I don't play games

The Button Monkey, in its vast wisdom, may well talk about games. How they're played, what they are like, what is good, bad or indifferent about them.No doubt this wisdom will be delivered with panache, and a smidgeon of self deprecation.

Mutton Bunky, on the other hand, will do none of those things. Mutton Bunky doesn't 'play games'. Mutton Bunky tells stories, and sometimes uses third party interactive software to facilitate those stories.

This is because that although I have wasted many incalculable hours on gaming, I've only played about 15 or 20 games. Whilst Button Monkey's executive laboratory here at Monkey Towers has shelves upon shelves of discarded games, each lovingly (or hatefully) played and analysed, the superfuntime Bunky playpen has about half a dozen. And I borrowed two of those from Button.

Why then, you ask, am I here at all. What makes Mutton Bunky's views relevant, useful, or even coherent?

I could waffle on for a few hundred words about being the ying to Button's yang, or the Yoko to his Chapman, but frankly there's already enough drivel on the internet, and I'm trying to keep things brief.

As the Button Monkey has said, we are all wrong. This is always true, even when some of us are right. Mutton Bunky is here to be differently wrong, to present a slightly different perspective on things. I say things, because it's not all about games round here, oh no.

The truth is that, if art holds a mirror up to society, and part of that mirror is held by the games industry, there is a lot more reflected than pixels and power-ups.

I don't play games, for the simple reason that I believe that what goes on in our minds is far superior to anything our screens can throw at us, but I'm also happy to let those screens provide a framework for my daydreams.