I'm politicked out by the recent analysis of the massive overspend on Redland Green School. Scanning through You Tube's latest additions, I was highly amused by this performance from the Bristol University Computer Gaming Society. The conclusion to their last LAN party, this is a very credible version of the song from Portal, performed "in honour of its awesomeness", according to them.

Politics, I have always believed, is a vocation and not a profession, and I consider it high praise to be thought unprofessional in this regard. But all activists are guilty of a failure to empathise with those who do not make the art of government their hobby. This awkwardness, even insularity, reveals the inner nerd; for nerds we are, even if those watching repeats of "The West Wing" tart it up as being a Policy Wonk. Accept it - all that separates us from the train spotters and the role players is a Millets voucher and a twenty-sided die.

I can't help but be fascinated with the mechanics of council administration, but rather than write another post about how I could make the world - or at least Bristol - a better place, I shall attempt to retain any passing audience beyond this sentence by discussing a different avenue for my nerdish ways, namely games.

The word "Game", to anyone born after the mid seventies, does not immediately describe a physical board and pieces but rather a hand-eye coordinated connection with electronically generated sound and vision. But regardless of form the needs satisfied are the same: some gamers seek simple diversion, others victory in competition, others a place in the company of like-minded compatriots.

The latter is where the state of the art is currently practiced, whether in the motion controlled family fun of a Wii console, or the all-consuming addictiveness of Massively Multiplayer Online games such as World of Warcraft, a game has been cited as grounds for divorce and for which 12-step programmes are now available. Speaking as a former addict, I remind you that the first step is to admit you have a problem.

But beyond the state of the art, what of the Game as Art? The medium meets the basic criteria: it can stimulate the human senses and the human mind through transmission of emotions and ideas. Perhaps the auteurs - the programmers - are still metaphorically daubing stick figures on a cave wall, but those early works were sufficient to move prehistoric man. Indeed, a modern PC (or Mac) has within it the potential to emulate almost any prior games machine, and a few minutes searching the Internet can locate the means to experience your memories through great games as richly as Proust with his Madeleine cake.

Aged five, playing a port of "Lunar Lander" on a BBC Micro with my father; aged seven, in Yate's Station Road chip shop playing "Battlezone" (the proper one with the periscope); aged ten in Devon, eschewing the beach for darkened arcades, dropping ten penny pieces to the hypnotic music of "Rolling Thunder"; aged eleven, Rescue on Fractalus on the C-64 with shields down, waiting for the knock on the door; aged fourteen - now with more personal computing power than was used in the launch of the Apollo moon landing and access to massive 720k 3.5" diskettes, playing "Wing Commander" and "F-19 Stealth Fighter" in the latest 256-colour graphics.

Of course the moment fades, and the march of obsolescence reveals yesterday's perfect simulation of reality to be a crude parody. But the storytelling is timeless, and in that regard we must find fault with modern games. Where the player is unable to create their own story, technical flare is a mask for clichéd characters and derivative plots. In fact, mediocrity of narrative is the norm; history rewritten at the whim of marketing executives; returning kings with broken magical swords aplenty; the pearls of the Golden Age of Science Fiction cast before the swine of Generations X and Y.

But there is hope for the new Muse. As the tools of game creation become less like the toolkit of a builder, and more like the palette of an artist , the creation of games will become the domain of those who can combine intellect with imagination. It's a good time to be a Nerd.