"When I contemplate the complete collapse of capitalism, I feel like a minor background character in a video game – a faceless pedestrian in Grand Theft Auto, say – being told the powers that be have just discovered a fatal bug in the software and the whole thing may be deleted any second. I may not have enjoyed trudging through my dystopian city, but it was all I knew. Will the pavement now be deleted along with the walls? I have no way of knowing."

Charlie Brooker explains the global economic crisis using gamer-friendly metaphors