Open your heart to the unexpected gamer

My friends don't play video games. Not many of them, anyway. My best friend Regi rocks his PlayStation Vita on the daily, and one of my cousins in Missoula has a Foxhound tattoo, but that's about it for gaming vis-à-vis my immediate social circle. Despite its status as a college town, Bozeman lacks a prominent gaming scene compared to, say, Seattle or Dallas. Unless you're going to GameStop, assuming status as Bozeman's only gamer is much too easy to do, especially if you see as few people as I do on a daily basis.

Which makes finding a rogue, unexpected gamer that much more wonderful. Granted, it's not that huge My People! moment that it used to be in grade school or at summer camp. Gaming is much, much more prominent compared to when I was in high school. Still, I made no less than two unexpected gamer connections on Sunday morning, and each was a small pocket of joy.

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I try to attend Sunday mass as often as I can. Sometimes, I'm out of bed at 7:30, ready to jumpstart my day and smash my weekend assignments into little bitty pieces. Others, I'm finishing up my shower at 10:32 and hoping wildly that I can sneak in before Father finishes the homily. Last Sunday was the latter, but I figure that building a habit for attending services is more important than not attending at all.

Whatever you tell yourself, right?

After mass concludes, the church organ plays Father and the procession out like an ornate keyboard cat. Sometimes the organist gets cheeky—during one mass on Halloween weekend, he played the Tocatta in Fugue, which I've always associated with creepy, villainous imagery (think Captain Nemo in Disney's adaptation of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea). That day, he played a sort of tuneless noodling, using the upper octaves to create a sound reminiscent of, I dunno, Regency-era Britain.

As I waited for Father to walk out, I noticed a young couple in front of me leaning in to whisper to each other. The gentleman looked around my age, sporting glasses and the ghost of a trimmed, twentysomething beard; the lady was short with curly hair, also in her mid- to late-twenties. I don't know what caused me to decide to listen in, and I'm not sure what I expected to hear, but I definitely didn't expect:

Guy – "This reminds me of Zelda."
Girl – "Yeah, I can kinda hear that."
Guy – "I'm not sure where it would be. Maybe the overworld?"
Thing is, it did remind me of music from a Zelda game. At this stage, I couldn't help but to chime in.
Andrew – "Or, like, the shooting gallery. You know, with the slingshot." *mimes a slingshot motion*

They laughed and nodded in agreement. I smiled. Who'd have known that kindred gaming spirits were as close as church?

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After mass, I went out to brunch. My review for Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time was due that night, and I needed to suss out my thoughts over a plate of eggs and hash browns. I ordered a chili cheese omelet and jotted down notes. Outlining has been an unexpected help during my previous few writing assignments—who'd have thought that, after shirking them off all throughout high school and college, I would voluntarily start doing pre-essay blueprints on a regular basis?

Free-form note taking helps me crystallize my thoughts. After polishing off my orange juice and biscuit, I finally cracked my writer's block and put in place a general outline. I got excited. I slapped the table, "That's it," I shouted. Behind the counter, a server cocked her eyebrow at me. I hastily explained that I was reviewing a video game, and writing until I could figure out what I had to say.

I'm not sure why I tagged my writing as a review. Certainly there are enough dudes with laptops ambling around Bozeman that I didn't need to justify exactly what I was writing. Perhaps I wanted recognition for having the audacity to write about video games? Hell, I have a column in the local paper; maybe I was in the mood to stunt.

She reacted not with the familiar oh-that's-nice look that I was expecting, but she looked interested. "What game?" she asked. I was taken aback, but felt like if she cared enough to ask, she earned a full answer, and I launched into a quick overview of Sly Cooper. After I'd finished, she made a quick, put-out comment about wanting to play more games, mentioning that the last game she finished was Final Fantasy VII. That did it. We chatted for five or so minutes about what we were playing, and I found out more about her gaming habits and recommended games for each other. Quite a morning.

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Both times, I was caught off-guard by regular, average Bozemanites casually chatting up their gamer side. Not just chatting it up, making quick, blink-and-you-miss-it references to games like Borderlands and The Legend of Zelda. Does that sort of thing happen in this town? Apparently it does.

The couple from church and the friendly server reminded me about my own preconceived notions of who plays games, and how much I need to tear them down. With more people gaming than ever before, surely I can drop my whole Woe Is Me, No One Plays Video Games mentality. It'll be healthier for me, allowing me to be more accessible to people who play games, and hopefully cut down on any accidental condescension on my part; after all, I Write About Video Games and they don't.

