Tetris! (now with added msg)

I know it’s getting bad when I look at my wife on the couch and see little blocks raining down on either side of her. My imagination twists the blue, red and yellow blocks to fit into one another.

A strange anxiety is eased.

If you used to play Duke Nukem in the Nineties you’ll remember the feeling of walking through a shopping mall and mentally shooting out the air ducts. Or holding down ctrl and looking round corners to see if a blocky alien was waiting for you.

Maybe Starcraft was your thing, and you’d find yourself drawing squares around groups of people and trying to direct them to one spot. Or when you took a leak an imaginary toilet bar decreased, a la Sims.

I never really got into games. After fifteen minutes on Playstation I’d get bored. I much preferred beer, pizza and knockout Teken with a group of mates. My cousin and I spent a weekend playing Brian Lara’s Cricket on Playstation 1 – now that was a game.

These days it’s too complicated; too many buttons to hold down and things to remember. I reckon if we’re not careful our species will evolve four thumbs, all so we can play Halo better.

But the other day I took a smoke break and had a go at the Tetris I’d downloaded.

Five smokes later and an umbilical cord had grown from the monitor into my frontal lobe. The pain of chewing through it and getting back to work was a bit like showing a baby a fluffy scarf and blowing a vuvuzela in its ear.

That’s how you make a kid scared of rabbits.

I now had this odd little fear of addiction crawling through me, gnawing with its pincers underneath my skin.

We all know about alcoholism, drug addiction and compulsive gambling, but no one really thinks that much about gaming addiction.

Those that do tell us that kids who spend too much time vaporising aliens or invading virtual kingdoms “displayed higher levels of depression and other mental health issues than their peers who played fewer video games.”

The game makers, much like tobacco companies, skirt the issue: “There simply is no concrete evidence that computer and video games cause harm,” a statement from the Entertainment Software Association said, “In fact, a wide body of research has shown the many ways games are being used to improve our lives through education, health and business applications.”

Of course, those aren’t the games that are being sold by the millions, are they?

But addiction is a tricky thing. Addicts are just that, addicts! And whether it’s alcohol, gambling, or gaming, they’re likely to latch onto it in a socially and psychologically negative way.

Like the nasty chemicals in ciggies and booze, games are designed in a way that exacerbates the situation.

Obviously, there are men and women more intelligent and qualified than me who will have to deal with this one day. But it’s something to think about before buying your kid an X-Box for Christmas.