Game of Love is a serious business

This article was published in the Fort Bragg Paraglide on Sept. 29, 2008

It seems it’s my turn to write a commentary and since everyone keeps asking me about the gamer lifestyle and most recently Dawn asking me about love advice for a non-gamer married to a gamer, I decided to write about gamers.

Well, first let me explain the type of gamer I really am.

Despite the popular description of a gamer most people try to categorize us into, I’m not a pimple faced 13-year-old with a game room in her mother’s basement who stock up sodas, cheese puffs and pizzas for a weekend of gaming or non-stop Dungeons and Dragons at a friend’s house.

I’m not a girly girl either. I don’t go out of my way to buy 20 to 30 different pairs of shoes with matching handbags or worry about the latest fashion styles of the month. I’m pretty content wearing my game-themed tshirts and jeans.

I don’t enjoy chick-flicks. Want to end a date with me pretty darn quick? Surprise me with a movie like Titanic or Bridges of Madison County. You’ll find me in the lobby arcade room 30 minutes into the movie or breaking out my portable hand held game to kill time. If anyone went to the premiere of Titanic and remembers a ruckus at the end — yes, it was me cheering and screaming “about time” as Leonardo Di Caprio slipped into the freezing ocean as a human popsicle.

Seriously, the title of the movie was the Titanic … it should be no surprise as to what was going to happen after the ship hit the iceberg.

No, I’m just a person who enjoys her video games ... I’m just a gamer.

(Pay attention Stephenie … ‘cause here we go.) And for those of you who don’t realize that gaming goes beyond a deck of Pokemon cards (that’s pronounced ‘Poke-E-Mon’ not Pookie-man) and a handful of 8-year-olds hovering over a gameboy, there are hundreds of different types of games, styles in which you play them and the forms in which they come in.

For example, there are live-action role playing games (a game where participants physically act out their characters actions), collectable card games (like Pokemon, Yu-gi-oh and Magic the Gathering), fantasy role playing games (like Dungeons and Dragons and click-it set games that sometimes involves the use of miniatures and maps) … exhausted yet? … Browser games (any casual online point-n-click, java or flash games) and then console games to name a few. And that’s not even mentioning the types of console games like first person shooters, massive multiplayer online or racing games. I’m not sure there are enough pages in this newspaper to explain them all.

Also, there are more and more adults playing games than children these days, despite the popular mythos from the “normal” population who are under the assumption that gamers wouldn’t know what a boyfriend or girlfriend was unless they were digitally enhanced and came with weapons and body armor.

We do go out and mingle with the human race every now and then to hang out with fellow gamers for dinner and a movie or just a cup of coffee and a deep philosophical conversations or debates about the controversial topics we’ve seen on the Internet or television the night before.

What I’ve found as a gamer, is that we are as selective in who we choose as a potential partner.

But we do get tired of the head games we often have to endure just to make them happy. It starts with, “I understand your need to game” speech and often ends a few months later with, “you spend more time with your game than you do with me” speech.

If we’re lucky they won’t sell our games on eBay or give them to the neighborhood kids as payment for a well-mowed lawn following the break-up.

I’ve had friends who have been happily married for years and both partners game … together.

My friend, Lisa Moore, often schedules family time in which she plays a sports video game with her family on the weekends.

It’s not an issue of whether we can find a date on our own, we’re just as selective with finding a significant other as we are in choosing which game we want to play.

I’ve had my share of shortterm relationships with nongamers before. I say short-term because they say they understand my gaming needs for a week or two, then it becomes a whine-fest about how I spend more time playing a game than watching re-runs of CSI Miami.

It’s not like I play the minute I get home. I have responsibilities that include cooking dinner, feeding the cats, watering plants, laundry, answering e-mails and spending quality time with my family even if it’s a 30-minute phone call to hear about all the fascinating things they do or complaints about why I’m not married yet.

That’s what I do every day on the weekdays. On the weekends, I require at least a two-hour block of gaming … so how is that spending more time playing a game than spending time with them? Hmmm ... it isn’t.

Shutting off my computer or removing my game system to get my attention because you felt ignored will only result in you and your belongings scattered across the front lawn.

Gaming is just a lifestyle I enjoy just as golfing, bicycling, motorcycling and car racing is a lifestyle for others. If you want to get our attention and become a part of our world, simply play with us. I’m not speaking for the entire gamer nation, but if we are able to share our world with you and feel you understand our needs, we will join you in your world. We will come up with a schedule that involves things we do separately and things we do together. If you don’t like the game-style being played, most gamers will try to find one both can enjoy.

Just know that sometimes at the end of the day, especially if it was a bad day, we need to escape our reality for an hour or two.

So there will be times when you just need to let us work things out over a game and not take it as being ignored. We hear you … we just need to refocus our frustrations before we interact with those we love.