'Games have always been part of human culture', says Lucien King. 'No wonder then that artists have sometimes adopted a gaming mode in order not just to have fun but to challenge our perceptions...humans have been building mysterious or predictable new game worlds for a long time now. For slightly less time we have been doing this electronically as well.

'I've always enjoyed games, but often wonder how we can have so much fun when parts of the world are burning, drowning, disappearing?... on the other side of the 6 x Nightly News, we can all see extreme close-ups of everything that is not ideal in our world.

'And still we play games. more and more it would seem. It has got to be more complicated than the pursuit of escapism. hasn't it?'

King, 'Introduction', Game On (2002), London: Lawrence King. The book was written in conjunction with the exhibition Game On, September 2002, Barbican Centre