Fact-checked by Dr. John Clock, PhD
Fact-checker fact-checked by Mr. William Wang, BTEC
We used to be an inventive and creative nation. Millions of enterprising individuals carving new paths into the exciting future.
Now we just sit and watch foreign streaming services and play foreign games all day. All Californian bollocks.
Where the hell did we go wrong?!
Children and adults alike today are spoiled little brats. They have everything they could possibly want, and yet have never been more needy.
We want MORE things. MORE media. MORE games. CHEAPER crap on Amazon DELIVERED RIGHT NOW.
How did we get into this mess?
Let me tell you a story...
Back in my day, we had to make our own fun. Sometimes this fun was outdoors involving fires. Sometimes it was indoors involving fires.
But if you were really lucky, you might have had a computer. Not a console, those weren't a thing here. A computer.
Video games, you're thinking? No, no, no. For a start we didn't call them video games. They're computer games.
But that was not the only thing you could do with a computer. You could program. You could make art. Compose music. Even hack into a military computer to play chess.
Computer games were expensive for a child or teenager. And back then, we had to save up for them. Many of them were shit. The good ones were really hard. And the games were small by necessity. The challenge was simply getting through a single level, let alone completing a game.
So you'd have just a few games. Spend half an hour or an hour gaming. Then do something else with your computer.
We didn't take our computers for granted. It was an amazing new technology. The entire world is at your fingertips when you sit in front of a computer. You can make anything! All you need is to learn how.
And learn we did. These computers came with manuals the size of Russia.
Being simple, the games we did have were not immersive. You could not role-play as a character in this sort of game. Children love to play make-believe or imitate adults. So rather than pretending in-game, we'd try to create things on our computers like the adults did.
In the 1990s, consoles came along. You plug in a game and play. Along with this, the rise of "child culture" where parents would spoil and "protect" their children excessively.
A console is the worst thing you can give a child. It allows instant gratification with no waiting and no learning curve. The games are expensive and today's children are not willing to sweep chimneys to earn the money. And it's a dead-end. What will they do when they complete a console game? Why, they'll ask for another one!
Consoles are constructed in such a way that even a curious child cannot get into the inner workings. You cannot hack the games. You cannot make your own. It's a sealed box delivering a curated consumption experience.
Worst of all, today's games are large and immersive. All of a child's desires to play make-believe and imitate others can be satisfied in a game. All their dreams are absorbed into this foreign third-party walled-garden experience. Your child will go nowhere doing this. They will still be taunting their peers through a gaming headset in their 60s, living in someone's basement.
If your child is a brightly-burning fag-end, a PS5 is the heel that's coming to snuff it out.
The ultimate gift for any child: a Commodore 64 computer.
We would have donated our organs to have one back in our day. Best you could hope for was a second hand Spectrum. And now they fetch more money than a PS5 because of their legendary status. So your child can't possibly feel short-changed by this gift. If they do, they need a serious attitude adjustment. Up the chimneys with the brat.
But here's the key ingredient for your child's success: buy them only one bad game. And a ton of reference books on programming, 3D graphics and the Commodore 64's hardware.
It goes without saying that your child should not have access to the internet. So they will not be able to obtain more games for instant gratification.
The one bad game will give them a little taste for gaming. But it's bad, so they will become frustrated. They will want more.
But a spoiled child can't scream to its parents when it wants more. It must turn to its stack of reference material and learn to make a better game.
The Commodore 64 is a good choice, as it doesn't have a proper BASIC. It lacks any useful graphics or sound instructions. So they will need to brush up on PEEKs, POKEs and assembly language to move beyond text adventures.
And this, my friends, is how the entire British gaming industry was born. Your child can be next.
But you're going to buy them a PS5 regardless and watch them waste away, aren't you?
Think carefully. You only get one shot at this. You chose not to abort that screaming brat. So don't abort it with a PS5!!
* PS5 is a trademark of slimy foreign megacorp ltd., out to destroy your children and your bank balance.