February 9, 2010 at 1:06 am
filed under research
Over the year I have been “germinating” a project about paranoid delusions inspired by the Internet and video games and/or fantasies about the Internet’s powers. A popular example being the car thief who behaved as though he was in the middle of a Grand Theft Auto video game.
Yesterday’s “On the Media” featured Chris Suellentrop whose article in this month’s Wired describes how virtual football games like Madden NFL are emulated in real games instead of the reverse.
Well, the Broncos are on the 13-yard line, their own 13-yard line.
[GAME HUBBUB]
The quarterback drops back to pass. He heaves this somewhat desperation toss downfield. It gets deflected into the air –
[CHEERS]
- lands into the outstretched arms of a Bronco’s wide receiver, Brandon Stokley, who streaks toward the end zone for the winning touchdown.
[LOUD CHEERS]
And that was an amazing play, known as the “immaculate deflection.” But more remarkable than the funny bounce is that Stokley cuts right across the field horizontally and lets about six seconds drain off the clock before meandering into the end zone, because no one was near him to tackle him. And, at that moment, for a certain brand of football fan, the video game-playing football fan, you were, like, holy cow, did he just pull off a video game move?
When I asked Stokley that question directly, he said, yeah, of course that was a video game move.