Well this is awkward.  As the token games columnist in Varsity’s Arts section I feel like I’ve turned up late to the party, relegated to spending the evening browsing Reddit because Film and Television have finished the booze and passed out on the couch.  Fostering positive coverage for games in the wider media has always been an up-hill battle, and while it’s now fairly common to see the odd game review skulking about pages of The Times, teething problems such as matters of social acceptance and maturity of content hound gaming at every turn.

Yet the games industry represents the fastest growing sector in entertainment, predicted to reach a worth of $82bn during 2013.  Ninety-eight percent of children now have a games console at home – a staggering figure in its own right, but even more impressive when one considers that the average age for a gamer sits between 30 and 35. The market is emerging from its troubled adolescence.

But let’s say you don’t like games. You’ve never played games, you won’t play games, puerile celebrations of gun violence that they are.  Why should you care about my wittering over the next eight weeks?  The go-to argument for the aspiring games journalist is of course to convince you that games are Art.  Art is respectable.  Everybody likes Art, right?  Maybe, but it doesn’t matter.  The whole debate is looking a bit geriatric, having been reliably wheeled-out in gaming’s quest for respectability for the better part of thirty years, and honestly, it’s not worth our time.  Assertions that games are art do not even attempt to convey the medium’s appeal and serve only to showcase the insecurities of a fledgling industry.  Games may well be an art form – their credits list art directors, concept artists, 3D artists, effects artists – but the tag is worthless; attaching it to games will not make the slightest difference to people not otherwise convinced.

So instead of trying to argue a resolutely subjective point, I’d like to use this column to shed light on some of the many faces of gaming and their respective communities.  How did FarmVille come to enjoy such massive, if short-lived, success?  Why do hardcore gamers enjoy spending hours at a time in darkened rooms?  Why have calls for a not-so-ol’-fashioned book-burning recently been getting traction in the US?

For those of you who have never given gaming a second thought, I hope that this might serve as a brief introduction to a colossal industry, and for those of you curious to expand your tastes – I’m looking at you, CoD fanboys – you might just find something to interest you in the realms of mobile gaming, casual gaming or professional tournaments, absolutely none of which I claim to be art.

Next week, I’ll be driving myself to drink attempting to discover just how Angry Birds became the exasperatingly pervasive franchise that it is today.

Angus Morrison runs a YouTube channel on games and their critical reception at www.youtube.com/RErollGaming