Games Gone Feral

There was a time not too long ago—well, maybe it was long ago, but it doesn’t feel like it—where I’d have called myself, without hesitation, a Hardcore Gamer. I also would have called myself a college student majoring in the liberal arts. This probably accounts for all the free time I had to dick around on video games while my housemates were off learning to be doctors and lawyers.

I’d gamed for years prior to college, of course, cutting my teeth on the Sierra and Lucas Arts adventure titles as a kid, then graduating to the hundreds of titles on the Super NES in high school, where my friends and I would cut class for extremely well thought-out reasons ( i.e. one of us had managed to score hash) and play Super Mario Kart stoned for a good six or seven hours until it was time to get serious, unplug the console and go shoot some pool. But it was in college where I made the conscious choice to really knuckle down and waste serious time playing video games.

But then something happened after college. I’m sure most liberal arts grads can sympathize: nobody wants to hire you and, in all fairness, they’re probably right not to want to. I’d spent four years reading and writing about literature, which as it turns out is right up there with being able to burp the alphabet or combine small soap slivers into one big ultra-soap in the shower as far as employable skills go. The high demand I’d anticipated for poorly-researched five thousand word essays about Beowulf failed to materialize. Before I knew it I was temping at crappy office jobs to pay the rent.

Having a crappy job means getting paid a crappy salary, the logic being that if your job required any skill whatsoever they would have hired someone far more talented and expensive than you to do it. A poverty-level income forces one to do without luxuries, like meat not reduced for final sale, pants without holes in the crotch, or beer that isn’t Old Milwaukee Ice (a foul-tasting but refreshingly inexpensive malt liquor that gives you, the frugal beer enthusiast, the opportunity to feel your frontal lobes fusing into a lump of dough while you drink it). I made do without frivolous things like nutrients or vitamins, devoting myself instead to exploring the side effects of a diet consisting of ramen and the Burger King value menu (not to spoil the surprise, but: brick-like poops).

Occasionally I’d visit with friends and check out whatever exciting new game they’d purchased that week, making the obligatory comments about how pimp it looked; but on the whole, gaming was now a hobby embarrassingly out of my price range. Without the latest video card or a next-gen console, I was aware of video games mostly as abstract concepts. Not wanting to look out of touch, I’d take pains to camouflage my gaming ignorance, mostly by checking in with Penny Arcade occasionally so I could parrot back the comic’s opinions as my own when talking with friends.

Time passed and games evolved. Something called Halo was released. Online console multiplayer became commonplace. A game came out that allowed people to beat hookers to death in the street—since that was all I kept hearing about it I was left wondering if there was more to it or if hooker-beating was the core gameplay. Some idiot named Tony Hawk kept pushing games at me on TV, touting them as extreme and in my face, and I sincerely wished he’d stop.

At some point the crappy temp jobs segued into decent writing jobs. And while I suddenly had the money to game, I now didn’t have the time. Shit. I grabbed an Xbox and a stack of used games to dick around with, but typically I was playing titles a good year or so after their release date—for all intents and purposes, I might as well have not been gaming at all. “You played Guitar Hero yet, Jay?” “Ha ha! No. I only play games nobody cares about anymore. Like Barbie Horse Adventures. It’s f**king intense!”

Then something unexpected happened: I got a job in the video game industry. Suddenly, being out of date with my gaming wasn’t a quirk so much as a professional liability. Perhaps more importantly, I finally had a really good excuse, for the first time in years, to really knuckle down and waste serious time playing video games.

“It’s not fun,” I explain to my wife. “You think I like spending my weekends playing games instead of listening to you? This is research.”

“You sort of look like you’re having fun,” she’ll say. “I can hear you hooting from the other room.”

“This is hell,” I maintain. “It’s hell but I’m doing it for us. Can you grab me another beer, by the way?”

I’ve now spent about a year wading back into the deep end of the gaming pool, doggy-paddling out to where my feet can’t touch the bottom with inflatable water wings snug on my arms. I thought I’d use the occasional blog post to jot down my observations. I’ve been out of touch for a while. And anyway, maybe it’ll give you a chance to see things you take for granted with a fresh pair of eyes.

(Or, you know, you can just laugh at me. Whatever kills a few minutes on the net, right?)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 25th, 2007 at 6:17 pm and is filed under General, Humor. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.