Some vintage video game opinions have been unearthed and leveraged against a 13 year old Willis Gibson AKA Blue Scuti, who recently managed to hit the ‘killscreen’ of Tetris, effectively beating the game.
For many, it was a pretty exceptional achievement for the young man – beating 157 levels of the classic block buster is no simple feat – but in the year of 2024, 51-year-old presenter Jayne Secker decided to end the segment with a throwaway line about how the kid needs to find something better to do.
🎮📰Sky News's Jayne Secker breaks script to tell 13yo who reached a WR Lvl. 157 in NES #Tetris
— Nintendo South Wales (@Nintendo_SW) January 4, 2024
"Beating Tetris is not a life goal. Go outside and get some fresh air"
This priggish, ignorant belittlement of Willis Gibson's achievement shows gaming stigma is sadly alive & well pic.twitter.com/KRix9g6A32
Some epic words there.
“As a mother, I would just say step away from the screen, go outside, get some fresh air. Beating Tetris is not a life goal.”
Never mind that Willis will enter the record books as the first human being to achieve such a thing unassisted, never mind that he was doing it in tribute to a family member that had passed – never mind that his achievement was being openly celebrated by scores of people across the world. Nah, this kid needs to go outside and touch grass, as the kids would say.
News presenters always drop a little comment at the end of a piece – there is nothing wrong with perhaps mentioning that our boy can now give his fingers a rest, or take a break and look towards his next goal. But openly dropping a line about how this is not a life goal is such a flippant and outdated statement from someone who clearly doesn’t understand the subject matter.
Many older gaming folk have weighed in with an air of incredulity, rightfully stating that they haven’t seen such a lukewarm take on a gaming achievement for years. This kind of attitude was rife decades ago, when parents would lament how their kids would ‘waste hours on their Nintendo game’ and wish they’d just go outside – but this is the mid 2020’s, where gaming as an industry dwarfs other entertainment sources and professional gaming athletes are recognised in the street. For <expletive> sake, as we inch towards the Olympics we keep seeing discussions about how eSports could be recognised at the event.
So, the ignorant belittlement of Ms. Secker is gross. It’s outdated. It is supremely silly. So my statement is thus.
As a father, if my barely-teenage son managed to go down in history as the first person to naturally beat a game considered unbeatable without computer intervention, I’d absolutely celebrate his achievement. I’d ask him what he wants to do next. His future would likely be super bright. I’d trust in his life goals.
And to spotlight a particularly epic slam from Mike at Miketendo64:
Watching Sky News is not a life’s goal either. I’d sooner go outside and get some fresh air rather than listen to vapid broadcasters telling me to turn off the screen and go outside when their literal job is to keep people glued to their screens. 🤷
— Mike M64 (@Mike_M64) January 4, 2024
Ouch. There it is.
Did you think Tetris would ever be beaten? Do you think it’s a cool and awesome thing to belittle gaming achievements of any kind? Let us know in the comments or on social media.
Known throughout the interwebs simply as M0D3Rn, Ash is bad at video games. An old guard gamer who suffers from being generally opinionated, it comes as no surprise that he is both brutally loyal and yet, fiercely whimsical about all things electronic. On occasion will make a youtube video that actually gets views. Follow him on YouTube @Bad at Video Games
