They say the family of the 21st Century is made up of friends not relatives. We no longer look to our elders for all of our answers as to how to live. Our frame of references have altered to such an extent that our moral compass can be dictated in equal measures by our religion and Star Wars. Many of the teachings I follow come from The Simpson’s and I have a great sense of direction not because I learned how to read a map properly or carry a compass but because I play an awful lot of games and have learned to memorise every turn I’ve taken as I go along. Even stranger is the fact that those friends who make up our modern day families aren’t necessarily just the ones you made at school or go to the cinema with on a Saturday. Some of them you’ve never set eyes on in your whole life and may never meet. They live in different countries and cultures and have backgrounds incredibly different from your own.

The reality is though that our generation is creating its own culture. It spans the planet. Gaming culture is a big part of that. I’ve recently discovered the joys of online comics like Penny Arcade and VG Cats and it made me realise the amount of cross-cultural observation there is in gaming. As much as it sometimes feels like us gamers are a tiny subculture the fact is that we are growing into a massive global community. The Penny Arcade catchphrase is “You wouldn’t get it” but the reality is that Penny Arcade has 5 million readers, their kid’s charity Child’s Play has made over a million dollars worldwide providing consoles and games for kids in hospital worldwide and the creators of Penny Arcade, Tycho and Gabe have spoken at MIT and taken classes in primary schools. This year Frag Dolls intends to help spread the word even further but the message isn’t that we need more people to be a part of gaming it’s that the main stream better sit up and take notice because gamers slowly but surely ARE taking over the world!