(I don't think Jason Bernard died in a car accident... it was a heart failure, wasn't it?)
Shot, I kinda get where you're coming from, but I find it hard to agree with this kind of sentiment. I think, back in the day when this article was originally published, it certainly would have been a very big thing, to hear that an actor the age of Jason Bernard plays games. At the time, the statistical age of the gamer was much lower (in the 20s), and the stereotypical age of the gamer was lower still - the stereotype of games being something only teens could care about was very much still alive. And of course, it didn't help that many of us (certainly me) were teens at the time, so we obviously resented the insinuation that our super-serious hobby was less mature than we thought it to be
. So certainly, we would have seen it as something very important that a real life film star (heh) plays video games - now,
that's validation!
From today's perspective, though, there's just nothing noteworthy about this. Yeah, Jason Bernard played games - so did many other people his age at that time, they just didn't talk about it. Maybe because they weren't actors, and weren't being interviewed. Did it matter? Is a hobby any more "acceptable" because it's shared with an actor? It doesn't help that I think to myself now how silly that argument would have sounded to my parents or other adults back in 1996 -
oh, an actor plays games? Oh, well, that changes eveeeerything... now, get to your homework!
Similarly, I just find it so hard today to look back at those days and resent the fact that an actor playing the lead role in a game didn't bother playing it. Again, I probably would have expressed similar sentiments to yours at the time - but, you know, teenage minds and all that. Games are not something that everybody has to get into, and with age, people find themselves less and less willing to do so. It's not just about time constraints, though that's important enough in itself. It's more than that - for many people of that generation (heck, even for many people of my generation), games were something completely alien. They had other forms of entertainment, and simply could not see the point of getting into a new form of entertainment,
particularly one that was off-putting due to the inherent challenge involved. So, at the end of the day, I look at those interviews and I think to myself, isn't it cool that a bunch of people who for the most part didn't play or understand games, were able to play leading roles in a game and deliver great performances?