A while ago I read an interview with some bloke who'd written a book about where humanity is headed. The interviewer asked what he believed future generations will find most shocking about the people of 2017. His answer? How we treat the animals, likening it specifically to how we now view slavery. Albeit the type of slavery where the slaves are delicious to eat.

​It has sort of stayed with me ever since. I'm not a vegetarian - though I did try to be for about a year when I was 15, because I thought it'd make me different and cool and I nearly died because all I ever ate for dinner was Pot Noodles and chips. Also: my other half is a vegetarian, and my daughter is vegan, and from them I've learned a number of things.

1) It's actually easier to give up meat than I realised.
2) I don't want to give up meat because, well... bacon/steak/hamburgers, but I wish I did, because... y'know... animals are nice. Well, some animals. My cats act like they hate me unless I'm feeding them.
3) Some vegans are full-on extremist mentals.

Indeed, if you think gaming has its dramas... it's nothing compared to some of the in-fighting that occurs online in the vegan community.

The cheerleaders of vegan extremism appear to be PETA - People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. I wrote earlier this week how they'd taken offence to the cow teat-yanking in Nintendo's 1-2-Switch, but it isn't the first time the organisation has generated publicity by taking aim at the games what we play.

Indeed, PETA has even created some surprisingly decent online versions of popular video games, to highlight what they believe is the games industry's pro-animal cruelty agenda. You can try them here.

And now? And now: behold... behold those times that gaming wandered into PETA's sights, like a sweet, innocent, bewildered dik-dik (a type of delicious edible animal).

Back when Digitiser was a thing on Teletext, I started a semi-regular comics column called Comics Trolley. We can't have run more than half a dozen instalments. I think I put a stop to it, because writing about comics on a video games section - purely to scratch my own itch - felt like a wilful self-indulgence. Yes, yes - I know Digitiser also had Fat Sow, and Man's Daddy, and Inspector Morse...  

And? And here I am again, picking away at my oozing rash of immoderation.

I used to be a big comics fan, see. Growing up, I started out on Whizzer & Chips, Topper, Buster, Cheeky and Krazy, occasionally picking up a Beano and Dandy - but I was really an IPC/Fleetway boy. I'd particularly treasured the summer specials, reading them on the beach, or in the car en route to yet another caravan park.

Obviously, I was aware of the big Marvel and DC heroes during the 70s. I remember seeing the oversized Superman Versus The Amazing Spider-Man one-shot in my local newsagent's, and having my mind blown. I'd picked up various Marvel issues here and there over the years, mostly the Marvel UK reprints of the US stuff (as well as Marvel UK's Amazing Spider-Man, which featured an original story that saw Peter Parker moving to London).

I think I bought every issue of Marvel's Star Wars comic, and my mum's mum - who I subsequently referred to as Nanny Comic (my other grandmother was known as Nanny Money, because she gave me £1 every time I saw her) - bought me the weekly Marvel UK reprint of Secret Wars, a crossover which featured more or less every Marvel hero. Apart from Daredevil, for some reason. 

It was 2000AD which really inspired me, though. I think I started with issue 3 of that - having been round my mate Jon's house, and seeing his copy of issue 2 (which came with "Biotronic stickers"). I badgered my mum to get me the next issue, which had a free code-breaking "survival wallet" taped to the cover. Not quite as much fun as the stickers sadly, but I was sold.

​I didn't miss another issue for nigh on 30 years. In the early-90s, I even got within a hair's breadth of actually drawing Judge Dredd. Such is the story of my life; I've had more close shaves than a male stripper.

#GoodMetaphor

We live in a society where outrage sometimes feels as if it has become the new normal. You'd think it'd be easy for anybody with half a brain to get through life without causing too much offence for looking at a cat the wrong way, but sometimes it feels as if there are those out there who actively seek out reasons to be appalled. 

It has its place of course; without the Suffragette movement women wouldn't have the vote, without Civil Rights black people would still be sat at the back of the bus, and if it wasn't for public outcry over the persecution - and prosecution - of gay people, we'd never have seen the 1967 decriminalisation of homosexual acts. Outrage is often a good thing. Conversely; sometimes it goes too far.

Of course, video games - being barely-understood by the wider world, and a seething stew of boiling hatred between those within it - often seem to stoke more outrage than is strictly necessary. Sometimes the industry brings this upon itself... Other times it feels as if a brouhaha has been manufactured for the sake of it.

​Here are ten controversies from both sides of that divide, that you likely wouldn't have seen coming. 

Before there were video games there was pingball! Please, what is pingball? It was a game in which players would "ping" a "ball" around a special type of table called a pingball table. It was invented by Pingu.

Here is a gallery of vintage images showing people playing pingball, though sadly it's not quite as interesting as we might've all hoped for.

Fortunately, there's a way to remedy this: by pretending that all of the people paying the pingball are popstars - the most important and coolest people around! 

What does your name say about you? It says this: that is the name which your parents gave you. Unless you've changed your name for some reason. In which case... whatever. Bored now. Let's move on, shall we?

"Okay."

Thanks.

Now get this: video game companies are called what they're called for all kinds of strange and fruity reasons.

Here are but ten or eleven or something of the hidden stories behind the game company names. Get ready to have your mind blown...! By which I mean: "get ready to learn some facts that at most you'll find mildly interesting!"