One of the first video games I can remember wanting to play was Xatax [1]. It was a 1994 game by a group called Pixel Painters and was a side-scrolling shooter with an actual story, organized into “Episodes”. The ending is disappointing but I can remember the chiptune music ringing out from the piezo-speaker in a friend’s computer. I say “wanting to play” because I only ever played about fifteen minutes of the game. I never had my own copy, had no idea how to buy it and had no idea how to get it from my friend. I was yet to discover that game executable files could simply be copied. Just like that – voila!
I did play video games prior to Xatax. I can remember playing the Atari 2600 [2] game Yars’ Revenge [3]. This released in 1982 and had some interesting cover art. My copy came in a box with an insert. I likely read the story printed on the insert several times and used my imagination to fill in the gap between the rather primitive graphics and the fanciful box art. I never liked that game much although I didn’t buy it, my dad did and I can’t remember why. Prior to my exploits, no one played the game because no one could figure out how to get the Atari to work with a TV. The problem was that no one bothered to read the instructions. Now, in fairness to my cousins and their parents, the instructions were much older than the TVs everyone had in the early 2000s but I read them anyway, tried what they said about “Channel 3” or such and when that didn’t work, I read the manual that came with our Sony Trinitron TV. Lo and behold, there was a section in there about older video game consoles. The solution was to run the TV’s scan function until it detected the console’s signal. That was it. I dug up the game cartridges that were close to discarded, played them and was quickly bored. No one read any of these manuals.
I will digress here momentarily. I realise now – looking back with two decades of hindsight – that these same people would become the most easily duped and misinformed people I know today. This is not to absolve myself – I too believed some horribly ignorant things like “all Africans are Nigerians and all Nigerians are some combination of drug dealer or pimp”. I eventually corrected these beliefs but the “how” is critical here. As a child, I was given books to read. Books were in short supply in post-liberalisation [4] India however, I had uncles who worked outside India and who would buy books – often for me. I had few books but the books I did have I would read in their entirety, often wondering what “Library of Congress Catalogue” was or where it was [6]. It was this habit of reading, asking questions, trying things, failing, reading some more that served me well. It wasn’t what I was reading, it was that I was reading. I read everything I could find from books to manuals. Reading manuals was precisely how I got the Atari working. Reading on the internet was how I discovered piracy.
Gabe Newell famously said that piracy is an issue of service, not of price [5] and this was and remains true. I pirated games once I discovered Kazaa, Limewire and eventually the Pirate Bay. I played pirated games but it was always a struggle. Would the game run at all? If not, how did you fix it? Once the game ran, how did you get it to run well? What if you had no graphics card? What if you downloaded a virus? Since I set up a Steam account in 2012, I have pirated exactly zero games. This is in part connected to my income rising but I remain frugal or cheap or whatever the mot du jour is. I refuse to pay $ 50 or $ 70 for new games, instead preferring to pay a maximum of $ 25 or waiting patiently till the game is free. Eleven years later and I see no need to pirate video games. Steam and other stores make it so convenient, painless and simple. While I loathe paying large amounts for games, the sales figures indicate that plenty of people do not and are willing to buy games at launch.
I am slightly saddened by the demise of physical media for games and by the consequent demise of video game inserts. The inserts would have some interesting back story, maybe a map, maybe some concept art. Now, this is all digital and it isn’t the same. I suppose it’s because a digital version is on a screen or that it isn’t tangible – something I can hold, draw on. This may be why I collect discount PS4 games in physical form. I have now spent more on PS4 games than I did on the console itself but that’s not saying much because I paid more for the controllers than I did for the console itself.
Anyhow, dear reader, I encourage you to read. Read anything but make a conscious effort to ask questions, be that of a game or of retellings of history or of the news. Keep reading.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xatax
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_2600
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yars%27_Revenge
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_liberalisation_in_India
[5] https://www.gamesradar.com/gabe-newell-piracy-issue-service-not-price/
[6] I eventually visited the US Capitol and the Library of Congress. Their political shenanigans and recent proclivity to mock books and knowledge notwithstanding, the Library of Congress in Washington DC is impressive. The tours are free as of 2023 and I highly recommend visiting.