Video Gamer

PART 1: My Characters Stats

I’m in the bathroom looking at my character in the mirror. It’s through the mirror that I can see his stats and abilities. I’ve been working incessantly on my faithful character for over thirty years and even though I didn’t get to customise him when I first began playing, I’ve nevertheless grown a fondness for him. Looking at his past experiences I break them down into categories to organise the jumble.



Fighting

When Tekken 3 came out, my brother and I got pretty hooked. It was because we shared a mutual hated and the game gave us a perfectly acceptable outlet in which to humiliate and vent our frustrated venom upon each others body. We would play firstly in rounds, but those matches never lasted long enough, so we extended the rounds and reduced the damage vainly trying to prolong the experience of kicking each others asses. However this still ended too quickly, so we would go into training mode and fight each other with unlimited time and only a number to track the damage. These matches would go on for hours, each of us experts in the different fighting techniques of our characters, able switch fighting stances and adapt our rhythm depending on how the other would proceed. Action vs. reaction, affect vs. effect. I would always have more points but that would never stop him finding a new way to break my attack patterns.

Once I discovered how to effectively use interrupts the dance was pretty much one sided and he gave up shortly thereafter. Sometimes I wish I’d just let the arrogant little prick win as perhaps then we’d have at least one point of commonality. Something to relate to each other and maybe bring us back from estrangement. But being the vicious survivalist I am, I neither gave no quarter nor expected any. This was my world and the only form of respect I could show him was to treat him like a fellow contender, not the pitiful snot nosed shit that reflected my own arrogance back at me.



Adventure

You can fuse Materia to weapons in order to enhance your characters abilities in Final Fantasy VII. For example, my Buster sword has two slots for Materia and if I fuse a counter Materia my character will automatically give a counter attack each time someone attacks him, this will cost me nothing and give me a huge advantage especially if I link it with a drain Materia which will mean that the damage I do will be returned to me in the form of healing.

My character currently has a Diploma of Information Technology fused, which though effectively useless in everyday encounters allowed me to embark on the Bachelor of Arts Materia quest. I’m told that it wouldn’t really help me in direct way as it wouldn’t lead to any tangible job prospects. I was recommended that I try the Accounting or Engineering Quests as they were very popular and offered solid benefits despite the mind numbing tediousness of the journey. However these quests would require I sacrifice my dreams/hopes/aspirations of happiness/desires and knowing how selfish I am meant that there was no way I could complete these quests.

After all I wasn’t going to university for a job so the choice was clearly obvious.



MMORPGs

Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games allow you to play adventure games over the internet with people across the world. These games differ in content but all offer a selection of mundane easy tasks you can complete in order to make some quick cash with minimal danger to your character. You pay a subscription fee for monthly access and the right to do repetitive tasks over and over again. You gain your money, but someone else who is more powerful than you or has been playing longer or simply has taken advantage of third party cheating scripts comes along and steals all your money. You can buy protection insurance against this happening. It is stipulated in most contracts that you don’t own your virtual character. If you stop paying, your character will be deleted.

I discovered a MMORPG called Guild Wars which was free to play once you paid for the initial outlay. I haven’t seen my friends for over a year. But we used to meet every night in virtuality and do mundane tasks together. I cancelled my subscription when no-one could meet me one night because they had other things to do. We were training to take on the Australian tournament cup, which would boost our guilds standing significantly.



Simulation

It started with SimCity, which was remarkable because the emphasis wasn’t on destruction and instead focused on creation. This is what began the whole simulations genealogy and The Sims is the most popular incarnation and aimed at a generation already self obsessed, this game allowed you to create a virtual character and control every aspect of their life. If you didn’t send them to the toilet when their bladder was full, they would pee themselves and cry. Everyone spent countless hours creating virtual families, virtual neighbours and virtual lovers; controlling every aspect of their interactions.

My characters all live in fabulous houses. One character per house; no one talks to each other outside because they never leave their state of the art videogame consoles which I bought for them. I’m playing watching them playing. I wonder if they’re playing The Sims and I can’t help looking over my shoulder to wave at someone, maybe god because I’d like my characters to wave at me sometimes. In the silence of my room, the laughter echoes only in my own ears.



