The Economist recently published a special report on video games, a subject in which I fall ever farther behind.  I’ve never owned a play station or a Nintendo or an Xbox or a Wii or even a smartphone where the little game devils are now staging an insidious invasion.  (Will we soon be playing while we’re driving?)  The article terrified me.  It’s very difficult for an old person to stay current.

“Call of Duty, Black Ops” was released in November of 2010.  Thanks to good pre-release advertising and hype people were lined up around the block, all over the world, hoping to drop about fifty bucks at any store that carried the game.  After five days sales reached $650m.  A month later the total was more than a billion.  Before the Economist report I’d never heard of “Black Ops.”  Are we living on the same planet?

“Black Ops” is the seventh “Call of Duty” war game, a series beginning in 2003.  It has the necessary tools of the genre; guns, violence, blood, gore, profanity, intrigue, zombies.  I personally just don’t get the war game gig.  Haven’t we got enough of the real thing?  Get off your couch and go to Afghanistan, fella!  No end is in sight, “Call of Duty 9” is scheduled for 2012 if all the legal wrangling between various developers can get straightened out.

Lest you think the providers of this video warfare are greedily insensitive, Wikipedia points out: “The Call of Duty Endowment (CODE) is a non-profit foundation created by Activision Blizzard to help find employment for U.S. military veterans. The foundation will contribute $1 million to several veteran support organizations.”  Also, “Black Ops” allows players to turn down the blood and turn off the profanity. That’s some progress.

The economics of game consoles and telephone/pad apps is mind boggling.  Fundamentally the attraction is that people have always liked to play (and fight), and the internet is especially beguiling, because of the ease by which new toys can be accessed.  It’s a $56 billion global market, and it’s only going to become more consuming.  Do the math: suppose each subscriber has one game app that he plays once a day for a nickel.  That would be $2.8 billion a day in revenue.  Of course you can argue that most apps are free, or sort of.

I have a Facebook page, but I only use it for posting blogs.  If I chose, I could apply it as a social networking venue for gaming.  I could access “Cityville” to investigate better ways of managing Damariscotta.  Or I might choose to waste my financial resources with “Slotomania.”

What I find especially puzzling is that one can spend real money to make his virtual hero more powerful, or to buy accoutrements for such as the imaginary homestead on “Farmville.”   And this creates fiscal problems.  Should governments be allowed to charge sales tax on these purchases?  If “Farmville” should suddenly belly up, whom can we sue for the loss of this property?  Barristers are busily scheming.

An example: in “Dark Orbit,” a browser-based space adventure from Bigpoint, customers can beef up their space ship by purchasing a “10^th drone” for about $1300,   In 2011 Bigpoint sold about 2,000 of these.   It gets weirder.  A Chinese player, Mr. Qiu, killed a fellow player of “The Legend of MIR 3” for selling (on Ebay) a rare virtual sword that Qiu had lent him.  Mr. Qiu is now serving a life sentence.

You might be surprised to hear that until I read the Economist article I’d never heard of “Tetris” and it’s been around since 1984, immensely popular.  This game is so well-known a World Championship is held every two years (a practice shared by a number of video games).  I pulled up a free version and gave it a shot.  My final score was zero.  In my defense I offer that I didn’t know the rules, and I didn’t know how to maneuver those little colored blocks as they tumbled towards the floor.  Still, a zero is a zero; not very flattering.  I haven’t tried a second time.

Just so you’ll not think I’m a total misfit I do play some console games:  “Reversi,” “Dominoes,” “Scrabble,” and “Boggle.”   For social interaction I occasionally indulge in “Bridge Base Online.”  This is pretty dull stuff I’ll admit.  However,  I just can’t work up any enthusiasm for slingshotting birds at egg-snatching green pigs, and never mind that “Angry Birds”  has sold 12 million copies and been downloaded 500 million times.  Remember, I grew up without television.  It’s hard to catch up.