Game Over Man

Game over man.  Game over!

Video games have been one of my favorite hobbies and I’ve spent countless hours doing it.  Yes I know huge revelation to the world on that one.  In my early years games and hardware were very primitive and required something called a boot disk.  This was a technical challenge and was my introduction in to the world of computers.  On ancient computers, aka 486 PCs, most games needed a tailor made 3.5 floppy boot disk in order just to have enough system resources to run the game.  My desire to have fun playing a cool game driving a submarine made me have to learn a technical skill.  It doesn’t sound like much but this drive to want to play better games kept me learning computers.  As computer hardware advanced games got bigger and better as well.

I buried myself in reading and comparing pieces of hardware and their performance, and most especially cost.  I found such a sense of self-worth and empowerment just being able to figure out all this stuff by myself going out and purchasing all the individual pieces and building my newest and shiniest gaming rig I could afford.  I was pretty good at it and I often lugged these things around to friends’ houses for a LAN party.  To those of you who aren’t total dorks a LAN party is where a bunch of guys bring their computers together and link them together so we could all play the same game against each other in the same room.  I met a lot of good friends doing this and we had some awesome times.  I even met a few that I consider some of my most valued friendships I’ve ever had.  I often think about the times we spent together not playing computer games and get filled with Joy at those memories.  I also laugh my ass off thinking about some of the insane things I did in the games like jumping off the cliff as fast as possible so the other guys couldn’t kill me all the while yelling insane things like the snakes are after me!

Eventually I grew up.  A bit.  A very little bit and got married!  I’m sure most women will roll their eyes at this one.  But games caused a bit of tension between myself and my new bride.  She got upset at me that after a long day at work I’d go home and straight to the computer and play for too long instead of being with her.  Yes I know ladies shocker!  Eventually I learned not to be an idiot and backed off gaming a wee bit.  When kids rolled around that’s when things really changed.  I knew that spending a crap ton of time on a game vs changing diapers and midnight feedings were not very compatible.  So I cut back a ton because I didn’t want to be that guy who ignored his wife and relegated her to the duty wet nurse, or wife maid.

As the years rolled by and kids grew I still went back to games over and over again.  Not for learning or technical reasons.  My skills working in the technology field far out stripped anything I could possibly learn playing a game.  Instead of what happened in the past something else developed out of my gaming habits.  Escape from reality was the new theme.  I began to isolate myself from my problems and opted not to even think about them.  When things became stressful I buried myself in a game and did what is called ‘power gaming’.  Here is a handy definition from Wikipedia. 

Powergaming (or power gaming) is a style of interacting with games or game-like systems, particularly video games, boardgames, and role-playing games, with the aim of maximising progress towards a specific goal, to the exclusion of other considerations such as storytelling, atmosphere and camaraderie. Due to its focus on the letter of the rules over the spirit of the rules, it is often seen as unsporting, un-fun, or unsociable. 

The games I focused on were not even multiplayer so I didn’t have to play with other people.  The sense of accomplishment I felt from reaching max level on games gave me a false sense of control over my life.  It was my total escape from reality, it was an atmosphere where I could control all the variables.  I had clear goals and outcomes and endless tinkering I could do to achieve some useless skill.  So I created a safe haven of stagnation.  Gaming, and a crap ton of other reasons, allowed me to lose precious skills like knowing how to talk to people.  Even worse it provided me an escape away from dealing with problems with my marriage and addressing the stresses that come from having 3 children on the autism spectrum.

The last 2 years of my life have been the most awakening, transformative, and harrowing of my life.  Things came to a boiling over point in our marriage.  We realized we were speeding uncontrolled towards a cliff that would end what we had built together.  So we went to therapy together.  We learned new skills and we got tools to help us deal with our own individual problems that caused us not to communicate.  Over and over we would have discussions about our problems.  Often times it took me weeks to be able to answer some of her questions.  It took so long because I was so unaccustomed to thinking deeply about anything other than escaping into my perfect world.

Thankfully I no longer take weeks to answer questions.  I can even take as little as 30 seconds now to give an answer about what is going on inside my broken mind.  Through all this growth period I realized I no longer want to escape into myself and play a game.  The movie reference ‘Game over man. Game over!’ applies to me now.  I very rarely play any kind of video game.  It simply does not offer me any kind satisfaction or fun.  Now I have a new escape as I’m sure nobody will be surprised to learn its fly fishing.  I know that doesn’t sound like I learned anything.  But fishing is a very healthy hobby for me.  It gets me out and gives my body exercise I never got playing a game.  It allows me to calm my mind and think just by being surrounded by the beauty of nature.  I get a real thrill catching a fish and admiring the beauty of the animal before I release it back to the waters or into my frying pan.

I still love my good memories of the games I played and recognize the pivotal role they played in developing my career. I do not plan on ever going back and playing video games.  So now it really is GAME OVER.