Gary Larson's Far Side once predicted how big video games would become, as a comic strip accidentally joked about the fun hobby becoming a potential job. With the rise of video games, the commentary in the Far Side comic about playing them leading to a real profession ended up becoming true, predating the eSports itself by over 30 years.
Gary Larson's Far Side comic strip was a wildly popular surrealist comic that ran in syndication in newspapers from 1980-1995. The comic featured observations and spoofs on culture, social situations, and society, often with absurd slants featuring animals taking the place of humans. Larson's award-winning work, which he recently returned to when the author launched his new website in 2020, has not only made readers laugh but has led to scientific discoveries being named after the nature-loving writer - having a significant cultural impact extending far beyond the world of cartooning. In one comic from 1990, Larson even accidentally predicted the rise of video games as a career path.
In Gary Larson's "Hopeful Parents" Far Side comic from 1990, he poked fun at video games and how, in the future, they would actually be more than just a hobby. While Larson might have been making an absurdist statement with the strip, as video games, at the time, such as the Super Nintendo, appeared to be nothing more than entertainment and served no career value while sucking up lots of time, the Far Side comic accidentally ended up predicting the pastime becoming a real job in the future.
Larson's Comic Showed That Video Games Would Become A Real Career
With the rise of the internet, video game entertainment has become much more than a hobby, as participating in eSports, streaming games like Fortnite on Twitch, and being a part of the industry have turned into real professions, part of a billion-dollar industry. So while Larson joked that being a "Nintendo Expert," and experienced video game player would be a job, little did he know that would end up being true more than 30 years after the Far Side comic strip would be published.
In the 1990s, the Far Side comic joking that playing video games could ever lead to a paying job was understandably farfetched - as those who played Mario weren't turning their experience into legitimate careers. However, with the gaming industry exploding decades later, Gary Larson accidentally predicted what video games, streaming, and eSports could become. The Far Side comic might have been a joke, but after a couple of decades, it became a somewhat accurate look into the future.