I don’t really consider myself a gamer. I play games, but I don’t
cosplay, I don’t have special joypads or a customised headset. As a teenager,
while my contemporaries were locked in their bedrooms, swearing at the length
of time it took a ZD Spectrum to load a game,
I was throwing crab apples at buses and making dens in subway
bushes. When Sega and Nintendo happened upon
the market, girls and booze and disco dancing happened upon me. Those first big waves bypassed my formative
years.
It wasn't until Uni that I first bought a console, a SNES,
because it was half-price and because I had no concept of money. My hope was
that it would keep me out of pubs and off the streets. It did. Unfortunately, it also took over my life like an electronic brain-devouring parasite. Months of being
locked away with Mario, Chun Lee, mates and social enhancers. They may have been
great times. I can’t really remember. It’s all a bit of lo-fi, primary-coloured, pixellated blur.
When the Grey Plastic Time Vampire was taken during a
burglary a few months later, I looked on it as a blessing. Its stranglehold on me was loosened, and I
could now devote my time to much more worthwhile habits. And so I did, with gusto.
A few years ago an Xbox came into my life by accident. The digital
smackdown began again. Bioshock, Call of
Duty, FIFA, Skyrim, Assassins Creed. The
came into my life, and then they took it over.
The problem is pretty simple. It starts with a solemn promise to play for no
more than half an hour. That half hour passes and you realise you've slipped
into some twisted space-time continuum because, instead of being seven in the
evening, it’s three in the morning, and you have to be up in four hours. There’s
little more humbling than a console showing you have less willpower than a
scouser in a pound shop. Apart from possibly being a Man United fan, or a Nickelback
fan whose hearing aid suddenly starts working.
The second coming wasn't as all-consuming as my first foray. I wasn’t
chained to screen night after night. I’d have waves where I’d be wandering the
Texas desert in Red Dead Redemption looking to shoot Mexicans, as if in some
Donald Trump time-travelling fantasy, and waves where I’d actually get on with
my life and leave the house and shit like that. And that’s the trick really. People have accused me of wasting time
shooting up post-apocalyptic wastelands, or stealing cars and killing cops
until I get gummed down in nihilistic blaze of glory. And I probably am. But no
more than watching vacuity such as Strictly or Nazi Storage Hunters or somesuch
nonsense. And as long as there’s balance, then I’m like, totally Zen about it.
Life is just killing time between birth and death, after all.
I’m troubled today, however, as I’ve had a massive Fallout 4
bender this week, and I feel slightly adulterated. Every time I look at an object, I expect to
be given the option to pick it up. When someone
walks past my house, my first reaction is to get my mini-nuke ready in case they’re
hostile. If I’m replying to someone talking to me, I wonder which of my four
conversation options will get me the most XP. Last night, instead of going to
the pub, I decided to play for just another half hour.
At five this morning I decided
I should go to bed.
So I’m striking out. I’m laying down the law. Drawing a line
in the sand. The ghouls can roam, the raiders can raid. The Commonwealth can
rebuild itself. I’m not going to allow my life to be dictated to and distorted
by digital crack. I’m through with addictive destructive interactions.
New day, new me. Yes.
I will be strong. Starting now.
I’m off the pub. Anyone fancy a pint?
