Joshingo Gives up Games Because Gundam Guy Told Him They’re Evil

Once upon a time I thought video games were a force of good in this world, and it took a very special old man to show me otherwise. Mobile Suit Gundam’s creator, Yoshiyuki Tomino, had a few things to say about video games and some kind of upcoming electronic apocalypse during his keynote at CEDEC 2009 developer’s conference in Japan. His words were so inspiring that they convinced me to give up playing video games as a pastime and do something more productive with my time like watching a TV show about giant robot battles.

The man tore apart the foundation of my foolish beliefs with a wit sharper than a laser scythe. ‘œI think that video games are evil,’ he asserted, bathing the crowd in what I consider auditory plasma bullets, ‘œ[Gaming] is not a type of activity that provides any support to our daily lives, and all these consoles are just consuming electricity! Let’s say we have about three billion people on this planet wasting their time, bringing no productivity at all. Add 10 billion more people, and what would happen to our planet? Video games are assisting the death of our planet!’

It wasn’t long before I systematically destroyed every last one of my consoles, starting with my Wii for what I hope are obvious reasons. I then turned back to such words of wisdom as:

Has there been anything better than Tetris since it first came out? How many years has it been? This is what I want to tell you: I want you to create a game that does not negatively affect our daily lives and is something that is considered more productive.

And of course there has not been a game better than Tetris, as an addictive puzzle game with nothing resembling a story is an entirely logical thing to base the credibility and usefulness of a medium on. In fact, let’s throw away the 25 years of games created after Tetris for the sake of the argument of a man who likely knows nothing about them, despite the fact that there are more Gundam games than years he has been alive. Yes, let’s ignore all of this because one famous old man says we should. As such, I expect all of you to disassemble your game stations and rebuild them into a mobile suit to prepare for the upcoming end of the world.

Via: Game Politics