What a long strange trip it’s been.  Eight weeks of waxing lyrical about an industry that barely understands itself.  If this were a game, I’d be rewarded with experience points, a nice bit of loot, or even that most tautological of rewards, an Achievement.

Achievements were first implemented as something to brag about – official recognition of in-game feats worthy of commendation.  In some sense this is still the case, but it has long been standard practice for developers or more frequently publishers (being the business arm of the venture) to hand out achievements for so much as tying your shoelaces.  It’s difficult escape being rewarded.  In a recent play-through of DmC: Devil May Cry I received an Achievement for finding a (poorly) hidden key, a second Achievement for unlocking the door to which the key belongs, and a third for completing the challenge behind the door which I had so heroically unlocked.

Aren’t we setting the bar a little low?  The hunt for each of the many hundred Achievements that ship with new releases are the go-to method for artificially lengthening the time players will invest in the game, and it’s hard to see what they’re actually rewarding.  It used to be that the discovery of a secret door was reward in itself, the simple thrill of exploration leading you to wander from the linear path prescribed by the story.  Being presented with Achievements simply for logging in is like receiving a standing ovation for passing wind – sure, the praise is nice, but what have you accomplished that you weren’t going to do anyway?

And while I hadn’t initially envisaged drawing parallels between wind and my column, I do wonder what the past eight weeks of ‘RE:roll’ have actually achieved.  I very much doubt that I’ve converted the fruit ninjas into Battlefield pros, or the boat club into eSports enthusiasts.  And if anyone feels inclined to perseverate in the argument that games are art I’ll consider it a personal failing.

What I do hope I’ve done is convey some sense of the scale of gaming; the medium, the pursuit, and the industry.  Gaming is no longer the hobby of the shady male shut-in but a colossal force in the entertainment business that is grabbing headlines like never before.  If you’ve somehow made it through several thousand words of this column without being convinced that games are anything but shit, well, first-off, good job for sticking with it, and second, that’s fine! It really is, so long as you understand the scope of the industry you’re writing-off.  The media party may already have started, but games are fashionably late.

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

Check out Angus' column from last week here