That's the important part, though. That is how they've rebelled. It is the thing they do that I did not do when I was their age. I do play a lot of games, but gaming has not completely taken over my life.
For my boys, games are more important than TV, films, music and books. Because, of course, games incorporate all of those elements so comprehensively and so seductively.
Okay, I must stop now and confess that I have no daughters. Maybe girls are different? I know games aren't such a big part of their world (although the biggest selling and most popular games of all time, such as The Sims and FarmVille, are those that appeal to girls more than boys). And speaking purely subjectively, my wife is obsessed by Angry Birds and Tiny Wings.
Games are not going to go away, they are simply going to become more immersive, more beguiling and more time-devouring. They are taking over. So I was delighted when they asked me to be a judge for the new GameCity prize, a computer games festival held annually in Nottingham and the first major one of its type.
The idea is to lift games out of the hands of the nerds and industry insiders and award them the cultural status of music, films or books. The aim is partly to find a way of talking about games, to find a language to stand alongside the languages of film or literary criticism, but it is also to make games respectable and accessible to the wider non-games-playing public.
The range of judges' backgrounds was diverse, coming as we did from the fields of music, literature, theatre, academia, politics and journalism. What we were asked to do was find a game that you could show to someone who had never played anything before and say: "Look at this. This is what you've been missing out on, this is what games are capable of."
It was an interesting selection, as the shortlist had been compiled from suggestions by the industry itself, and was perhaps aimed too much at gaming nerds. It was interesting that none of the mega-blockbuster franchises were on the list. There was no Grand Theft Auto or Halo, no Red Dead Redemption, no Assassin's Creed or Call Of Duty (in some cases because they didn't fit into the prize timeframe). It was a shame that there were no RPGs (role-playing games) with stories to tell and huge intricate worlds to explore - nothing like LA Noire to really show the novice gamers just what modern games are capable of. There was a feeling that the industry insiders who had made the list were perhaps trying too hard to be clever.
In the end, we gave the prize to Minecraft, a world-building game that is as simple or as complex as you want to make it. It seemed to fulfil the criteria of a game that you would want to keep coming back to. It's creative, immersive, neatly designed (everything is a cube) and will be fondly remembered for a very long time. It's a game you get obsessed by and end up playing in your sleep, chopping down trees, mining resources, creating blocks, moving blocks, building blocky castles, avoiding Creepers. In truth, it's perhaps not so much a game as a creative resource and, as it's played in your web browser, the graphics are not hugely complex. But, for me that was part of its appeal. I hate games that use beautiful and elaborate visuals to try to distract from the fact that the gameplay is actually pretty rubbish. I would much rather a game plays well but doesn't necessarily look amazing (though the best games do both).
As an author who also plays games, and the father of three boys who read books and play games, I often get asked whether I think games will kill off the novel. The answer is no, of course they won't. Books have survived the coming of films and TV, rock 'n' roll and Sudoku, and they will survive the coming of computer games. But they will be influenced by them, just as all those other media had their own impact and influence on books and, let's not forget, were hugely influenced by them.
The best games have taken stuff from books (where would computer games be without Tolkien, for instance?) and any novelist worth their salt should be taking stuff from games. What you don't want are books that slavishly replicate the experience of playing a game because, well, why not just go and play a game instead? In the same way, you don't want a game that gets bogged down with interminable cut-scenes and has only one, very rigid, way of being played. There are cleverer and more elegant ways of designing them, as demonstrated by the brilliant GTA series.
I am fully aware that if I write a book for kids, however, I am competing for their time and attention with computer games. I know that my books have to give young readers the same kick they get out of playing Call Of Duty: Black Ops in zombie mode. So they are as full of action and adventure, bloodshed and zombies as any Xbox game, but they also do the one thing that games cannot do - they put you inside the minds of characters so that you can understand how they think and feel.
That's the essential difference between books and games. Games create worlds for you to play about in. The best of them are about you, the player. You are either God, in control of everything, or you are a grunt on the battlefields of World War II, desperately fighting to stay alive. The best books are those about other people. Novels get inside people in a way that no other medium can.
Reading, whether it's from the pages of a book or the screen of a Kindle, is a very intimate, private and immersive experience, utterly different to any other medium. And that is why we will always read. And when we are not reading, we will play games.
Gaming prize shortlist
Minecraft
The winner of the GameCity Prize, by Mojang. It allows gamers to build worlds as intricate as they like, but makes them work for it.
Ilomilo
Two friends try to meet up via endless intriguing puzzles in this Southend Interactive game.
Portal 2
Spectacular, with ground-breaking effects, the story-telling developed by Valve outdoes Hollywood.
Limbo
Playdead's dream-like puzzles are at the arty end of things.
Child of Eden
Music-and-rhythm experience by Q? Entertainment.
Pokemon
Black Game Freak's refined example of a highly successful formula.
Superbrothers S&S EP
Capybara's classic adventure reimagined for 2011.
* Charlie Higson's The Fear (Penguin $26), the latest in his zombie adventure series for teens, is out now.
- INDEPENDENT
