Early Retirement

I think I may stop playing video games for a while. I just don't really seem to be getting the same enjoyment out of them as I used to. I actually had this theory that my ability to enjoy video games goes in cycles. I have a few years where I absolutely love them, followed by a period of time where I just can't be bothered. Like I said, I'd always assumed it was a cyclical thing, but I get the impression that I may have been a bit wrong.

Obviously, now that I'm earning a little bit of money by writing about video games this whole situation is could probably prove to be a bit of an inconvenience. Actually, I think that the real irony of the situation is that it's precisely because I've got the job writing about video games that I'm a bit bored with playing them.

Anyway, this is how my new, revised theory about my gaming habits goes...

I only play games when I'm bored and unhappy.

I had a spell of uninterrupted gaming from about the age of three, when an Atari 2600 first materialised in my house, right up until I was nineteen playing Mario Kart on my Super Nintendo. So, the question is, what happened when I was nineteen?

Well, for one thing, during the course of a time trial challenge of Mario Circuit 1, my lap time was beaten by precisely 0.1 seconds. As hard as I tried, I simply could not beat my opponent’s time of 1.11.77. You may ask how it is that, twelve years later, I can remember the exact winning time. After all, I'm not some rain main style numerical genius. No, instead, to compound his supremacy, the winning time matched exactly my date of birth. Sure, in the year or so that followed, I played a few of the old school Lucasarts graphic adventures, but for the most part, my passion for gaming was extinguished right there.

So, I don't like getting beaten. That's one reason. The next is, I believe, the main impetus behind my temporary retirement from gaming. I started to have a life. That particular game of Mario Kart was played within the confines of my room in my Hall of Residence. I was away from home, away from the tedium of my boring little suburban town, free to do whatever I wanted to do. And what did I want to do? I wanted to go out every night.

Before then, my friends had always been dreary and dull. I never felt like I was on quite the same level as them. I don’t think I mean that I was better than them, just different. I remember thinking, on one occasion as I sat in from of a computer in my friend’s bedroom (it may have been during one of our many LAN Parties where we’d each take out computers round to each others houses, network them together and play Doom), I wished that I could just write their dialogue for them. As far as I was concerned, they never seemed to give what I would consider to be the correct response to anything I might say. Things that seemed obvious to me simply passed them by. I remember suggesting that we should maybe go to see a band some time. It just went completely over their heads. They stared at me briefly before returning their gaze to their computer screens. I didn’t bother suggesting anything ever again.

Actually, one of them contacted me on Facebook a little while ago. We chatted a little, caught up with things. He’s married with kids and a dog and living in Milton Keynes. All quite pleasant stuff. He’s a computer programmer, which I guess kind of figures because that was the sort of thing he was always in to. He sounded like he was really happy. I didn’t add him as a friend. I suppose if I’d wanted to remain in contact with him I would’ve bothered a lot sooner, but I left him and the rest of it all behind when I moved away to university.

I came back home for the first weekend after I started uni. I think a lot of people thought I wouldn’t return. It was, remember, only 3 weeks since my Dad had died, and I wasn’t really coping too well. Anyway, when I got back home, I found out that the aforementioned friend had come back from his university on Thursday. He’d decided not to return having found the place depressing because of the “breeze block walls” in his room in halls. We met up on the Friday night in a pub just down the road from me, “The Rayners”, which is now boarded up awaiting a council planning decision that will probably turn it into flats.

I’d decided that I’d try to convince him to go back. I thought that if he didn’t stay he’d really be missing out. After all, my Hall of residence was entirely composed of breeze blocks, but you couldn’t see them once you’d put your posters up.
When I arrived he was there with someone else, someone whom I later discovered was a gay friend whom he’d met god knows when and where.

So, I waxed lyrical about how great university was and how he ought to give it another try. I wasn’t really sure if I was getting through to him, but I was really determined to try. He popped off to the loo and, as soon as he was gone, his mate started having a go at me. He told me to shut up about university. He said that my friend was better off back home. I disagreed quite fervently. I reasoned that my friend was just a little timid and fearful of change, but, in the long run he’d be better off if he didn’t drop out. I had my mate’s best interests at heart, the other guy simply didn’t want him to go back for what I assumed must have been his own selfish reasons.

My friend returned from the toilet and sat back down. I headed off to the loo myself and by the time I came back, there’d obviously been some sort of discussion, judging by the conspiratorial look on the faces of my drinking companions.

