By Bowling Pin
I barely know anyone else living on my street, and I’d wager the same holds true for every other household on my block. However, everyone knows this kid because he goes door to door asking if they need any odd jobs done, like lawns mowed or things tidied up. He’s probably 14 or 15, that same age when the misanthropic Ennui hit me, and probably many others, but I do respect his hussler chutzpah. Last year I bit and gave him twenty bucks to mow our front and back yard, and as he was playing with our dogs he brought up games.
Now he knocks on my door every other day, asking me whether or not a multiplayer Black Ops 2 trailer has come out yet. (I don’t believe one has.)
Here’s the thing. He makes about $20-60 a weekend mowing lawns. His mom refuses to pay for his cellphone bill or buy him games and consoles, so he uses this money to pay for that. He’s an avid Call of Duty fan, and a lot of his wages go toward CoD map packs. So he usually comes over to tell me, among other things, about his Prestige ranking progress.
“So I’m about to get third prestige…” he tells me the other day, or something. I don’t really know. I only really got into first person shooters a year ago, after finding Half-Life² a paragon, and DooM an epiphany.
“Oh. Well, that’s good, I guess.”
“Did a Black Ops 2 multiplayer trailer come out yet?”
“I’m not sure… I don’t think so. Just some single player stuff out of E3, I guess.”
He views the lens of the medium through Call of Duty. Once, he came over and I was in the middle of practicing Third Strike. I go into arcade mode, and he says, “you’re not playing against anyone online? Are you playing the campaign mode?” I shrug it off, but felt like an old man. A few months later I was playing Arcanum, and when he came over he asked me what the hell I was playing.
“It’s Arcanum. It’s this RPG…”
“What’s an RPG? Oh, wait… you mean a grenade launcher.”
“…”
I find him an interesting case study. He’s from a different time than mine: he doesn’t troll the internet voraciously, nor does he consume video game magazines or media. He finds out his game news through word of mouth from the kids at school, or from whoever’s working the Gamestop counter. Quite fascinating. He came over once and played a few games on my Wii. He actually liked Ikaruga, despite dying a lot and apparently never having played a shmup before, and he apparently really liked Streets of Rage 2. I would like to think that these games are timeless classics. But he came over while I was in the middle of Half-Life² and asked to give it a shot. I let him play the the game from the beginning, and… he hated it. He hated how the opening sequence was drawn out, how he didn’t have a gun as soon as he walked out of the train, how Civil Protection would beat him with batons and how he had to stoically accept it, and how time was dedicated to characters explaining this dystopic world and not to the his immediate annihilation of the enemy. Interestingly, he quit the game right before Barney Calhoun would throw him his crowbar, before Half-Life² would begin in earnest. He didn’t have the patience for it. However, he did love DooM. The labyrinths didn’t bother him; it was just an excuse to wander around and shoot things until they died, until he could go to more places and shoot more things.
I don’t know. I’m mostly unfamiliar with Call of Duty, outside of playing the first game. He’s quite familiar with the series and desperately tries to get me to keep up. But I like grenade launcher games and Street Fighter campaigns. Sometimes what he has to say about Call of Duty bores or confounds me. Yet I continue to listen to him, sometimes because I think he’s just a naive kid, and sometimes because I think he represents the same population that video game marketers reach out to. Sometimes I’m tempted to let him borrow a game I cherish, but think the better of it because I know it’ll only frustrate him. Sometimes I watch him play a game, so I can gain the perspective of what young people who Play Games actually do today. Sometimes I cut his visits short, because he reminds me how painfully out of touch I actually am.
He’s got a PS3 and a 360. Do I make him play Atelier Totori or what?