Joanna Hunkin: Closet games

I am not - in any way, shape or form - a gamer. I do not own a Playstation, Xbox or Nintendo Wii.

But I know the type. Intimately.

I once lived with a gamer who would spend entire weekends glued to the computer, blithely unaware that day had turned into night and back into day, as he fought goblins and God-knows-what-else in the fictitious World of Warcraft.

For years, I have tuned out when the topic of gaming arises. It doesn't concern me. Don't need to know, don't want to know.

But gaming has infiltrated my life. Surreptitiously.

I was drunk the first time it happened - at a friend's birthday party. Bonhomie was high as the festivities wore on, when someone had the idea to pull out Singstar. Why go out when we had karaoke right here?

As we worked our way through the delights of Duran Duran, The Clash and Tina Turner, we failed to notice the clocks ticking on, until a brief moment of silence (the disc froze and we had to reboot ... ) heard the tawdry chirrup of birdsong fill the room.

Time to go home, we agreed sheepishly, silently acknowledging we had unleashed a beast.

From that moment on, no party was complete without a Singstar battle or 10. Sometimes we had parties purely to celebrate a new version of Singstar or simply because there was nothing else on.

Sometimes we deliberately skived out of events, in favour of a night in with Singstar.

Of course, Singstar was but a gateway into other party games. On election night, we soon grew bored of watching the polls so tested our trivia with regular rounds of Buzz between electorate results.

And then came Wii Sports. Well, tennis to be precise.

I was holidaying in London last year when a friend introduced me to the game after dinner one night. I was instantly hooked.

When said friend left for work the next day, I snuck into the lounge and cranked up the Wii.

Such was my gaming inexperience, it took me half an hour to realise I was trying to select the menu with an Xbox controller and not the Wii remote. But once I'd surmounted that minor difficulty, there was no stopping me - oblivious to the call of Oxford St, the Tate or the rest of London awaiting me outside.

Upon my return home, I dallied with the idea of buying my own console to continue my great love affair, but soon rationalised I would never get anything done.

Still, enough friends (clearly with greater self-control than myself) have indulged themselves and many a night out has ended with us ditching town in favour of a Wii tennis tournament.

Some hardcore, World of Warcraft-types might argue this obsession does not constitute real gaming and I would happily concur, simply to distance myself from them. But they are all sold in gaming stores and played on gaming consoles. Ergo, for all intents and purposes, they are video games.

Which makes me - shock, horror - a gamer.

Turns out, there is no type.