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On Virtual Virtues
September 28, 2004
So, last night, I return home from my basketball team's third loss in, oh, three games. It's a work in progress, but that's another story.
Anyway.
In my usual obsessive effort to accomplish as many things as possible in one smooth motion, I gathered up my work clothes, shoes, briefcase, gym bag, and some miscellaneous trash from my back seat, bumped the car door closed with my still-sweaty butt, and then decided to go get my mail.
The mail was disappointing. Having paid off many of my debts this year, I've realized that the threatening letters from credit card companies and collection agencies I used to get were not only better than nothing, but they gave a comforting sense of familiarity in the way they reminded me of my childhood and my relationship with my parents.
But there, on the sole trashcan in the complex's mail room, was a shrink-wrapped copy of a gaming magazine, complete with a disk full of playable demos. And I, as fate and my chromosomal makeup would have it, own an XBox. It was addressed to someone else, but had clearly been placed on the area informally designated and universally understood to proclaim, "I'm too good for this junk mail, but you might want it." I've always hoped for some unwanted, misdelivered pornography, but the closest I've come was a Nordstrom's catalog, which doesn't even usually have lingerie in it.
I looked about warily, then, in an amazing feat of dexterity, slipped the package under my arm.
The magazine was fascinating, obviously created for people who play video games for over 10 hours a day. I own an XBox, bought with a gift certificate on a lark, but it gets played maybe 10 hours a month. I play: one basketball game that I can't master at all, one driving game that I am completely incompetent at, Tetris, which is devastating for any obsessive-compulsive personality, and a game called Splinter Cell. In Splinter Cell, you're a ninja-like American covert operative who apparently owns only some sort of wetsuit and speaks only in a low, gravelly series of wry threats.
One of the games reviewed was Def Jam: Fight For New York. Populated by hardcore rappers portraying violent street thugs, the game's depth is apparently amazing, with appearances by over 40 hip-hop superstars, and the ability to outfit your player in appropriate attire, including Jacob the Jeweler. The game was obviously developed by people who think "stereotype" is a question about what you listen to your Chingy album on.
The game challenges you to fight in up to five distinct "disciplines": wrestling, street fighting, martial arts, kickboxing, and... submission? Personally, if I'm playing a video game, I'm looking to escape reality, and I want the challenge of trying something new. If by "submission" they mean letting someone kick the crap out of me, then I've finally found a game I can excel at, but I'm just not interested.
The magazine also provides helpful tips that accompany screen shots of the game. For example, if you smash your opponent's head into a car door three times or so, the door will pop open, after which you can insert said head into the opening and use the door to continue the attempted decapitation of your opponent, probably in retribution for comments commonly made in the game like, "I'm gonna rip your tongue out and lick my ass with it."
Maybe I'm too old for this. In Splinter Cell, one has the option to be non-lethal: stealth is generally rewarded, and I take it as a personal challenge of my honor and respect for life to accomplish my mission with as few casualties as possible. I get a special sense of pride from sneaking up behind someone silently, then uncoiling like a cat, putting the would-be evil doer in a headlock and dragging them in the darkness, where I then knock them unconscious, usually adding my own wry one-liner to the action: "It's bedtime for Bonzo. And you're the chimp, chump." WHACK!
The only exceptions, of course, are when the opponents speak in foreign accents. Some deeply-ingrained or hereditary Republican impulse in me then feels it's OK to open fire, though carefully, so as not to injure any innocent English-speaking bystanders, or worse, to run out of ammo too soon.
It is addictive, the challenge of beating these games. I'll look up and see I've been playing for hours, realize my hands are kind of sore, and I'll decide to take a break. I'll pause the game, switch the television back to cable. Often times, I'll catch a few minutes of the news. When I watch footage from Iraq or Sudan, I'm disappointed by the lack of pithy and witty dialogue accompanying the death and destruction. Maybe it's just not getting reported, the things that soldiers and rebels say before they off someone. Furthermore, almost exactly no one at all wears sleek black stealth outfits, instead wearing standard camouflage, or khaki, or tattered and bloody shirts or robes.
After a while, I'll switch the TV back to XBox. I unpause the game, and there's my character standing in midst of dead people that didn't talk American, a mission almost, but not quite accomplished. Invariably, I start the level over, holster my pistol, and I stay in the shadows until the Russian guard ambles by. I grab him, drag him back into the darkness, and alone in my living room, I mutter, "Sweet dreams, comrade."
Posted by Rob at September 28, 2004 04:13 PM