To Game or Not to Game

Juan Ortiz
October 16, 2007
English 1001-110
Lei Lani Michele

To Game or Not to Game

Some may wonder if the world of platform gaming is taken to far be the male gender in today’s society. To some men it is just a recreational tool, used when there is no other means of entertainment. However, to others, it is viewed as a way of life; where scheduling and rituals begin to come into play and consequences befall any one who so happens to interrupt a gaming session. But however it is looked at, the question still remains: Do men tend to push the limits between reality and what exist within the realm of “gaming”? Is it that they have nothing better to do with there time then to sit around trying to obtain the next level or is it merely an escape from the daily bothers that may range from stress at the job, all the way down to the nagging girlfriend? Well I thought, what better way is there to judge how men think than to ask a woman.

Thankfully I found such a woman who didn’t mind commenting on the views she had towards the relationship between video games and men. Katherine Cantwell is a freshman at Louisiana State University. A tall, slender woman with blonde her and bubbly personality; Katherine would be the envy of many gamers. She works as a hostess at a restaurant and if often knee deep in studying in order to make the much needed grade. However, she occasionally finds the time to accompany a group of her friends to their apartment in order for them to play video games and relax. I met with her in the pentagon court yard just before she left to this apartment in order to understand why men are viewed to be so obsessed with video games.

I began by asking her about her thoughts on gaming. Katherine admitted to being an avid player of Guitar Hero; a game that involves the player to use a mock guitar as a control stick and to strum buttons as if they were actual notes. She said, lightheartedly, that most of her friends played it quite often at their apartment and that they often fought over who would go next. “It’s our favorite,” she said with a smile on her face. On the other hand, outside of that she could not understand the fascination her “guy” friends had with FPS (First Person Shooters) games such as HALO 3, Call of Duty and Condemned. She began to talk about how she could never control the characters and how the constant spinning always seem to make her dizzy.

With the mention of HALO 3, I asked Katherine her thoughts on the reactions of her male friends during the recent release of the game. She began to laugh as she recalled some of the stories she had heard of her friends. One of her friends said that he had waited in front of the store for twelve hours in order to be the first in line for the release. She told me of another of her friends who had turned down sex from his girlfriend in order to play the game all night long, only to be found in the morning cuddled up along side the game box. I asked her if it could be just that the friend didn’t want any one to take the game while he slept after paying so much for it; especially if he bought the Legendary Edition. “I don’t understand what is so important about that game,” she said, “it’s just like the other two.” At that point I had to gather myself after such an insult to the HALO 3 but I was able to continue with the interview.

What about Hurricane Katrina I wondered. How did that affect your friends and gaming? “I lived in the point,” Katherine said as I watched an acorn fall on her head from the tree above, “so the power would go out all the time and it would always mess up the boy’s games, but when Katrina hit they went nuts without power for so long.” We both couldn’t help but laugh at the misfortune of a gamer without power.

Another hot topic in the realm of gamers is the massive movement known as WOW or World of Warcraft. It is a game with infinite possibilities, allowing its users to customize everything about there characters down to how big their nose is, sarcastically speaking. Katherine had again admitted to playing this but not nearly as much as she had played Guitar Hero. “The quest annoyed me and I just couldn’t get into the swing of things like the guys did”, said Katherine as she began fiddle with her phone. She told me of how a close friend of hers had lost her husband due to WOW. Apparently she found that her husband was cheating on her with an elf princess whose user lived in Maine. I asked if she thought her friend might have over reacted just a little bit to the situation. “Of course not, that was just the first step towards actually meeting with that woman.” she said with some authority. I could only sit and ponder.

One could ask if men take gaming too seriously, but why would you. Is there really an issue if a college student would like to spend his spare time, and possible class time if necessary, submerged in a world of complete imagination where the only limitations are how far the controller will reach or how many people are in rotation with the controllers? Who’s to say that sixteen hours of straight gaming with no sleep is a bad thing? It requires concentration, commitment, and caffeine. All the basic needs of a college student, regardless of the practice time put in at the counsel. So what if men play more then forty hours a week, it only shows that we can commit if we truly want to. Who are you to judge: besides our wives and girlfriends.