Something wonderful happened to me the other day; I met a girl who changed my life.

Not a girlfriend � she changed my life a long time ago - nor a great sage with untold wisdom, but instead a young mentally handicapped girl who taught me that games are worth enjoying. That games are first and foremost an entertainment medium created to please and stimulate. Games are fun. Deal with it.

The name of this young lady was Mary, she came into our workplace with her parents and her brother some time ago. From the very beginning it was obvious that she was not comfortable with her surroundings; her eyes darted to and fro as she took in the unfamiliar sights; she tensed and flinched visibly at every unusual noise that came from this new and unfathomable place. Her father took her by the hand and smiled at her reassuringly.

"Not long Mary, we'll go home and play Mario later."

She brightened visibly and a big smile crossed her face.

"I like that!"

I smiled too, and asked her what her favourite game was. She looked at me with a mixture of shyness and discomfort as her father urged her on.

"Go on Mary, tell the man what your favourite game is."

She scrunched up her face in an expression of concentration, then she looked me in the eye and said "I like Mario the best! But not Bowser." She shook her head vigorously. "He's really naughty! He keeps taking the princess!" The last statement was uttered with such force that I was momentarily taken aback, she had condemned Bowser in the same tone of voice that you or I would use to denounce the most diabolical acts of cruelty and evil that the world has ever seen. I asked her what other games she liked. "Spongebob!" She said. "I can do it really easy!"

For a second, just for a second, the words "Spongebob is rubbish, just like all movie tie-ins." Bubbled to my throat, then I realised what I was about to say and swallowed the words, leaving a bitter taste in my mouth. Because it had occurred to me that I was wrong.

Please do not mistake my words for confusion over the issue of movie tie-ins, they are mostly utter shash. However, at the same time, no matter how poorly realised and quickly and cynically developed they might be, these terrible movie tie-ins are fun and often yield a great deal of entertainment. It does not matter a stitch that they suffer from a glitchy camera, twitchy controls and awful graphics; so long as they entertain in some way or another, they have achieved their goal.

It seems to me that there is an increasing trend in the world of videogames to hack to pieces the games released by studios that we believe are not committed to pushing the industry forward or adding to the overall status of videogames in the world. At the first sign of trouble in the development process of trouble or budget cutting, we journalists smell blood and pass on the scent of a wounded animal to the rest of the pack. Whenever a sequel falls below the high standards set by its impossibly brilliant predecessor we immediately give chase to the beast, looking for a crack in its defences, over-analysing the faults of the developers and baying wildly at the apparent or perceived absence of quality control. Relentlessly we pursue the game into Purgatory and beyond the flames of Perdition, finally condemning it with sneering scorn into the very bowels of Videogame Hell, our lust for blood sated as we see another labour of love plunging headlong into oblivion. We have become snobs.

Mary has not.

Mary just plays the games that look good and feel good to her, the games that entertain, that make her laugh, the games that she can play. Good or bad, EA or Nintendo, the names are not important, what matters most is that she has fun playing her games in spite of what the press says or what the videogaming community at large thinks of them. It's high time that we climbed down from our Ivory towers and enjoyed gaming for the pleasure of it. I for one cannot think of any one game that I have not enjoyed in some way over the last few years. Even the cash-ins like FIFA and Star Wars have been fun in some ways. Heck, it does not matter that Starfox Assault ruined what remaining hope there was of Starfox ever being considered cool again, I did enjoy a lot of the space battles and weaving in and out of the tight and thrilling spaces that the game forced me into.

If you can do one thing tonight when you pick up your control pad, make sure it is to take the time to enjoy your games, despite how banal and pointless some of them seem. I dare any of you to look Mary in the eyes and tell her that she is wrong to enjoy Spongebob as much as she does Mario Sunshine.

If you can do that, you're worse than Bowser.

Iun Hockley
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