“Games,” pronounced Professor Alan Wilmington in his characteristic pontificating style, “are a remarkable guide to the nature and inner workings of a civilization.”
If that is true, thought Kevin, then the Playstation generation has a lot to answer for.
Kevin was attending another of the NISSA briefing sessions. On this occasion, the theme was commonplace technology that he was likely to encounter on visiting the Island. The Professor actually used the word “technology” in this context, although Kevin had yet to comprehend any reasonably rational basis for the processes which underpinned the operation of such artefacts in Lyndesfarne.
Professor Alan was explaining about the Island equivalent of computer games. It appeared that automatically-mediated multi-player games had been a feature of Lyndesfarne society of a long time, Kevin was slightly dismayed to note. He did not really comprehend the Professor’s explanation of the behaviour, and got the impression that Alan was not entirely au fait either.
Despite his easy familiarity with computers in his professional life, Kevin was of a generation that did not really get the absorbing nature of immersive computer games. This was especially true for those games where several people could play together with the rules being enforced by the machines. He supposed this was a hangover from his university days, when the technology was in its infancy, and the few people interested in this kind of thing were unwashed, long-haired geeks of the first water, even by Kevin’s own standards as a swotty student.
Things were different in Lyndesfarne. On the Island, such entertainments were immensely popular, and not just with teenagers and young adults. Typically, these were role-playing games, based almost entirely on skill, rather than relying on pure chance.
Games were played “for real” in what the Professor could only describe as a light trance. For single-player games, one took what looked like a pair of smallish stones into each hand; they fitted neatly into each palm. For multiple players, the participants were seated together, and each took up a similar pair of stones. At an initialization gesture, the stones soften, allowing the manipulation of what Kevin thought of as a virtual environment.