It hadn’t occurred to me just how blurred the distinction between, say, watching daddy play a sports video game and watching an actual real-life sporting event was for our son, Micah, until last night. A lot of times when there is an on screen representation of players Micah will point to one and guess “that’s you”. One some of the newer games that feature customizable player models, he has been better at picking out the right person because I often make players that at least somewhat resemble me (red hair, goatee, etc). Last night we were watching Tigers-Cardinals Game 3, and they happened to show a close up of Detroit pitcher Nate Robertson (pictured below unless AP or Reuters somehow gets really upset with me). Personally I had never seen enough of a resemblance to make me take note, but I could stop laughing when Micah looked up at the screen and said “that’s you!”. It took quite a while to try to explain the difference between a “real life” game and my video games, and I’m still not sure it has sunk in completely.
<——- Not “Daddy”
Stuff like this does make me wonder what the implications of more and more photorealistic graphics will be on generations to come as the gap between real and computer-generated narrows. In the meantime, though, it’s great fodder for cute two-year-old stories.