So how will things be like in a perfect (gaming) world? Pippa muses, and while you might say she's a dreamer, she's not the only one. 

In an ideal world, everything would be backwards compatible. Yes. You would be able to play your old PS3/PS2/PS1 games on your PS4. You could revisit your favourite games from your childhood any time you liked without having to wait for the “HD Remastered” version to be released on your current platform.

In an ideal world, nothing would be platform exclusive. No elaboration needed really. All games would work on all systems. Always.

In an ideal world, nothing would require upgrading on your PC. You’d be able to play the newest version of The Witcher without thinking: “Can my PC handle this? It’s still pretty speedy, but it’s a year or so old, and I’m not convinced that I won’t need another 2 GB of RAM or worst case a whole new graphics card in order to play it.”

In an ideal world, games wouldn’t be so expensive. Yes, I said it. It doesn’t matter how you spin it, almost R1 000 for a game is hard on our pockets. It’s all very well and good if you buy a game that gives you hours and hours (and I mean in excess of 20 here) of play, but when a game that you’ve just spent a small fortune on only provides at best eight hours of play, there is something very wrong. I’ve said before that as gaming journalists we often forget how expensive games are, but at a time when there are three or four big releases in a month, the consumer suffers financially, if they can afford to spend that much on a game at all.

In an ideal world, we would have time set aside for gaming. I would be able to come home from work, eat dinner, sit down and play for hours without being interrupted. Now don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t trade my kids for anything in the world, but having children completely changes your gaming habits. You go from gaming in every spare moment, to trying to squeeze it in after you’ve put the kids to bed, before you get too tired to keep your eyes open, knowing you have to go to work the next morning. It takes twice as long to complete a game and the days of playing games into the early hours of the morning are long gone. There’s no going to bed at 4 am after a particularly gruelling boss battle when you have to be up at 6 (if you’re lucky) because your kid wants to watch cartoons.

In an ideal world, there wouldn’t be even a hint of a gender feud. Ok, perhaps feud is the wrong word, but 2014’s #GamerGate controversy that swept through the gaming world, lends itself to this description. The fact that women feel the need to disguise their gender when playing games in the online arena simply wouldn’t happen in an ideal world.

Perhaps not all of these are completely realistic, but this isn’t an ideal world. In an ideal world I would be ensconced behind a high powered gaming PC, while still interacting meaningfully with my family and not even a little bit worried about my gender.

Article first appeared in TechSmart 136, Jan 2015. Available to download here. 

Photo: Tim Hulme for Spliced Magazine.