you are viewing archives from 2004

she got game

Last weekend, A. and I had errands to run. On the agenda:

- look for plants for our new planters
- purchase various sundries at Target
- purchase Sims 2 at Best Buy

(Although I doubt that we’re the only over-thirty couple to put video game purchases on our to-do list, I realize that we may be in the minority. I find this a good thing.)

I missed the first Sims debut, as I was a long-time Mac user. Mac Users as a whole cling steadfastly to their Mac-ness. A smiling icon at start up! An interface so simple a rabid monkey (or me) could use it! I would sniff haughtily while I would scan over PC Gamer at the newsstand. The Mac isn’t so gauche. Hrmf.

Older SlackBrother J. and I got our first Atari 2600 (classic wood grain, natch) at seven? eight? years old? I don’t remember the date exactly, but I do remember hooking it up to the back of the TV set, my father getting out the screwdriver to make sure that the connections were tight at the switch box. I recall the rubbery smell of the joysticks, and how they’d crackle with first use. The crick in my neck I received from craning upwards to look at the TV, as my preferred playing position was cross-legged on the floor, or flat on my stomach, my elbows propped up on a pillow. I remember the dammits! and the christs! and the occasional fucks! uttered as my brother and I bested my father in Space Invaders.

Video games took us out of our tiny little lives and brought us into the lives of the Warlords, were we had to knock out the enemy’s fortress pixel by pixel until victory. Or into the world of Breakout, where one little dash had to bounce a tiny little ball heavenward knocking out pixel by pixel, in an effort to free himself. Or Adventure, where we, as a little dot, had to kill the dragons and recapture our lost castle!

Although mostly, it was just destroying things pixel by pixel.

But it was cool. And SlackMom was in favor, as Video Games Improved Hand-Eye Coordination. So time in front of the TV wasn’t monitored. We could spend hours perfecting our strategy (do you kill the Space Invaders row by row horizontally or vertically?) or mapping out our progress (did anyone finish Raiders of the Lost Ark?) or looking for Easter Eggs.

As I got older, the Atari was replaced for a short while with a Sega, then a Nintendo. I Super-Mario-Brothers-it-up for a bit, but like any good gamer girl, my game was Tetris. I would play for hours, beating my brothers, my mother, my father. Years passed and I entered college. The Nintendo started to falter so Older SlackBrother J. and I bought mom and dad a SuperNintendo one Christmas. (The same Christmas that elicited this quote.) Tetris 2 was purchased along with the SuperNintendo, and it was a whole new season of merriment. My parents would practice Tetris into the wee hours of the night, and then challenge me when I came home for the holidays. Beating Nina meant a victory dance and bragging rights for the day.

But as I sent more and more time in California, I spent less and less time at home gaming. I’d occasionally hit up the Pak-Man Arcade in Pasadena to play pinball and classic arcade games, taking dates there and being not-so-humble when I kicked their ass at pinball. I even went so far as to purchase a classic Atari 2600 on eBay. I still remember the look of horror and respect in the shopkeep’s eyes when I went into his gaming store and asked do you have any Atari cartridges? He brought out a dusty box and told me I could have then for a buck a game. I bought him out.

But it wasn’t until I started dating A. that I saw what I was missing out on. I assumed A. was a Mac guy, being a creative-type – a writer and an artist and an animator. He scoffed at me. No, I have a PC. Occasionally he’d fire up a game when I was over at his house, and I’d watch like a good little geek girlfriend.

Finally, in 2003, I had had enough. I want a PC, I told him.

I’ve been through Star Wars Galaxies (and still playing – although A. and I have moved to the Starsider Galaxy, for those playing along) and Doom 3 (which I don’t play often, as my rule is no video games during the day and I have spooky zombie dreams if I play before bed.). Our Xbox goes through sporadic use, having been burned out on Halo and currently Star Wars:Battlefront. I still like being taken out of my tiny little life and beating, blowing, and shooting things up. I’ve decapitated zombies, I’ve fought alongside Lord Vader and against him. I’ve saved planets and gone into head-to-head combat with A. My competitive nature is assuaged, and occasionally, I even get to win. Sure, there’s a lot of dammits! and christs! and the occasional fuck! uttered as Daisy just looks at us from her pillow, slightly snoozing with one eye open.

But last weekend was something new: The Sims 2.

We returned home, our game booty in hand, and fired up our computers. We inserted disc one and disc two and waited and switched to disc three and four and waited and restarted and suddenly, we were playing.

There seems to be two minds on playing the Sims: creating people you know, and creating people to torture them: trapping them in a room with no doors, never cleaning their house, not giving them a refrigerator so they starve to death, that sort of thing. But I was going for the first option: I created A. (Maxwell Mysterioso) and I (Sasha Mysterioso). I gave us snazzy clothes, bought is a little house, and made our aspirations job-related.

What I didn’t realize is that simply putting Sims in the same house does not give them an automatic romantic relationship. So I tried making our Sims talk to each other. A no-go. Maxwell taunted Sasha the entire time, and Sasha taunted him right back. Maxwell was constantly putting his fingers in his ears and making the international nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah sound.

Fine, I thought, I’ll get them jobs. Maxwell found a job right away, working in a politician’s office.

Sasha, on the other hand, was only offered jobs like pickpocket and golf caddy.

I’ll hold out, I thought.

As Maxwell got up every day to go to work, Sasha slept late. Day after day she would check the paper, but found no jobs to her liking. Maxwell got one promotion, then two. His mood meter was platinum: he was always fed, always bathed, always had just the right amount of social contact.

Sasha, on the other hand, didn’t progress as neatly as the days went by. She didn’t get dressed. She would only shower when she needed it. She was never in the mood to work out, and her social contact was limited. She would sit on the couch on play video games in her pajamas. She didn’t know anyone, and her lack of social contact drove her so batty that she began talking to an Imaginary Rabbit that would fall from the sky. Every so often she would collapse to the floor, crying about her lack of a job. She would pass out from lack of energy, because she had nightmares all night.

I turned to A. I don’t think I like this game.

Why?

I pointed at the screen. My character was in her underwear on the front lawn, weeping uncontrollably about her lack of career and face-time with the human race. And then she passed out. While she snoozed, the mail carrier stepped over her prone body and slipped the mail in the mailbox.

A. watched silently. He then turned to me.

You only do that inside the house.

And I take comfort in that.