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.
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