This past week, the Christian Science Monitor published a very short, 300-word story on a generator-powered arcade in Kabul, and it has to be the most wistful, sad gaming news story I've ever read.Despite its short length, the article has plenty of almost implausibly sad quotes to choose from. The first quote is from a 14-year-old, who says "We come here to play games and relax from street-begging." A boy who claimed not to know his own name says the arcade is full of "beautiful machines." Another boy says "I don't want this game to finish, I want to keep on playing forever."
The article still sticks in one little dig at gaming for being violent, though... The only specific game named in the article is Mortal Kombat, and in the next paragraph we can find the line "For a generation that knew only violence growing up, these aggressive games offer a logical continuation to lives lived in hardscrabble conditions." That line goes against the grain of the rest of the article in an odd way. It's not exactly a condemnation of violent entertainment, but in the middle of a thousand optimistic quotes about how glad everyone is that these kids aren't stealing money and sniffing glue, we get this one line that the games' violence fits in well with their violent surroundings. Really? Mortal Kombat fatalities = Real life Afghanistan violence?
Unimportant side note: The above picture is reportedly from the arcade, and unless I'm hallucinating, it appears to be a Mario game. I'm pretty certain there were never any official Mario arcade games, so what is this? Not too important, but does anyone have an answer for this?
