What is a Button Monkey?

It’s only fair to start this entry with a warning. I may have chosen to call it ‘What is a Button Monkey?’ but I have absolutely no intention of telling you what one is. You might think, therefore, that I should change the title. The warning is that I think you’re wrong.

Because this entry is more about who Button Monkey is, and what Button Monkey is about. If you read the ‘about’ page, then you’ll probably not have any decent idea. In fact, the ‘about’ page is really fairly rubbish at explaining what this is all, erm, about. I should know: I wrote it. Again, you might think I should, therefore, re-write the ‘about’ page. And again, I think you’re wrong.

I’m not being personal, by the way. I think everyone’s wrong most of the time, including myself. And I know I’ve deliberately misled you solely so that I can tell you you’re wrong, which is probably quite unfair on my part. It also says more about me than it does about you. And that, as it happens, is what this entry is really all about. Unless I’m wrong.

Perhaps I should explain. But in order to do so, I need to go off on a tangent.

There’s a massive profusion of blogs and assorted ramblings on the internet, which One Button Monkey has just increased by a further irrelevant one. Often, they’re of the Geoff’s Gamey Blog type, where Geoff shares his thoughts and feelings about games. If you go there, the site will say ‘I am Geoff and I really like games. I’m writing a blog about games. I hope you enjoy my Games blog’. I will do exactly the same thing later in this entry, by the way, but I’m pretending I’m cleverer by doing so in a deliberately roundabout way, after having referenced it here.

In general, if you’re an opinion-starved idler with time on your hands, or if you know the Geoff in question, you might find his blog slotting in somewhere between dazzlingly diverting and mind-numbingly awful. You will almost certainly, in all cases, know exactly what Geoff thinks about games by the end of it, because that’s what his blog is about. Whether or not you agree with his opinion, you’ll know what it is. You won’t know why he thinks his opinion is worthwhile. You won’t know what made him want to share his opinion. And you probably won’t really care. But you’ll know. I think I’ve made this point enough times by now. Geoff. Games. Blog. Opinions. Known. Move on.

Opinions are everywhere, these days. In fact, they are almost as ubiquitous as clichés about everyone having opinions. Even the press has gently nudged itself away from ‘comment’ to ‘blog’ type entries, in an attempt to seem all postmodern and web 2.0 and relevant. Which generally means short, individual opinion-based articles written solely to make a point, rather than really explore it, mock it, or bugger about with it.

And there’s another wonderful, democratic thing about giving everyone a voice. It often means that people are so busy using their own that not only do they not listen to anyone else’s (because they probably don’t even notice them), they also don’t realise that all they’re helping to create is an overwhelming cacophony. It’s a cacophony where all the individual voices are lost, because they become indistinguishable or impossible to isolate. And spending time reading about people’s opinions is more likely to make you care less than if you hadn’t bothered, give you opinion fatigue, or just make you try and shout louder.

Button Monkey doesn’t want to shout louder. It wants to shout longer. That’s one of the things that makes it so much damn better: it doesn’t have style, but my god has it got stamina. And in a world of indifferent vocal gobshites, stamina is important.

Stamina isn’t just important, it’s necessary, too. I spend a lot of time playing games, (some of which are, frankly, pish), and then spend quite a ridiculous amount of time talking about them, afterwards. In fact, I dread to think of the cumulative amount of my one and only life that I’ve spent pressing x, swearing at a controller, or gazing lovingly at glowing screens full of simulated computer-generated peril.

I love games with a passion, and hate them just as much, too. I love and hate what they are and what they’re not, the vagaries and idiocies and triumphs of the industry, and the intelligence or meat-headedness of us gamers. Let’s face it, games and gamers are ridiculous, veering as we do between dreadful pomposity and pitiful stupidity, the brain-batteringly brilliant, and the brain-buggeringly awful. Art and crap, often at the same time, that’s our spectrum. Has there been any other mass-media movement so externally misunderstood and so internally un-self-aware?

For what it’s worth, I’m proud to be a gamer. And given that all the interesting sexual, musical and social revolutions seem to have happened before I was born (or when I was too young to appreciate them) it’s a privilege to be part of the generation that grew up with games. My generation are already too old to die before we get old, but we have died a billion times in rubbish Spectrum games, when it bloody meant something, alright? Alright.

We have also seen games if not exactly take over the world, then certainly evolve and remake their own utterly. It’s all come a long way since I used to play Frak! on a BBC Micro in computer lessons at school rather than writing 20: Goto 10. Again. And again. And again. Until I wrote a program that did it for me. Probably.

And I genuinely believe that the revolution in gaming’s technologies, popularity and breadth is one of the most significant cultural events of the last 20 years. Yes, I know it’s ridiculously self-important, and probably even wrongheaded, but I still believe it. In fact, I might even believe it so much that I’d punch your mum on the nose if you told me I was wrong.

But I could be wrong.

So if you’ve made it this far, you’ll probably have a better idea of what this is all about, where it’s coming from, and how it will tend to be done. Button Monkey does indeed love games, and also wants you to read his opinion, just like Geoff does. But Button Monkey is just as interested in how the opinion is expressed as what the opinion is. Most of all, Button Monkey would rather have fun with an idea than banging on about the opinion itself. Unless I’m in a bangy-onny mood, of course, in which case you can reverse that last sentence.

This may or may not be a Button Monkey

Button Monkey is obviously indulgent, and will take far too long to say something simple – in fact, it’s painfully obvious by now how Button Monkey goes on a bit. But I think there’s an important difference between being fond of your own voice and enjoying using or hearing them. And showing is better than telling, anyway, unless you’re on the phone, which we’re not. Also, and crucially, there’s no point just saying what you think unless you have something about the way you say it.

Which isn’t to say I think this is fantastic, glimmering prose shining from the midst of the socially-degenerative sewer pit that symbolises the death of all culture (although sometimes I might pretend I do). In fact, it’s not even to say that I think anyone will read this at all. But it is to say that I’d like to try and say interesting things in interesting ways, rather than simply opening my mouth and letting the words fall out. And if it takes several hundred more words to get there than you’re used to, or rambles off and loses the thread entirely, that’s how it’s designed to be, not a failure to deliver. I want it to be this way. I hope you do, too.

There’s always someone who’ll stick to the point, but I’d rather listen to a voice.

Finally, if you haven’t made it this far, you won’t be reading this, and so I can safely say that I hope that you choke on your own stupidity, you ungrateful, worthless, knuckle-dragging Neanderthal moron. I hope you get run over by a golf cart and that your eyes fall off. Drop dead, but not in my doorway, because you’re not even worth tripping over. I hope your willy melts and stains your favourite trousers, and that you get your fingers stuck in a squeezy bottle of ketchup. If you ever come round to see me, I’ll wee on your shoes. Possibly even twice. Your girlfriend looks like a mole having a poo, and I fart at your hopes. Yeah.

It’s fun to say stupid things about serious stuff, and to say serious things about stupid stuff. And I don’t care if you think I’m wrong, because I know we both are. Sometimes being wrong just feels right, right?

And that’s what being a Button Monkey might be all about, after all. Or perhaps not. Because even if I did know, I’m not going to just come right out and tell you, am I? I’ll leave that to Geoff.

Comments

[matt h]

Golf Carts? Have you messed with the Multiplayer of Battlefield: Bad Company? You can run people over with golf carts! Unless your golf cart gets a tank shell for it's birthday, delivered at terminal velocity. I don't play it much now though. I tend to get too angry with all of the people who would rather hide in the long grass and snipe than shotgun people in the face from a much more personal angle. You communist.