A Day In The Life Of The Social Loner

I am in the middle of bringing down a Scarab, leg by leg, when I hear my room door creak. As my girlfriend walks out I am holding down the power button on the controller to shut down the console, never mind where the last auto save was. Because it’s Halo, I’m not too concerned with the amount I’m going to replay, but there have been some real tragedies, the most recent having occurred this time last year with Final Fantasy XII. We have been together for five years but I still feel a palpable sense of shame when she sees me playing videogames. On such occasions when she or another acquaintance catches me in flagrante, I make a brief mumbling pronouncement while I quickly fumble to exit out of the game, trying my best to pretend some horrible boredom has driven me to these extreme measures. Let me be clear: I love videogames, but with each passing year it becomes less a badge of honor than a carefully concealed scarlet letter. Fortunately for me, my girlfriend couldn’t be less interested in what I’m playing. We’ve formed a kind of culturally vacuous truce with Gossip Girl and The Hills firmly in her camp and Halo and Mario entrenched in mine. My roommate, who plays NCAA Football religiously and thoroughly, and has a small, albeit unsubstantiated, claim to fame as the dominant NFL Blitz player at the University of Michigan from 2000-2001, usually has questions about whatever game I happen to be playing. I keep my answers as vague as possible; my lame attempt to convince him that I haven’t been researching the game since it was announced at E3 two years ago. When I graduated from college, the way I socialized with people became at once more formalized and interesting. The pick-up games of Halo in a house with four other guys were supplanted by drinks after work at sports bars. While there has certainly been a resurgence in communal gaming, Guitar Hero in particular having worked its way into water cooler conversation, I have never had the appetite for social games. If I am with a group of people I find videogames to be an exclusionary activity, with social interaction revolving around waiting in line for my turn. As I have grown older and social networking has become an integral part of my working life, I find there is no room for videogames in conversation, nor do people want to hear about them. At this point in my life, a deep interest in the intricacies of a game signifies a kind of unhealthy preoccupation; it brings forth an image of the wild-eyed fanatic. I have experienced the ecstasy that fuels so many gamers on their quest for the 100 percent completion marker in a game. And yet every year since I devoted 60 some hours toward Final Fantasy VI in junior high, my will to engage in such wholehearted devotion diminishes. Collecting every item, seeing every ending and uncovering every secret just isn’t the badge of honor it once was, much as I might want it to be. More than that, half the fun of such thoroughness was in discussing it with your friends, in helping each other achieve perfection. On occasion I bow to nostalgia and purchase a game like Pokémon Pearl, in hopes that I might awake my dormant need to collect things, virtual or real. But I find I have no place for it in my life anymore, and what was once a social catalyst is now a hindrance. Obsession, which seems to walk hand-in-hand with every videogame anecdote I have, is not an attractive personal quality. It’s a great night; eclecticism dominates as the DJ’s produce set after set of obscure ’70s dance and pop music. I sit in the company of a creative director for a boutique label, a copywriter and my friend, a media planner like myself. The conversation and the drinks are all over the place: from music to martinis to relationships and finally, Pabst Blue Ribbon. It is a stereotypical night in NYC’s lower east side. It comes to a close several hours later back at my friend’s place in Williamsburg. It’s 4:00 a.m., and the light beer is flowing steadily. I am about to call for a cab home when a woman in our party says to my friend, “Hey John, we should play some Guitar Hero. Anyone else down?” My usual reservations, apparently alcohol’s favorite target, are thrown to the wayside as I leap forward to grab the plastic Gibson and allow, just this once, a videogame to have a place in my social life. Tomohiko Endo is a freelance contributor to The Escapist.