(Image credit: Rockstar)

I'm in my fifties and far too old to use youth slang. But even I've come to realise that in recent years, the kids have started using "NPC", aka non-player character, as a term of ridicule for people in real life.

That makes sense, because typically in video games, the people who walk past you on the street are visual wallpaper. They give the impression that other humans are around, but they have no individuality.

This is exactly why the 2021 film Free Guy, in which Ryan Reynolds lives a repetitive, meaningless existence in a video game world, worked so well.…