Sports

Three important people are at my place playing Tony Hawk’s Underground after work. It’s 3:30 in the morning and we’re all tired but having fun. Most of the fun comes not from playing, but rather insulting the other player and putting him off his trick line, or forcing him to go for too much and stuff it up. It’s my turn, and being the asshole that I am, I pulled a trick worth practically nothing, smirking in superiority and comfortable in the knowledge that my opponent will stuff up and I’ll win by a minimum of effort. The shame of the humiliation drives my opponent to get up, stretch and state how late it is getting. Within a few minutes, everyone is gone and I’m left alone to bask in the glory of my victory. I can hear them outside near their cars, talking with each other enthusiastically about things of which I have no comprehension or experience while I set up another trick line to practice my skills for next time.



Arcade

The arcade genre is synonymous with action games and coin-operated machine games. Pac-man and Space Invaders were the pioneers and eventually every true gamer will enter an arcade to isolate themselves to play socially. My greatest victory came during my TAFE days when I’d attained unlimited dominance of X-Men vs. Street Fighter in the cafeteria. For three hours, undefeated I was king. In my magnanimous generosity I even allowed my opponents to select my characters. I had not returned to class because the clash of battle held me enthralled and my skill made me a titan in the eyes of my peers. After a while there were no more challengers, I looked around for my friends but they had long since gone. The cafeteria had closed down and the only sounds were from the machine beckoning me to continue playing.



Strategy

Homeworld: Cataclysm is without a doubt my favourite game. When it first came out the few friends I’d had at that time weren’t interested in videogames. So I played against A.I opponents and when they became too easy I started adding in multiple A.I opponents. When I’d mastered that, I started teaming the A.I players together. And once that became too easy I linked them all and gave them massive starting bonuses while reducing my own. The only way to win in that scenario was to leech off their resources, much like a dominant person will surround himself with submissive personalities. Eventually I would become powerful enough to subsume the enemy and become the only personality to exist in the universe. To this day I still have the dreams of my ships hopelessly outgunned, outnumbered and the indescribable joy of throwing yourself into the horrible jaws of damnation without fear. The thrill of coming battle; of angst forgotten; of loneliness irrelevant; of everything focusing into a singular beam of determination; of incommunicable power in the battle cry: FUCK YOU I WILL NEVER BOW TO YOUR WILL.

I never won against those odds. Each time my base ship would be pulverised after 8 or 12 hours of unrelenting attacks. I never felt sad or remorseful and though I could load an auto-save game, I never felt any urge to do so. Instead I’d felt great. The loss would cleanse me and I would start a new skirmish with the same hopeless odds, the same scream of defiance unreleased in my throat.




PART 2: The Game

Life is the name of the game and you’d think with all the worlds I’d saved, all the adventures I’d had, all the ways in which I’d perfected myself I’d be able to replicate those victories; transplant them into everyday interactions. It seems my character still hasn’t realised there is no SAVE/LOAD function embedded into the fabric of existence. There is no redo so here, I fear every move.

However I can communicate freely with other gamers, they comprehend my experience.


“Have you speed clocked any titles?” Josh asks me. He’s a true fanatic. Speed clocking requires insane determination and practice.

“Nah, I get bored too easily, I tried it with sonic and got around 32.”

“Pfft! That’s noob time. The record is under ten.” He says dismissively. “Tell me you’ve nailed an ultimate weapon.”

“Are you kidding me?! WTF dude. That shit is standard. Emerald was my favourite, it took me ages though.”

“Yeah you looking forward to the next one?” Josh follows up.

“Not really, I’m RTS at heart. Old school Cataclysm fan-boy.”

“No shit!” He exclaimed surprised. “Are you a Beastie?”

“Haha, nah Kuun-Lan every time. Love that long range plasma cannon.”

“It’s not as useful as the infection beam. You still play?”

“When the occasion calls for it. You do realise infecting a drones is useless.”

“Fuck you, drone bitch! Let‘s see what you‘ve got.” He laughed.


The Dreadnought, which is the Kiith Somtaaw’s most powerful ship, is immune to the effects of The Beasts Infection beam and also easily capable of taking out a mothership by itself. However, defeating a mothership with a Dreadnought is considered standard fare; no big deal. To defeat a Beast mothership with a collection of Drone frigates is extremely insulting because while the drone carriers themselves are susceptible to infection (which would simply force the units out of your control and into that of the player controlling The Beast), the drones themselves are easily discarded when infected and remade automatically at the frigate after a few seconds. So in essence you simply send in a drone attack and keep the frigates out of range, which is hard to achieve considering the arsenal and abilities of The Beast.

