What do the books of Terry Pratchett, the film Iron Man 3 and the video game Grand Theft Auto V have in common? The answer is that they are all regarded as “geek” pursuits, and therefore not part of the cultural mainstream. That is bizarre: Mr Pratchett has sold more than 70m copies of his Discworld series of novels. Iron Man 3 , based on a character from Marvel Comics, has the best box-office receipts of any movie this year. And Grand Theft Auto V, released yesterday by Rockstar of Edinburgh, is expected to take more than $1bn in sales.
The game is part of an industry expected to generate worldwide revenues of $66bn this year – releasing titles across consoles, PCs, Macs, tablets and smartphones. It employs thousands in highly skilled jobs: its writers create multilayered stories told over dozens of hours. Its designers conjure up lush landscapes and futuristic cities while economists study their virtual markets for clues to help solve real-world problems.
Yet whenever I am invited to talk about video games, three things tend to happen. First, I am described as some variation of “political journalist by day, gamer by night” – as if playing video games were an exquisitely unusual hobby such as bog-snorkelling. Second, I will be asked whether violent games contribute to real-life violence, despite a yawning absence of evidence to demonstrate any causal link between the two. Third, I will be asked to defend the fact that I play games at all – as if there were only one type of game. Imagine if you told someone you were enjoying the latest Harry Potter novel, and in response they gasped: “Hang on, you read books?”