Confessions of a video game widow
by
Fran Hortop
uploaded: 30-11-2004
If there's a PlayStation on your boyfriend's Christmas list this year, be warned. It could be the beginning of the end, says Fran Hortop
For weeks now, the man with whom I share my living space (that’s currently all it boils down to – he used to be my boyfriend), has been getting jittery about something he maintains is the most exciting thing to have happened to him since Luke Skywalker first waggled his glowstick. A momentous time, truly to be savoured, the release of Halo 2, Half-Life 2, GTA San Andreas, Metroid Prime 2, (and many, many more) has caused havoc in our household. If you don’t recognise the latest video game releases, then I would suggest you make it your business to find out about them sharpish, and then make sure these little bastards never darken your door. Know thy enemy!
It may all seem very innocuous to begin with. You allow one consul and a couple of games into the house – maybe a fighting game or a weird Japanese horror - and spend a few happy hungover Sundays playing together with your loved one in your pyjamas. No harm done to anyone.
But then one console becomes two. More variety, but also more cables down the back of the telly and more potential for rows about when it’s time to play. Hollyoaks or Grand Theft Auto? – it’s a debate more polarising than foxhunting and with just as much potential for violence. It’s around this time you realise a wedge has been silently, but inexorably driven between the happy couple.
Around this time, a little handheld number to play with while waiting at the bus-stop, or in conversational lulls at dinner might seem like a good idea to your beloved gamer. And a second telly, of course – no time to waste on pesky squabbles while there are zombies to be pulverised, and cars to be smashed.
And then comes the discovery of ‘massively multiplayer’ online gaming. Here, the gamer gets to play games with tens, sometimes hundreds of other gamers all over the world. Without the normal rigmarole of social interaction, you know, conversation, getting to know one another, knowing what the other person looks like, he can whoop it up in, say, a war game scenario and form his own crack squads of geeky buddies without ever having to physically shake hands with them. It’s like playing action men all over again. Did action man have a girlfriend? He most certainly did not. You have now become obsolete.
And so here you are. After a flurry of Xmas games releases, you find yourself in the most curious predicament. You and your partner are strangers inhabiting different worlds who meet only at the save point (bed) and at the refuelling station (the kitchen). While he indulges himself from cock’s crow till the small hours, you have faded into the background, a disappointingly corporeal intrusion into his paradise of virtual reality where one moment he’s an urban gangsta and an interstellar warrior the next.
The loud and very ostentatious whoops of joy, or bluer than blue language of consternation coming from his gamer’s den as he plays are enough to send you out on the streets in search of oblivion. It’s the most fun he’s had in years, don’t you know! He stays up late, doesn’t ask you how your day went, barely notices when you stay out and get pissed, ignores that you reek of booze and self-loathing, and he couldn’t even give an arse about the fact you’re only feeding him pot-noodles and cheese-on-toast.
You are a video game widow. Let this be a lesson to you. If you want a man with overlarge thumbs, then go ahead, invite the GameBoy in, but be warned, once it’s crossed your threshold it’ll suck the life out of you both. Game over.
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"Hollyoaks or Grand Theft Auto? – it’s a debate more polarising than foxhunting and with just as much potential for violence" |
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