Just last week I was trying to avoid overhearing a conversation between two enthusiastic guys who were alternately praising and criticizing the achingly realistic war-simulation computer game “Black Hawk Down.” Both liked it, although they preferred “Medal of Honor” for sheer realism, excitement and total blood factor.
These were not teenagers, by the way. This was my boss and one of our programmers.
All around me folks are apparently deriving great personal satisfaction from their computer games and bonding with each other as they meet to share their experiences and advice on getting past tricky levels. I admit that in my time I’ve spent plenty of hours over a hot game console myself, but somewhere over the years I lost the devotion needed to actually complete a computer game. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but around here it does leave me feeling like a designated driver during New Year’s Eve.
One of my co-workers (who shall remain nameless, to prevent retaliation and general snubbing), a person who appears healthy and even moderately athletic, is currently building a cabinet for his monitor and game systems to simulate an arcade machine. With just a little work he could expand it into something he could sit in. I suggested he expand it further, adding furniture and basic life support facilities, and take up the entire room. He could rush to it every Friday evening and climb in, surrounded by water bottles and salt tablets, to emerge Monday morning blinking in the sunlight with tracks on his arm from the IV drip and a killer high score. I was joking. He seemed intrigued.
There is a classic psychological study wherein lab rats are placed in a cage and provided with food, water, and a button that directly stimulates the pleasure centers in their brains. Once they discover how it works the rats will push the button over and over, ignoring everything else, until they die from thirst. I’d be interested in a study to see how much faster this might work if the rats could push the button in just the right way to get a hidden ability spinning back-kick, three extra lives, and a key.
At home, my sons proudly display their superiority over lab rats by periodically surfacing for food and drink before diving back into the digital depths. Their tendency to speak about their games as if they were real adds to the occasional bit of confusion. Once when my oldest was 15 he came into the living room after spending the previous seven hours playing “Gangsters,” a very detailed 1920’s simulation game.
“Dad, I’m not sure what I should do about my future,” he said.
I was delighted. He was talking to me! And about real stuff! I put on my Concerned-Yet-Open dad face and asked him what his goals were.
“My accountant said I made too much money last year, and I can’t decide whether to open a casino or another brothel.”
What every parent longs to hear. I think I just stammered something mindless about “everyone loves card games” and he trotted back to his life of crime.
Just recently, his 10-year-old brother ran from his game of “Grand Theft Auto II” to dash in and shout, “I figured out how to make the school bus crash off the bridge!” I was faster on the uptake this time. I assured him that his mother and I were very proud.
One of my friends has taken to instant-messaging me at work every 20 minutes or so to tell me what her “Sims” are doing. This highly addictive life-simulation game allows you to create people and control their lives to varying degrees and has forced her to keep a kitchen timer by her computer to help remind her to attend occasionally to other necessary functions such as eating and, time permitting, bathing.
Personally, I wonder who’s controlling whom. This month, not being satisfied with expansion packs that allowed her digital people to live, date, vacation, party, and have pets, she bought “The Sims Superstar” to allow her Sims to enter the world of fashion, movie stars, divas and general superstardom that she herself has always scorned and ridiculed. I’m sure this makes sense, somehow.
With sales in the millions, such hyper-realistic games are plainly shoving their way into the zeitgeist. Were I the suspicious type, I’d think that President Bush himself had just finished playing “Command and Conquer: Operation Iraqi Freedom” with a high score and low casualty rate (but without finding any of the hidden levels).
But mostly I just smile and nod when everyone tells me about his or her virtual successes, and inside I pity them a little. Why would anyone obsess on such a meaningless, time-wasting activity is completely beyond me.
And then I rush home to decide if I’m going to watch one of my hundreds of special edition Criterion expanded, limited-edition, four-disc, director’s-cut box set DVDs, or go buy a few dozen more.