What happened next was a bit of a shock; my friend’s companion touched up my leg. I recoiled immediately. The pair laughed away. Clearly they had set their minds to unsettle me. They’d succeeded. You have to remember, at the time I was only 18 and a little less able to deal with unfamiliar situations than I am now. Let’s face it, at the age of 18, when you haven’t so much as kissed a girl, you’re going to be suffering from a fair amount of insecurity about your sexuality. Not only that, as I mentioned before, my Dad had died only three weeks earlier, so I was already in a poor state of mind.

I left the pub pretty quickly. I never saw my friend again and didn’t hear from him until he communicated with me through Facebook a few months ago.

On the plus side, I guess the whole experience confirmed that I really wouldn’t be fond of the intimate touch of another man. It also confirmed that my ex-friend was a git.

Regular readers will be well aware of my, as it turned out, quite unnecessary panicking earlier in the week. Fortunately, on Friday, I ended up meeting up with the lovely girl I’ve been seeing lately. I had a really amazing time; I just wish that it hadn’t been brought to what I considered to be a bit of a premature ending. London Transport are, quite frankly, a massive pain in the arse. Why on Earth can’t they run the tube later? That’s sort of a rhetorical question because I am aware that they close the tube to maintain the lines, but surely they don’t have to do that every night on every stretch of rail? Is their workmanship of such poor quality that as single days use might break it apart?

Anyway, the night felt like it was over far too soon. I could have happily stayed out for many hours more. Of course, it started with a bit of dramatically bad navigation on my part. Somehow, I managed to get lost trying to find the Millennium Bridge from St Paul’s Station. It’s never been a problem for me before, so quite why it had to happen when I was trying to be impressive is beyond me. Actually, scratch that, I think that, with that last sentence, I’ve just answered my own question. That and it was dark, so everything might have looked just that little bit different. I’m just making excuses now aren’t I?

Today I’ve been mulling over all the mistakes I made and analysing all the stupid things I might have said during the course of the evening, but I know that, ultimately, all the recriminations are completely pointless. The only thing that matters is that I didn’t bugger it up so much that she didn’t want to see me again. She definitely does want to see me, she mentioned a next time in her text after the date, but quite when that’ll come I don’t know. I know that she’s pretty busy next week, so I’m not sure they’ll be an opportunity go out. Then again she was busy this week too, but she still managed to find some time. I suppose that’s probably a good sign too.

Actually, it’s my navigational ineptitude that provided the final impetus to upgrade my phone to one that actually has GPS. I’ve been rather keen on the idea of having a phone with GPS for quite some time now. I also quite fancied moving to a tariff that would provide me with inclusive internet access and some minutes that I could use during the day and with any network that I like. Well now (or soon, presuming they don’t mind sending me my upgrade a week early) I can do all of those things, albeit at the cost of £30 a month and a 2 year contract. So I can’t upgrade for two years. For as long as I’ve had phones, I’ve been upgrading my mobile more or less every year, so I’m a little worried that I’m going to become fed up with my new phone before the time is up. Well, we’ll see, but I should say at this point that I’m currently using my old K800, which I got way back at the end of 2006, because my current phone has a crappy flash and keeps switching itself off at random, inconvenient moments. I think I’ll see if I can try to peddle it to Computer Exchange next week. That and everything else I don’t want and can’t be bothered to sell on eBay.

Anyway, the point I was trying to make about fifty paragraphs ago is that now, once more, I feel like hanging up my joypad. Of course, that, if you really want to take the metaphor literally, will no doubt be more difficult than before because all my consoles controllers are wireless and therefore have no leads by which they can be hung. In all fairness, I’m not quite at the point where I want to stop playing video games, but I’m definitely heading quite rapidly in that direction. With all the writing work that I’m getting (with more to follow hopefully), my new adventures in dating and even this blogging, I have neither the time, nor, indeed, the inclination, for gaming. With everything else I get a sense that I’m actually getting somewhere, I gain a sense of achievement. With gaming, all I have is a sense of frustration and annoyance. Xbox live achievements and gamerpoints simply aren’t enough to motivate me. Honestly, I can’t see why you’d bother to do it at all if you have anything even vaguely better to do.

I should add, that I’m also trying to work on a script idea that one of my mate’s came up with. I’ll see if I can get at least 5-10 pages done to show him next week, so at least he can see if I’m on the right sort of track.