inevitably fail and never become a part of entertainment industry since they had weak plots also were long refuted. Today, millions of people from all parts of the world enter the net and live their fantasies in these games which visually and thematically equal feature films, communicate with those sharing their interest, form groups, set out on a Sith-hunting, save a princess-in-distress, stop the evil forces that would otherwise destroy all the planets, take up their swords of light and duel, or lead a peaceful life without being actively involved in attacks, heal the wounds of the warrior who fights on their behalf against the enemy and do experiments to make better shields and more efficient weapons. They choose whatever professions they want such as being a merchant; scientist, dancer and doctor or you name it. People enjoy becoming a part of this dynamic universe which they know is the outcome of a painstaking labour of hundreds of artists.

Of course it doesn't sound reasonable to leave all behind and live with games only and I wouldn't like to see anybody losing touch with the life outside and leading one in virtual universe as my friend happened to do; however, if you have contempt for these games, I think his is a very good case for me to explain you what I mean. Many actors/actresses appearing in these games are themselves old and mature enough to have their children.  In the Western world, there are many families, playing these games together with their family members as an alternative to their nightly TV viewing sessions. Europe and US-based magazines report that it was in the past when adults approached their children with their endless, "you'd better stop this game and start studying now!", or unplugged the machine as the last resort. Now it is children who complain and say "I can never play my game; it is my mom in daytime, and dad at night!"

Virtual Actors and Actresses: Stars Who are not Coy
 

In the second half of May, the video game fair of the world, E3, Los Angeles showed us how computer games will influence our lives in near future. We will see that the new generation play stations developed by brands like Playstation which have been full of joystick and play pads fighting and boxing so far (and of course the PCs in our houses) will have a claim to have more place in our lives that TV does. The reason is that these stations will have engrossing and life-like adventure games with really good stories perfectly produced as a result of the developments in technology.

Even the video trailer of this game, which I think is a must-to-see, Killzone2, (you can download from http://www.gamespot.com/ps3/action/killzone2/media.html) caused many controversies, because with its photo-real images, the game was so life-like that soon the rumour spread in the internet forums suggesting that the next step will be the era of feature films with digital actors/actresses and that the real actors will not be able to deal with all this. You might remember the science-fiction film "S1m0ne" (Simone) -- all-digital-cast--which is about a film director (Al Pacino) hiding from all, the facts about the actress he creates digitally (www.s1m0ne.com). We are now at the point those films raised a couple of years ago, and it was the computer games that opened the door for this beginning.

I would just like to say that you are outmoded if you are one of those who despise the computer games saying they are childish. Please note that the number of people sharing your idea is sharply decreasing and computer games are getting more and more respected as the works of eight arts.