Welcome to Modojo, 
The Portable Gamers' Manifesto
Written by Philip Jones on Tuesday, October 17, 2006
The days of disapproving looks when adults whip out their DS or PSP in public are finally coming to an end...
I read recently something along the lines of 'The older you are, the more cash you have for games, and the older you are, the less time you have to play those games." There are more entertaining things than ever before battling for our attention and our "cash money" like gaming, watching movies, reading books, magazines and websites or heaven forbid, actually going outside and socializing. Maybe I'm all messed up... I mean... I love movies! Have I watched any lately? Barely. I'd like to blame the movie industry for not making any good films of late but the truth is probably closer to the fact that I'd rather just sit and stare at the Internet all evening, absorbing news, reading, watching an unending stream of Youtube videos. I sometimes think I enjoy reading about the Sony vs Microsoft vs Nintendo saga more than I actually enjoy playing the damn games.
I own, or have owned most of the popular home consoles and computers of the last 25 years but as I've aged I've noticed that while I still enjoy games, I nearly spend more time talking about them and looking forward to them than playing them. I'll spend months looking forward to games, then a paltry few hours actually playing them. The only game I can honestly say I played through to completion on a home console of late was Shadow of the Colossus on the PS2. I had been waiting on that one for almost four years, though. For me and many of my friends who I've talked to, the age-old act of sitting down and playing videogames for an entire evening just isn't something some of us older guys seem to be able to muster these days. You can put it down to a whole variety of reasons, like some of us having gone as far as having our own kids, having a demanding social life, work overlapping from daytime into evening, or just being damn tired after a days work. Myself, I think I just fall into the latter category.
There's one constant in my life though, and that is that wherever I go, I take my manbag, and contained within this bag you will find the holy trinity. My DS Lite, my PSP, and my Game Boy Micro (yeah I know the DS plays GBA games, but the Micro still feels special to me). How I spend my evenings may very well be less and less with games, but what about those bits in the daytime where I'm stuck? Say, waiting for someone, or waiting for or traveling on a bus or train. Or just even on my lunch hour. Hence I find I play my handheld games far far more than I do my home consoles, just because I have the opportunities to do so when commuting to and from work.
Display your manbag and its contents with neither fear nor shame!
The thing I've noticed though, as a fully grown, balding, almost-scarily 30-year-old man is the reactions you get from other people when you start your unashamed public gaming. You sometimes feel like there is a certain stigma attached to being a gamer. That you're just wasting time with a bit of 'mindless fun'. Well, yeah? You'd rather sit in stony silence waiting for that train that's gonna take 30 mins to get here? You go ahead. There's no damn way I'm gonna sit there twiddling my thumbs. Some people read books, others listen to their iPods, I happen to like games! So I'm gonna play 'em when and wherever I can. Now, someone sitting silently reading a book will never be cause for concern for anybody, someone with headphones on may get some looks if they got their volume up high but playing games is different, sometimes you just get funny looks from people, sometimes, a little more.
posted October 20, 2006