Keeping my assumptions in check will help my gaming world seem even more magical. I don't have to be the outsider anymore, and I can share the gaming love wherever I go. Today's gamer doesn't always wear a Halflife t-shirt on constantly quote from Disgaea. They'll playing Words with Friends while they wait in line at the DMV. They're going to see Wreck-It Ralph and help it along to Disney's second-highest grossing animated film in ten years. They're watching Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and laughing as Jimmy plays Battlefield 3, musing how he'd probably made a game called "Hide." Playing games isn't a binary sense of identity anymore. I need to start acting like it.

Sure, it's much more likely that I'll run into someone who's playing Fire Emblem: Awakening at PAX than at Plonk, but I need to keep my heart open to everyone's internal gamer. Time to stop looking for the Kotaku shirt, and look at the Kotaku reader from within. Meeting another gamer doesn't have to be a pleasant surprise. Just "pleasant" should be enough.

The Cabin in the Woods policy

I'm not what I'd consider a principled man. I'm still young, and I try to take life in a detached, learning sort of way. Occasionally, though, a situation pops up that almost directly violates one of my precious few guidelines, and like the protagonist in a Michael Mann film, I must rely on my code to get my through. Or at least, announce it loudly in a blog-y sort of way.

This morning, Edge Magazine reported on a new rumor about Microsoft's follow-up to the Xbox. Among the details given was a peculiar bit: the new Xbox will require an internet connection to function, similar to Diablo III or the newest Sim City game. This always-online gambit is designed to deter used games, with new games shipping with a code for activating games using Xbox Live.

I'm not even going to bury the lede: if this is true, it's really dumb. It's dumb because it precludes a not-as-insignificant-as-you-might-think portion of its target audience without reliable internet. It's dumb because it's adding another layer of complexity and unfriendliness to video games just as they're starting to break even further into the mainstream. It's dumb because takes Microsoft's already-inflated sense of hubris with its online services and amps it up to Kanye West-levels of egotism. Actually, that last part's not "dumb" so much as "kinda gross," but I was having fun with parallel structure.

Which leads me back to that personal code I mentioned earlier. When it comes to new technology, I have a strict Cabin in the Woods policy (no relation to the film). In order for me to fully embrace a new gadget or device, I need to be able to use it in an environment completely isolated from an online connection—for example, a cabin in the woods. If I can't enjoy your product in an environment completely removed from 3G and broadband internet, I am not interested.

I am fortunate in that my family has access to just such a cabin. My grandmother owns a cabin on one of Montana's many fabulous lakes, and it is one of my very favorite places in the world. The cabin ("Hungry Hollow," reads a sign perched above the door) is on the lake's shoreline, a good fifteen minute drive into the woods and twenty five minutes from reliable cell phone service. Satellite TV and internet are available, but my grandmother is old and hasn't two shits to rub together about internet access, and most visits are spent isolated from society. It's wonderful.

I'm a bit of a cozy gent anyway, and I love the idea of using my favorite gadgets and devices in an isolated setting like a Cabin in the Woods. I need to be able to use your product when I'm in that setting, and assuming I have reliable internet connection all of the time is a fool's game. Even excluding the halls of Hungry Hollow, I have friends who are too cheap to purchase internet—all of the streaming content and cloud storage in the world doesn't amount to a hill of beans at their house unless we pirate someone's Wi-Fi signal.

Putting aside the romanticism for a different set of romanticism, I also feel like I have more confidence in products that don't need constant online supervision. Take games, for instance. I always buy games based on the strength of their single-player campaigns, because the single-player experience is always constant. Super Mario Bros. is just as playable today as it was 28 years ago. Multiplayer, on the other hand, is much more variable. Community participation varies, bustling one day and a ghost town the next, and companies eventually close their multiplayer servers down. Games like Modern Warfare hang their hat on top-notch multiplayer experiences, but it's the single-player game that ultimately determines my purchase.

Other symptoms of my Cabin in the Woods policy include:

• Netflix DVDs over Instant Queue
• Buying albums on CD instead of iTunes
• Making every worthwhile Spotify playlist "Available Offline"

Which is why I'm so frustrated at Microsoft's decision to make its new console online-only. I get that a constant connection works well as a platform for certain game models, especially ones that keep persistent track of progress or statistics. But the only model? That's much too limiting. Even discounting my admittedly-hoary attitude on persistent internet connectivity, are there enough people with broadband access to avoid affecting sales at the more rural Walmarts and Targets of the United States?

As the US improves its high-speed infrastructure—which is an entirely different conversation—my Cabin in the Woods policy will grow more and more outdated. That is my cross to bear. For now, I maintain my right to vent my frustration at any product or service that violates it. Vive le forêt!