It is quite fascinating to watch a Beast mothership being systematically torn apart by thousands of drones. Very few gamers can achieve the insane level of maniac attention to detail required to attain this method of destruction. In Josh’s eyes, I had proven myself as an elite gamer by one simple phrase, and we had bonded over a singular experience outside everyday perception. There is a joy here at the experience of past battles, the impossibility of victory against an unlimited adversary and of the coming battle with Josh. For a few seconds, I couldn’t feel alone or isolated through my experiences.




Conclusion

I stare in the mirror at the counter for game time and compare it with life time. My life time for the last decade breaks down into the following equation:


(24 hours X 365 days X 10 years) = 87600 raw hours.

87600 raw hours - (sleep hours (29200) - work hours (15600) - body maintenance hours (14600) - miscellaneous time (7300) = 20900 of personal time.


20900 personal time - 15782 gaming time = 5118 of non gaming life time.


It so simple when you reduce it to a mathematical statistic. I compared my stats with that of the few close friends I have and their non gaming life time comes out much higher than mine. It is without question that I look at these raw numbers and realise that I’m developmentally deficient in this world and ill prepared to deal with everyday situations that everyone around me seems to glide so smoothly through. Though it makes it easier to understand why communicating with non gaming people is so hard for me, the knowledge doesn’t make it any easier to bear nor erase my many complexes and anxieties I’ve subsequently been burdened with.

I switch off my game console, knowing with the heart breaking agony which a substance abuser must also feel when they swear off their poison, that soon it will be switched on again when I need refuge from the unfamiliar and incomprehensible world I’m forced to exist in without any SAVE/LOAD functionality.



Glossary


Final Fantasy VII: has been widely regarded by many online polls as the greatest game of all time. It is an epic tale of complexity that redefines itself along the way and has included a staggering amount of content. Enemies turn out to be friends and even the hero becomes something new and unexpected. The game is a moving adventure of exploration that becomes turn based during combat. It takes on average around 45 hours to complete if you know what you’re doing and skipping much of the challenges. If you’re trying to complete everything, the game can take a minimum of 120 hours to complete.


Guild Wars: A MMORPG with emphasis on team combat and skill instead of statistical dominance. There is no monthly fee, instead you pay for the initial purchase of the game. The focus moves from the singular experience to team play and co-operation but was unbalanced by people who had found ultra rare items and the fact that certain character classes had much more power than others.


Homeworld Cataclysm: Is the expansion to Homeworld a Real Time Strategy (RTS) set in space which utilises a third dimensional Z axis (a feat that is extremely hard to accomplish). The game is a fast paced action orientated experience, requiring you to deploy a tactical army quickly with limited resources against multiple opponents. The story deals with an alien organism codenamed The Beast is discovered in a derelict artifact hidden in an asteroid field. It activates an infection which subsumes flesh and technology and merges both into a singular collective with the one aim of spreading itself across the universe and you play the unlikely heroes that must defeat it.


The Sims: is a reality game where you create characters and put them in houses which you furnish. As you play your “life” you gain money to buy new things and see how your characters interact with them. This game has a staggering amount of expansion packs that give you new items and interactivity. There is no destructive element incorporated into these games.


Tekken: The Tekken series is a 3 dimensional fighting game that focuses on combinational attacks and linking attack routines. It is theoretically possible to remain in a constant attacking state due to the versatility of the fighting engine. It is very complex to play and each character requires memorisation of over 300 different combinational attacks to master. Thinking and planning attack strings needs to be lighting fast and dynamically change to adjust for your opponents’ movements and attacks.


Tony Hawks Underground: Is an extreme sports game involving skateboarding in random environments ranging to urban to otherworldly. The games physics stretch reality and allow impossible moves to be completed, sacrificing realism for entertainment. You gain points by doing tricks and multipliers by linking those tricks in one continuous run. The more tricks you pull off, the more multipliers are added to your potential score however as the tricks become more numerous, so too does the sensitivity and difficulty of balancing each trick. If you fall, you’ll get no points from the beginning of the run.


X-Men vs. Street Fighter: Is a fighting game based on the famous Street Fighter franchise from Capcom. You select two players and while one fights, the other recovers health and you can switch between them at any time. You play on a 2 dimensional axis and simply have to reduce your opponents two characters health to zero to achieve victory. Though you may link combination attacks, the attacks themselves are stand-alone and easy to execute.