The Games We Play

I am currently signed up for an Old Spice Experience Challenge over at http://www.360voice.com/. I have found this experience to be both entertaining and highly dubious. If you are not aware of what these challenges entail, you basically gather up a few buddies on Xbox Live, and challenge them to a friendly game of “who can get the most gamerpoints in X amount of time”.

As I have told in my previous blog, I am a very competitive gamer, and this challenge is right up my alley. I am pulling every imaginary rabbit out of my proverbial hat to win, and I have no hesitation stabbing my friends in the back to do so. I have actually stooped low enough to stay up just before the end of the challenge night to “earn” just enough achievement points to surpass the current leader by the smallest margin possible, both for the pure joy of adding insult to injury, and also to save potential points for my next challenge. I even had to stop in the middle of COD4 online match, which my friend, and current challenge leader, had joined me in, just so I could finish a final lap in Forza to seal my victory in the last minute of the last day of the challenge.

I am waiting to kick off the second challenge as I am writing this, but I am afraid my challengers may be on to some of my ploys. I have yet to pull the Avatar card from my sleeve, with its 1000 gamerpoints in 4 minutes, but it’s just a matter of time. Hopefully, none of them are reading this now, or my ruse may be up.

Why do we game?

I have been asking myself a lot lately, “Why do I play video games?” Being 25 years old, with a full time job and an even more full time, live-in girlfriend, I may not find as much time to play video games as I would like. This is not necessarily a complaint. I feel you need to have the balance of a social life and gaming life in order to truly enjoy yourself. But why do I always have an urge to play video games? What force drives me to want to sit down in front of my television night after night and glue a controller into my hands until my eyes water from fatigue?

Many people may have many different answers to this question, but I believe mine is rather simple, competition. The obvious competition present in video games is in the multiplayer arena. There is nothing more enjoyable then getting a headshot on your friend in a heated online match, or edging out your buddy in a close race, and talking all of the imminent trash talk the next day. The kind of competition that I really am referring to, the kind that drives a deep, inner obsession for me to play games is the competition that you have with yourself.

The strip that is associated with this blog illustrates a strange phenomenon that I am experiencing in my evolving love for video games. I used to game for pure enjoyment. My Wii still fulfills this need, along with a good game of Ratchet and Clank on my PS3, but now I find myself gaming more to prove something, both to myself, and to whomever I play with online. Obviously, you would think I would be an achievement whore to make a statement such as this. That is not necessarily true. One look at my Gamercard will tell you that I do not have an absurd amount of points, nor do I have a respectable completion ratio. I like to think of myself as a completist, but my track record does not support such allegations.

I have only finished a single circuit in Forza to date, even though I have owned, and no, I did not say pwned, the game since launch. I think very highly of this game, and every time I pick it up, I feel like I am going to be playing for hours. This feeling of love and admiration quickly turns to hate and loathing, as I constantly find myself in the last lap of a race, which I’ve been leading the entire time, spinning out and eating dirt while my competitors gleefully race to the finish line. Do I enjoy playing this game? No, in fact I would say 95% of the time, I feel like throwing the controller through my beautiful Bravia. But that 5%, that very rare occurrence where I actually do triumph over the often accused of cheating AI, is absolute bliss. You can never experience the great sense of accomplishment, without the constant annoyance of failure.

This is why I game, and that is why I will continue to game. I no longer have the physique to be competitive in athletics, nor do I have the knowledge to embarrass my counter parts in pointless trivia, but put a controller in my hands, and I am a force to reckon with. Even when I can’t beat others, I can always beat myself...(Get your heads out of the gutters!).