A Love Poem to Video Games

This week, one of the men behind Electronic Arts’ and its founding question “Can a video game make you cry?” was awarded the lifetime achievement awards by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. He accepted his speech with an epic poem, spoken in perfect meter and to great response.

The Golden Age of Gaming by Bing Gordon

Can a computer make you cry?

How many cool things can you ship before you die?

How many best friends have been made on your development teams?

Is anything better than creating a new “language of dreams”.

If it’s in the game, it’s in the game;

So what’s in your personal hall of fame?

Are you like Daisycutter, a fire-balling wizard?

Will Disneyworld ever again be as much fun as Blizzard?

Where’d that truck come from? We transformed John Madden

Into football fanatics’ equivalent of Tinkerbell plus Aladdin.

Now that Mario and Cityville have proven to be bigger than Titanic,

Which is your game of the year, what’s your golden mechanic?

We remember the 80’s, when games were geeky, uncool.

We were the high potential kids bored with teachers, and lectures and school.

We turned Dr J into a software artist, ended “Dinkety Dink Dink,”

And when the going got tough, we took the Bard out for a drink.

25 years later, we’re an overnight success;

Boys tout their COD scores to girls, and impress.

Guild management skills get you promoted to VP,

And Phorthor pays you to play his account, if you’re at UBC.

Virtual goods and freemium have become investable, magic words

We remember when Bill Budge was the only game-making non-nerd.

Pogo-type badges are imitated these days in enterprise,

Xbox Live achievements are used in online universities, Best Buys.

FIFA camera angles are adopted in televised sports,

And Gameface avatars are showing up in all sorts

Of websites. Sims relationship ratings are the new arithmetic teachers,

Gamification is on the Fortune 500’s must-have features.

We have innovated with more ethics than those damn Wall Street banks:

With Diablo skill trees, Ocarinas of Time, C&C stealth tanks,

Battlefield commanders, Kart bananas, and Hedgehog’s gold rings.

These are a few of my favorite things.

Hey, maybe Night Trap was just a little too smarmy,

And some people were offended by America’s Army.

But we are teaching productivity, how to commit to a mission,

And the high art of Tolkien has been surpassed by Cataclysm.

You have created the new literature, a Moveable Feast,

As rich as Moby Dick, more relevant than War and Peace.

You’ve made plastic cool again, with Nerf guns and guitars;

And taught a generation of speed freaks how to outrun cop cars.

We were all once young prodigies, in need of feedback and interaction,

Now we are self-taught pre-ship marketing and revenue traction.

We’ve grown up with the business, become our own mothers and fathers,

But we still share the initial dream that “We See Farther.”

Today, our mutual industry is undergoing a bit of re-framing,

But recognize this: we’re in the golden age of gaming.

It’s because of Sid Meier, Will Wright, Brian Reynolds, Mark Skaggs, Neil Young, Miyamoto, too,

That our nieces and nephews no longer have to get a “Clue.”

We have more power than Mubarak, so we shouldn’t abuse it.

Our goal is to “make software worthy of the minds that use it.”

Keep inventing cool! There are so many creative challenges still unmet.

And, as this Lifetime Achievement dude protests, “We’re not dead yet.”

Ps Thanks for the honor, now I’d better get off,

Because there’s an after-party with Dean Takahashi dressed as Lara Croft.