I Became A Gamer
My Fellow Gamers;
It’s getting a little heated out there isn’t it? A lot of accusations are being thrown around. A lot of negativity is starting to wear on a lot of people. Unethical journalists. Misogynistic gamers. Secretive group think collectives. Plots to physically injure involved parties in this whole #GamerGate argument. It’s strange, but mere weeks ago it was considered cool to be a gamer. It was starting to be culturally acceptable to say “I play video games,” and have people nod and smile rather than raise an eyebrow and look at you like you were mentally impaired in some way. And yet here we are once again questioning why it’s no longer acceptable to call yourself a gamer now. It’s become cultural taboo once more. A slanderous term. A self-degrading term.
An insult.
But I don’t consider it an insult. In fact some of the fondest memories I have has been as a gamer. The moment someone picks up a controller or fiddles with the touchpad to interact with some pixelated world; when someone motions a hand in front of a Kinect or grabs up a Wii-mote and threads across countless worlds and levels, then they’ve become a gamer. You’ve entered a world of imagination and joy and escapist fun. I don’t care if you consider yourself a ‘hardcore’ or even a ‘casual’ gamer, because that one word binds them both together. Gamer. It’s a word that binds us all together.
And it doesn’t care what color you are, what religion you practice, what sexual identity you chose to express, what age you are or how much you make. It doesn’t care if you’re male or female. It doesn’t care about your political beliefs. It only cares that you keep playing, that you keep a certain level of joy in your hearts for it. And so I want to take the time to share a few experiences with you all and why I think that being a gamer isn’t bad. It isn’t evil. It isn’t taboo. It isn’t just a word. It’s people. It’s experiences through life both good and bad. And it is what we make of ourselves that define us as a gamer.
* Inspired, respectfully, by Paul Harvey’s rendition of ‘God Made a Farmer’*
And on the 5th year of my life, I looked out to the old Atari box my mom had bought and had my grandfather hook up to that old 10 inch black and white TV we all sat around when it was too cold or too wet to do anything outside. When I finally picked up that old boxy controller, sat down and blasted my first Space Invader, It was then that I realized
That I became a Gamer.
I’d play in the soft hours of morning, stop and play again when my chores were done, go to school, do my homework, eat supper and play one last time before bedtime. Laughing with my mom, my grandmother, my cousin. It was these moments and the joys that it brought me that made me glad
That I became a Gamer.
And as I grew older and the world changed and stopped, only to change again; as I stopped playing that old and tired but worthwhile Atari box, I changed then to the arcades of Pac-Man and Donkey Kong and Dirk the Daring and eventually to Double Dragon and Afterburner. As I scraped and scavenged and went hungry some days at the thought of spending that dollar twenty on school cafeteria lunch, just so I had enough quarters to meet my old friends once again on a slow Sunday afternoon, I was happy
That I became a Gamer.
And as I grew older still and eventually saw a rebirth in the eyes of Mario, Link and Samus; as I punched, jumped, kicked and spun in the colorful worlds of Ninja Gaiden and Final Fantasy and Paper Mario; as I roamed the lands of Hyrule and Castlevania and brought the light to shine in darkest darkness, I was proud
That I became a Gamer.
And eventually, as we all do, as I grew to an adult and traded in plastic weapons for the real ones, as a solider in defense of his country and his countryman; as I traveled to the dusty shoals of Iraq and wept for a family butchered by despotic men; as I wept for the 2 year old child that had been desecrated by the evil that men do, and as I came home from war with scars both physical and spiritual; as I found softness and solace in worlds far removed from this one, with people who helped me to laugh and love again; from people of all walks of life and from parts of the world I’ve yet to see with my own eyes, I was honored
That I became a Gamer.
And as I found the courage to write and laugh and love and cry at the games, the gamers, and the gaming industry around me; as I wondered and wrote and wondered some more about the lives and the legacies and the legends of the gaming micro-verse, I find myself less than whole if I left it all behind me now, because for better or worse I know why
That I became a Gamer.
And so I blasted, flayed, slayed, fragged, slagged, and vaporized enough Locust, Covenant, Zombies, and Demonspawn to fill an entire metropolitan city, and yet still had time to enjoy the little things in life. The times spent building and breaking things in Lego Batman, and Viva Pinata, and thinking deeply on the narrative of Braid and Alan Wake and how it can also fail us at the end of Mass Effect 3.
As I wrote about such things, looked out to the changing (for better and worse) landscape of the gaming universe, I still find myself chuckling and sighing and wiping a tear both joyous and sad away from my face; a face that had seen both the beauty and the ugliness of this world and others for a long, long time. Despite the hate and the anger and the sentiments thrown at me for saying it now in these, our most troubled times, I am proud, and always will be proud of the day
That I became a Gamer.
So how about you, community? When did you become a gamer? What was your first or best memories? What is your worst? I invite any and all to share. I want visitors and strangers from all walks of life to come by. Invite friends to stop in, spread the message, ask people both great and small. I don’t care who you are. I don’t care what you’ve played. Judge no one for being a gamer. Because when we do, we judge ourselves.
“We are all bound up together in one great bundle of humanity, and society cannot trample on the weakest and feeblest of its members without receiving the curse in its own soul.” ~ Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
I wish I could recall my very first time picking up an Atari controller to play Pitfall. I don’t remember that first time, but I remember other times picking up that controller to play the same game, the same levels, only this time a little bit better, a little bit faster.
I remember thinking about the events of a game’s story and the mysteries it left unsolved and they, well, left me mystified. I wanted to know more, to maybe solve the mysteries, so I turned to novels related to a game at a time when I hated reading because it was something forced on me in school and stories I didn’t want to read.
I remember rushing over to my friends house everyday to play Halo until we had achieved every medal on every level for beating it on a certain difficulty. When that was done, we moved to multiplayer modes against each other and invited more friends over to play with us.
I remember getting frustrated with a game’s ending so much that I took to the internet to see if I was the only one. This event led me to become more knowledgeable of the industry I spent so much time invested in. It led me to wishing I hadn’t done so because of all the controversy and criticism and harassment and so on. While recent events and others like it have made me become disinterested in something I have enjoyed all my life, I remember something you put into words better than I have: Games don’t care who or what you are, they are there for you to enjoy (or not) and no one should be able to take that away from you or degrade you for it.
Thank you for the enjoyable read once again my friend, my fellow gamer.
One word: Colecovision. My course was set from then on.