Loving 21st century gaming like an 18th century furniture expert

Summary

The amount of time that’s passed between the wood-effect veneered beginnings of gaming at home and today’s enormous consoles and computers is only about 40 years, yet in that short period the hobby’s managed to accumulate an entire epoch’s worth of backwards-looking worries. Is gaming’s past something we should all be keeping packed away in plastic boxes for future generations to look at but not touch, or is it OK to pin those bonus posters to the wall and shiny badges to our shirts? What if something’s damaged or missing? What if we don’t get around to a game when it’s new, is that bad? Should we just not own anything we might not use the same month we buy it? How much is an old game supposed to cost anyway, and is it worth more because it’s out of print, or less because it’s an outdated relic made for ancient hardware? Most importantly of all: how can we ever hope to have meaningful perspective on any of this when everything’s happening so fast and the entire industry’s foundations seem to have been built on sand? It’s time to call in some outside help. Not from other people in the same boat, people we’d think would understand us best: the fact that we all tend to think of the ’90s as an eternity ago is in many ways part of the problem. No, it’s time to turn to your grandparents favourite TV show: the long running and much respected BBC weekend fixture, Antiques Roadshow. If you’re unfamiliar with the programme, the format (virtually unchanged since its 1979 debut) goes something like this: ordinary people bring an old item—maybe something they’ve loved since they were a child, maybe something they hate but a long-deceased relative always had on their mantlepiece, maybe even something found while digging in the garden or clearing out a shed—along to some beautiful castle or hall the show has borrowed for the day and then an expert casts their eye over it, providing general insight, personal admiration and enthusiasm for the object in question, and more often than ...