From my coronavirus quarantine, a love letter to video games

My favorite childhood bedtime stories were not “Charlotte’s Web” or “The Hobbit.” No, my most treasured nighttime texts were “King’s Quest” and “The Secret of Monkey Island.” Guybrush Threepwood, the hero of “Monkey Island,” would never be mistaken for a creation of Robert Louis Stevenson, but he was perhaps the first pirate to come equipped with a rubber chicken — a rubber chicken that could be used with an aerial cable as a sort of makeshift zip line. “This concept that games are only for children is a very Western attitude that I find very unusual,” says Marientina Gotsis, director of USC’s Creative Media & Behavioral Health Center. Conversations with real-life humans often went somewhere I didn’t want them to go, so I replayed “The Secret of Monkey Island.” My adult brain had a tougher time with some of the nonsensical puzzles that my anything-goes child mind cherished, but it was still a humorous soap opera that allowed me to wander, explore and talk to digital creations to try and figure out ways to get them to do what I needed. Whether it’s “Death Stranding,” the latest in the “Super Mario Bros.” series or even a highly literate work such as “Astrologaster,” a comedic tale about astrology and Shakespearean-era plague that can be played with no game knowledge, whatever happens in a game exists as a moment, one that, even in strictly narrative-driven games, likely won’t be repeated exactly as it just occurred.