You’ll have to humour me for a few minutes here, because my assumption is that this is going to come across as a deluge of self-pity. Likely, that’s because that is exactly what this is — the lamentable protestations of a pitiable fellow.

Before we get started, let’s address the hyperbolic nature of the headline. Is this just another one of those anti-gaming tirades that villainises an industry for the failings of its userbase? Not entirely true, and yet, yeah, sorta. Gaming, like anything else in life, is fine in moderation. There is room for both sport and gaming, when a reasonable balance is struck.

Alas, my issue has always been with balance. I’m an all-or-nothing kinda guy, and were I to redo my life with a hard-line stance of only sport or only video games, I would absolutely have gone down the former path this time.

It should come as no surprise that I was a passionate gamer as a child, pretty much for as long as I can remember. I was typically glued to my television screen, sinking hours into the adventures of the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis, challenging myself to get just a little bit farther, do a little bit better.

As far as my formative years go, sport was nowhere in my periphery whatsoever. I liked the Toronto Blue Jays, because my dad liked the Toronto Blue Jays. I liked the Toronto Raptors, because I liked dinosaurs. But I couldn’t have named a single player from either squad, not even from those glorious World Series Jays rosters of ’92 and ’93.

In fact, when I look back on my brief dalliances with sport, I can only manage to drudge up minor trauma. I have the vaguest recollection of some kind of ball being tossed around the gymnasium, not in any organised fashion, but as a continuous flow of catching and throwing. No matter how much I ran, how badly I wanted to be included, the ball never came my way even once. Whether I was simply not quick enough to reach its intended destination, or if there was some kind of nefarious goal to keep it out of my hands, I couldn’t tell you. What I do remember is how I felt: excluded and unimportant.

Worse still, was the one time I joined in on playing hockey during the school lunch break. As a kid growing up in Canada, it was pretty much an expectation that I would love hockey. But of course, I hadn’t watched a single minute in my whole life. I understood that I was supposed to hit the puck with the stick, and prevent the opposing team from scoring goals.

What I didn’t understand is that, when a shootout is happening, this procedure becomes a one-on-one affair between the shooter and the goalie. All I saw was the enemy approaching my goal with said puck, as though they were brandishing an explosive and had to be stopped at any cost. So I ran out in front of it, got down onto my knees, and blocked the shot. I felt very proud of myself for a fleeting moment, until the other kids began yelling at me for getting in the way.

I probably cried and ran off afterwards. I cried a lot as a kid, perhaps not coincidentally because I had little in the way of resilience.

Gaming in the modern era has become a more social affair, with online competition having become a major factor. When I was a kid, however, this was simply not the case. You played against your family, or your friends when they came to visit. Maybe you challenged someone at the arcade in a few rounds of Street Fighter, but I was too young for that. My world was insular, and I was a sore loser.

Beyond that factor, the infuriating thing is that if I had been involved in sport from the start, I may well have been quite passable at them. I was a tall kid growing up. Not noticeably so, but for the first few years of elementary school I was usually one of the tallest in my class. Despite my sedentary nature, I was lean, too; by all rights, I should have been quite obese. Metabolism is a wonderful thing, I guess. What isn’t wonderful, is a child who clearly has no idea how to control their body.

I have always been awkward, clumsy, and uncoordinated — traits that could have been mitigated had I participated in anything even vaguely resembling athletics. Tennis, boxing, bowling, freebasing, just anything, Anthony.

Fast forward to the 2000s, when I finally started watching American football. At last, the appeal of sport made sense to me from a spectator standpoint, so it made similar sense in my head to try playing it at a competitive level in 2005.

Thank god I was a teenager when I did this. There is a certain level of hubris that comes with being 17 years old, where you figure yourself to be unstoppable, even when it has become apparent that you are very much stoppable, in every sense of the word.

After a few months of training, I was thrown into a real game for the first time in my entire life. The assignment was the kickoff, and I was supposed to block for the return man (unless for some ungodly reason the kick was short and ended up in my vicinity). The issue is that, gosh, even after all that training, not much had stuck in there. Hours of drills meant to hone my craft, and I hadn’t let my constant shortcomings bother me for some baffling reason. So when I looked at the very solidly built young man who stood across from me on the other side of the field, I decided I was just going to run into him as hard as I could.

There is a specific science to blocking, where leverage is as critical as outright strength. In that moment, I learnt what happened when you had neither, and ended up crashing onto the ground with what was almost definitely a concussion.

“I’ve never been hit so hard in my life,” I exclaimed as I hobbled to the sideline, oblivious to the fact that I was supposed to be on the field at fullback in the subsequent series of plays. Wisely, the coaches pretty much threw out whatever offensive formation I would have otherwise been involved in, though I was unfortunately still required as a strongside linebacker on the other side of the ball.

As much as I hadn’t retained the basic principles of blocking, I had somehow retained even less of my role as a defender. Each and every play, I just kinda floated around in what could vaguely be interpreted as zone coverage, hoping and praying that the quarterback never considered passing it to the tight end I was ostensibly supposed to be guarding.

