Column: In defense of games coverage

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No, it’s not a perverted criminal ex-disc jockey who lost all credibility in a sickening act of public indecency and has been forced to rebuild his fame starting at a college newspaper.

It’s me. A video gamer for life, a guy who grew up propped in front of the TV with a Super Nintendo, then N64 and then GameCube controller grasped firmly in his hands.

I will admit I am a recovered Nintendo fanboy.

I will admit I hope to getting a job covering games when I graduate.

But I promise to cover my favorite form of electronic diversion no more than I think will be of interest to our readers.

That being said, I think that means more coverage than we’ve ever done before.

Why? Because video games are the fastest growing form of entertainment even in a receding economy.

Because it’s a young and constantly expanding field with titles ranging from high-budget annual sports games like “Madden” to indie sensations like “Limbo.”

Video game consoles inhabit 40 percent of all American homes, according to a 2009 report from the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing.

That’s not bad for a medium which required its own box and two peripherals just to render a game of “Pong” a few decades ago.

And even if you don’t own any consoles and couldn’t tell Duke Nukem from Randy Savage, there’s a good chance you’ve played more “Mafia Wars” or “FarmVille” than you care to admit.

The most common argument I hear against gaming is, “It’s a waste of time.”

And as far as I’m concerned, it almost always is.

But so is 99 percent of the television programs, movies, songs and, yes, even books that are massively consumed every day.

Why is watching brain-melting slurry like “Jersey Shore” so much more socially acceptable than sitting down to a round of “Team Fortress 2”? It boggles my mind.

But I digress. This semester I hope to cover video games for my fellow Central Michigan University students who are interested in them and maybe even show some that aren’t a little bit of the reason for our passion.

Don’t worry, though. If JWoww comes back to the Wayside, we’ll cover that, too.