A MOST AGREEABLE PASTIME

I’m feeling old. I don’t know my Iggy Azalea from my Ariana Grande and have no idea what the kids of today think is cool. I mean I still think Faith No More and Mr Bungle are cool, but i’m becoming painfully aware that to the modern generations, they’re basically their versions of what the Ramones and the Clash were when I was growing up. Basically i’m totally out of touch with the youth of today.

Case in point, do kids still draw logos of their favourite games?  Being a thoroughly nostalgic chap that I am, I have kept a lot of the drawings (and many of the scribbles) from my childhood, and looking through some of them the other day I found pages upon pages with little DOOM (and id Software) logos scribbled all over the place.  It was such a simple logo that, as with any good branding or marketing, captured the spirit of the game perfectly.  It was edgy, it was modern, and with one word it said all that needed to be said. But most importantly, it was ridiculously easy to reproduce with a little practice, and before I knew it I was subconsciously scrawling it in the margins of seemingly every page I ruled up.  Or at least writing “Doom Rules” if I was being lazy.  Right next to JS 4 JL 4 EVA.

But that was the 90’s.  In fact DOOM is 21 years old yesterday (Happy Birthday, DOOM!).  That’s more than two whole decades.  Basically, kids have probably changed, and while it’s no secret that DOOM is a special game for many people that grew up playing games at the time, including me, I often wonder what the cultural touchstones are for the kids growing up playing games on modern consoles.  What are the logos kids of today are drawing on their pencil cases and school books?  Do they even still have pencil cases and school books?  Do kids still giggle when someone says the “F word”?  I don’t even know.

And then I remembered.

Minecraft.  That MUST be what kids are drawing on their pencil cases.  Or iPads.