I only did two things of note for the rest of the game, and neither of them were good. I ate grass when I was laid out with a stiff arm from a running back who went on to score a touchdown, and I continued haplessly attempting to barrel through the same kid who blew me up on kickoffs — with considerably less gusto each time, as I was now realising that it really, really hurt.

I wound up suffering an ankle injury in the next practice, and wouldn’t see the field again, short of one game where I had to sub in due to a lack of numbers to prevent our team from having to forfeit. I played a few series as defensive tackle in that match, and no, it didn’t go well, either.

One of my positive qualities that I’ve always attributed to gaming is reasonably strong intellect. But goddamn, it is hard to make that argument when you look back on my brief, tragic time as a football player.

I wouldn’t return to organised sports for several years, when I joined up with my workplace’s basketball team in 2013. Basketball is a much more straightforward sport than American football, however it also requires a great deal more athleticism from players who would otherwise strictly be blocking on the gridiron (if only they knew how to fucking block).

We lost our first qualifying match, thereby failing to even participate in the league, until we rallied ourselves back five months later to win in our second attempt. For our efforts, we were rewarded with a berth in the F grade, and yes that is as low as the grades went for this particular establishment.

On what would go on to become the worst team in the worst level of competition, I was easily the worst player. Passing me the ball was practically asking for a turnover, and I was such a defensive liability that my only recourse was to foul on most opposing possessions and hope that the ref didn’t notice.

Once again, I had no control over my body in my mid-20s, a body that was no longer tall but somehow still gangly, as if it was being piloted by some panic-stricken creature from deep within its recesses. We didn’t bother drawing up any offensive plays, and I somehow managed to get in the way when my teammates were scheming something up. You don’t know shame until you look into the eyes of someone on your team who is expecting someone else to be in a spot, only to find you there instead.

I scored two points that entire season. Two. In 14 games, sometimes with as few as five players available. Most other people would have to try really hard to do that badly, but I managed it naturally. Both of those points came from a pair of free throws, and we celebrated the occasion as if we had just won the championship. I fouled out immediately afterwards.

Up to this point, that has been the full extent of my career in organised sport, and that is in no small part due to how discouraging it is when I even try. My initial point to this article, before I decided to regale you on the exactitude of my failures, is to express the kind of distress that comes with being the worst person there by a sizeable margin.

I attempted a gridiron comeback in 2021 despite being in the worst shape of my life. I only managed to survive one practice session, where I dropped nearly every ball that came my way, botched a route so badly that I collided with a teammate (almost like a proper block, actually), and exhausted my ailing knees so much it hurt to walk up a slight incline the next day.

You know that person who the others are whispering about behind their back? That’s me, and I hate it. I honestly do. But no, I had those video games, and look at where that got me.

I look sloppy, and my posture is atrocious. I’m socially inept, habitually lazy, apprehensive about social settings, and devoid of much of the zeal that comes with shared success. I live in a closely controlled bubble of my own creation, not solely as a result of video games but in no small part due to them, and distinctly lacking in basic body control that most folks learn within the first decade of life.

I do give video games credit for generating an enthusiasm towards reading that I may not have otherwise had. The instruction manual for 1993’s Bubsy contained a short comic book that laid out its narrative, and I remember being so desperate to understand what it actually said.

Beyond that, I’m really grasping at straws for ways gaming has benefitted me. Make no mistake, I love video games, but I’m not entirely sure they love me back — even the most riveting, inspirational game isn’t something I can hope to emulate for my own creations. Quite the contrary, I frequently find myself writing something only to realise I’ve inadvertently lifted it from an existing property.

For me, video games are simply fun, with minimal benefits to my development. Sports would have been fun too, had I given them a go before I morphed into the flailing manchild of today, with all of the additional positives that I’ve alluded to throughout this piece.

If I had just put that damned Sega in the closet and went outside, I might have had more confidence as a human being, generally. Nothing quite impacts your self-image like making an absolute ass out of yourself in front of others. Perhaps if I wasn’t so damned obsessed with Sonic the Hedgehog, and instead longed to be just like Joe Carter, I wouldn’t have languished so dramatically today, when I attended a baseball try out to predictably poor results.

Yeah, I’m still trying to beat the odds, by once again attempting a sport I’ve never even touched before. Tangentially, I’m reminded of a manga known as The Days of Diamond, where the lead protagonist feels isolated because he’s so much better than his peers. And right now, I hate that fucking kid so much.

Without trying to garner any sympathy, there are a lot of things I dislike about myself, and whenever I try to return to sports, I’m reminded of all of them at once. Something that’s supposed to be enjoyable, very quickly becomes the opposite, encouraging me to dig deeper into my safe little hole away from the world.

Again, video games didn’t do that to me; I did. But they damn sure didn’t help steer me in the right direction, either.

It’s exactly why I want my own kids to be nothing like me, for the most part. I’d like for them to inherit my manners, sure, as well as my reading comprehension. I tend to think I’m a decent fellow, and that would be nice for them to pick up, too.

But beyond that? I don’t ever want them to embarrass themselves as badly as I seem destined to, and an early start in athletics looks to me like the most sure fire way to prevent such a fate. We always want better for our kids, and more specifically, what I yearn for is demonstrably better than me.