GAME, BOY!
For Some Boys, Toys Can Be An Obsession

On second thought, I do understand my friend's ex. I remember back when I first laid hands on the computer shoot-out game Doom. My girlfriend would watch me in utter fascination as I blasted mutant alien soldiers to bloody bits. But fascination soon gave way to disgust of the so-you'd-rather-spend-time-with-your-game-than-me sort. Then she would ban any discussion of Doom in her presence. Good thing I finished the game in time to nurse her ego back to health. (By the way, I blasted that gargantuan Centaur demon with only rockets!)

I remember we went off to Boracay for a vacation. And she got so pissed at me for having brought a book, a walkman and a handheld Tetris game. Her logic was: You go out of town to get away from the city and all its distractions, but here you are with a video game, your sci-fi literature and your music, each one designed to shut me out of your world! The vacation was nice for a while. Until I got to the difficult stages in Tetris and my girlfriend stormed off to swim alone. (But I finally bested my 11-year-old nephew's high score!)

The other week, after watching a movie in Greenbelt, we chanced upon this cart in the 2nd floor that sold CD-Rom games. My GF gave me a particularly arched eyebrow but kept her mouth shut as I proceeded to buy Quake II, the second half of the sequel to Doom. It's not much more different from Doom, apart from the mutant aliens being quicker, smarter and more equipped to take you out with one missile. You still have to shoot and run around trying to figure out how to get out of the maze you're in. But I bought it anyway and installed it onto my crash-prone computer. Seven hours later, I look up and the sun is rising in my window. And my retinas ache with visions of mangled Strogg infantrymen, quivering as they die from bullet wounds that I inflicted. To my horror, I realize my pager is on silent mode and my GF's left three messages to call her back--- seven hours ago.

My GF once asked me, "What is in these games that makes you go crazy over them? I just don't get it." And I had to explain myself (quite a difficult thing, I assure you). I told her it was the stiff competition, the childish violence, and the absorbing fantasy worlds.

Once I play a video game, I compete: either with the computer (in the case of Quake), with another human's high score (like in Tetris) or with a real human player (like Tekken, where I can combat my girlfriend using kung-fu characters, and get rid of unexpressed stress between the two of us). Competing is addictive. I want to get better, I want to beat the other to a bloody pulp, and so I keep trying till I get it. If the game's violent, it's sometimes even more engaging. I get to work out my bad boy fantasies with simulated villains. Aim, shoot, reload. Go, go, go!

But ultimately, it's the fantasy world that draws me in. In Quake II, the computer backgrounds are wonderfully done. I feel like I am in a truly alien world when I play. And isn't that the same thing that leads people to reading books? The adventure, the escape to someplace other than here and now.
True, sometimes I do play too much. But I can't play forever. I sometimes wish I could tell my girlfriend she should just let me play as much as I want till I get sick of it. Because, admittedly, I am still an immature kid who will go against what is forbidden. Never fear though, I will return to Earth once I've incapacitated that Strogg fortress and terminated the Strogg leader with extreme prejudice.

* Leo Alcalde is but one of the many pseudonyms I've been given in Cosmopolitan, to hide the fact that I write a LOT of stuff for them.

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