Salonaz Sami takes on the weird and wonderful world of video games I wouldn't have known who Roberto Abbondanzieri was if not for one of my friends' obsession with PlayStation (PS). Well, he is an Argentine goalkeeper of Italian descent who plays for Geti; and my friend, whom I recently heard from after years of silence, was frequently beaten at virtual football thanks to "his" aptitude on the "court". My friend had called to tell me he had bought the latest PS console. Since then, for no obvious reason, I have caught myself slipping the word "Abbondanzieri" into conversation. Since my introduction to PS -- Abbondanzieri notwithstanding -- I've come to realise that, rather than the children's game it is supposed to be, Sony Computer Entertainment's video-game system, launched in the mid- 1990s (and since succeeded by PSone, PS2, PS Portable, and PS3), is actually a grown-up addiction. It is the one thing in common between so many of my friends, both male and female; and most concede that once you have had a taste of it, there is no going back. Karim Mansour, a business development and marketing manager in a multinational stock-exchange and online trading company, believes it is a form of bondage: "Sometimes it haunts me even in my sleep. I dream of a particular move and wake up dead set on trying it." A phenomenally successful venture, especially in its more recent incorporation of life-like imagery and sound, to celebrate its 10th anniversary in 2005, PS Italy used the image of a young man wearing a crown of thorns -- except that the thorns were replaced by the triangles, squares, circles and crosses in which PS controls are shaped. The caption read, "Ten years of passion". Mansour goes on, "PS was the console that made me take gaming seriously. And when I lost my first two FIFA matches, that turned it into a challenge -- rather than practising at the store, I went and bought a console of my own." When his television set persisted in showing the game only in black and white, he went and bought a new one. "And since then," he says, "it has forced its way into my life." Germaan Badawi, a lawyer, takes a more analytical attitude. Doubtless, she says, what Sony did to arcade games is comparable to what TV did to cinema: "I think the timing was perfect, because it targeted a generation who had had Atari and home computers as children and, long after that point in their lives, managed to lure them back into gaming. Suddenly it was all the rage to be 20- something and own a some form of machine, and PS brought 3D quality to the living room and facilitated group playing like no other console before it." In fact the effect was largely restricted to the generation of the 1990s, the only people who could appreciate it. According to Ahmed Abu Ghali, the owner of Carreau one of the elite PlayStation Lounges in Cairo, "PS drew together the right hardware, design, and games, at the right time. And it introduced the idea that gaming can be for adults. It was a revelation when it was released. It brought more people together than any other media; why settle for a passive experience when you can be an active agent of your entertainment?" With this in mind, Abu Ghali toured Cairo's PS stores and found none to his satisfaction. "I wanted a place where I could feel comfortable and relax after a long day of business." So he set up his own: with private rooms and an atmosphere to encourage "switching off" -- so much so that many of Abu Ghali's customer-friends have asked him to keep track of the time for them before entering one of those rooms, so embroiled do they get in the game once they've taken hold of the controls. Nor is it a boy's thing, Abu Ghali insists: "Many women play. Some start out wanting to know what keeps their significant other busy for so long, but then they fall for it too." Abu Ghali concedes that PS does appeal to a testosterone-powered competitiveness, an idea Hatem Gad, 24, corroborates: in its FIFA manifestation, for example, PS reflects the mostly male obsession with football. "I now play as the manager of an Italian team, and when I pull out a popular player, the audience roars its discontent just as it would in reality; the player might even walk up to the screen and say a few words to my face." Gad sees it as a reflection of the times: older generations played backgammon or cards; this generation plays video games. "We still make bets whenever we can. With the complexity of its content, graphics and sound, and the variety of games, PS has broadened the audience so much more, though. It's an alternative to mainstream entertainment and it appeals to the TV-viewing public." Abu Ghali believes this is behind many of the latest innovations in the software, designed for the benefit of women or older players. A brilliant marketing campaign further reinforced the idea that games were no longer child's play, he explains. Gathering over a game replaced watching TV -- a family-oriented exercise involving a higher degree of active participation. In the case of Badawi, for example -- "a Tomb Raider addict" -- the game's hero Lara Croft became a credible alter ego, "not just a pretty face"; the game raised the standards of problem solving to a previously unsuspected level, exercising Badawi's brain. The games played on consoles like Nintendo, Sega and Atari, which had dominated the market until the launch of PS in December 1994, were made to look obsolete overnight. Setting the standard not only of gaming but of cool, as Mansour puts it, and targeting anyone and everyone over the age of 14, the original PS had one of the longest production runs in the history of the industry, enjoying an "organic life" of over 10 years. Yet for psychologist Mohamed Suleiman, the phenomenon of adults spending hours in front of machines is rather disturbing. "For a kid it's normal enough," he says. "Not for an adult, who could be doing so for any number of reasons; but they will almost certainly be anti-social, the victims of some form of social phobia." He described such characters as weak and negative: "When you allow a game to control your life, something has to be wrong somewhere. This could be as addictive as drug abuse: it takes the player away from everything else in life and cuts his link with society. And he doesn't even notice it." For Gad, at least, such statements rang true: "I now play daily and PS is one of my priorities in life." Indeed, since the launch of PS3 in November 2006 -- improvements include greater processing power and online gaming capabilities as well as voice recognition -- crimes have been committed all over the United States to obtain it; on E-Bay the price of the $600 console has reached $5,000. Perhaps the comparison with the Passion of Christ is appropriate, after all. Abbondanzieri indeed.
