Continue Reading Below Advertisement

Note that when he "crashes" in that double hairpin turn each time, that's no accident. The great platformers did this, too -- the Sega Genesis built its entire business model with a game where, if you mastered it, you could fly through the level like a blue rodent acrobat, bouncing and ramping and somersaulting, barely touching the ground:

Doing that aerial ballet in Sonic has nothing to do with reaction time, or decision-making, or even anticipation. It's pure rhythm, nailing the notes like hitting keys on a piano. And when you do it just right, when you fly through the level and nail all the jumps and boosts and kills, it has to feel like the first time somebody learning an instrument plays a familiar song and makes it sound like the actual song, the beautiful contours of perfection at the command of your own fingers.

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

I mentioned Guitar Hero earlier. If your only experience with these games is videos on YouTube, then you don't get the appeal -- those videos only show you how the game sounds when the song is played perfectly. "So, what, the game plays a popular song and you tap colored buttons on a plastic toddler guitar along with it? So it's like a motor skills training tool for the retarded, right?"

You see, if you hit the buttons wrong, the game butchers the music. Do it wrong for too long, and the song garbles to a stop and the crowd boos. So for your first hours with the game, that's your experience with it. It's just you ruining classic rock songs, the TV blasting horrible, off-key deformities. You have to work your way up, with practice, to the point where you can actually do the song justice. Until finally you can hit the notes, and bring the real song to life. You become one with the music.

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

A waste of time? You bet. It's a pointless substitute for the real thing, just like candy is a pointless substitute for vegetables, a novel is a pointless substitute for a textbook, sports are a pointless substitute for warfare and recreational sex is a pointless substitute for procreation. But I'm pretty sure that humans who don't do those "pointless" things become either robots or pack animals.

So, that's why I play games. Hope that answered the question.

The author of this column wrote a bizarre horror novel that has been adapted into a movie with Paul Giamatti, and you can pre-order the sequel, which is coming in a couple of months.

For more from David, check out 5 Creepy Ways Video Games Are Trying to Get You Addicted and The 7 Commandments All Video Games Should Obey.