And I shall continue to quote poets long dead, none of whom could ever have conceived of a videogame, which is their loss. I shall use their more famous lines to illustrate my counter argument and to defend us all against Simon's bleak representation of our lives. These stanzas will lend my arguments the illusion of weight - quoting poetry always makes you look clever and sensitive. And it matters not (to use a suitably archaic construction) that I tell you this secret; that's the beauty of quoting poetry - it works anyway. It will demonstrate, spuriously of course, that it's not videogames that are tosh, but rather that it's my good friend and colleague's arguments that are tosh - utter rot.

Simon, sensibly, organised his argument according to a list of assertions. This broke it all down into bite-sized chunks that even the most brain-dead videogamer could digest. And in doing so he has held up before you a carpet of beauty and falsehood. It has now fallen to us to unravel this elaborate embroidery of hyperbole.

Hampered Representations
"Videogames provide a sub-standard experience," argues my good friend and colleague. By this he means that all videogames are fakes and not the real thing; that every simulation you play is nothing more than that - a simulation - and by definition inferior to the real thing. Even daydreams, Simon argues, are more real and have better graphics and sound.

Sir Edward Dyer (who died in 1607, long before they even had televisions, which is important) put it thus: "My mind to me a kingdom is/Such present joys therein I find/That it excels all other bliss/That world affords or grows by kind." But where does all this get us? Van Gogh's Sunflowers are not real sunflowers and, though they're worth a lot more money, they're not as beautiful as a field of real sunflowers.

William Wordsworth describes a comparable landscape in verse: "I wandered lonely as a cloud/That floats on high o'er vales and hills/When all at once I saw a crowd/A host, of golden daffodils." Beautiful! But not as beautiful as a field of real daffodils erupting into view. Is art, poetry, literature or any other 'hampered representation' of reality a sub-standard experience?