Son, come sit here next to me and I'll tell you what games were like when I was a boy. I been gaming since you weren't nothing more than a gleam in your daddy's eye. See, we didn't have these fancy graphics you all are so fond of complaining about. Not high def enough for you? We had dots. And the dots were square. And you batted them from one side of the screen to the other. And that was the game. Until sprites came along, then those square dots became shapes that, if you squinted, actually kinda sorta looked like a person. Hell, most games didn't even have stories. You just kept shooting aliens or asteroids or gobbling dots or chasing after that damned gorilla until the game got the better of you. And it always did. Because it wasn't about the story, it was about the experience. And points. Then Nintendo came along and added levels and a story and suddenly playing for points was meaningless. You had to get to that last castle, by God, or your life meant nothing. I never did get to that last castle, but that don' matter none now. Because now you have stories that make you think about what it is to be human and high def graphics that make it look like you're shooting real people in real environments, just like my daddy did in ' Nam. For real. And you have complex leveling systems and these online games where you can play with your friends without being in the same room or even the same country! Back when I was a boy, you had two controllers (they was called joysticks back then) that plugged into the system with wires and if you wanted to play with a friend, he had to be right there next to you. Yeah, we still insulted each others' mothers and questioned each others' sexual orientation, but it was different because you knew he didn't mean it. It was all for *fun*. D'you even know what that word means anymore? An achievement meant you topped your previous high score and got to brag about it in school the next day. And we had one objective: To play as long as we could. And we didn't have music with our games. We had bleeps and blips. Now, you have the London Symphony Orchestra performing your soundtrack for you. And you have your Halo and your Half-Life and your Bioshock being shown in the Smithsonian for God's sake! They're doggone works of Art now. You kids just don't know how good you have it. Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'm done talking now. There are dragons waiting for me in Skyrim.