Heads up girlfriends and my good boys too, I’m living with a cookie monster. No,
not the one you are thinking of. No disrespect to my old friends at Sesame
Street, but my cookie monster is fare more high tech.
As some of my sisters know, my beloved works in video games.
Incidentally he also plays with them. Many a night of my life has been spent
sitting by his side as he shoots zombies or wages war on Afghan rebels via an
electronic console and a very large television.
This began when we were dating, almost 20 years ago. The
“it” video game at the time was called “MYST”. It was 1994 and I drove to half
a dozen stores in a Winnipeg blizzard looking for a copy of the game. My car
was a 1972 Plymouth Valiant, it was Minus 30 degrees and the heater was broken.
All of the signs were there. I should have know back then the price you pay
when you love a gamer.
Years passed and my love grew. I went from an enabling,
enthusiastic girlfriend to a supportive wife. I listened patiently to the cries
from our family computer while my beloved gamer played the latest and greatest.
Shouts of,
“I need a medic!”
“Requiescat in pace, you bastard”
And “Mario”
Filled my living room over the years.
Did I object to the floods of explosions, grunts and growls
that invaded my living room? Not so much.
You see marriage is about loving someone else’s pursuits in
addition to your own; it’s about finding room in your life for another’s joy.
And just as my beloved knows every character on Sex and the
City, I too know the names of the greatest video game heroes ever. My life can
accommodate Duke Nukem and Batman as much as it can handle Jimmy Choo and
Manolo Blahnik.
Over the years I have found many ways to turn the other
cheek in the name of love and the love of all things gamer. There indeed is a PS3
in our bedroom attached to a 52” screen. Make no mistake , the television was
my idea- but the PS3 is my husband’s. Affectionately his user name for this
console is “Jay in the bedroom” and yes, I think it’s charming.
Does he play video games in bed? Yes he does. Do I complain
about the sound of zombies dying or Orks going to battle? No I do not.
Over the years we have developed an unspoken agreement. I
can watch Survivor and Top Chef and any crappy reality television show I chose
and he can be “Jay in the Bedroom”.
There was one night when at 2 am I awoke to the sounds of
Call of Duty. My beloved had been playing with earphones so as not to disturb
me when the batteries on said headphones went dead.
“What’s going on?” I called from a half sleep, woken to the
sound of a war zone in my bedroom.
“Shh…” Jason comforted me, “you’re dreaming. GO back to
sleep”.
You see my sisters, I know living with a gamer is often a
metaphor for a video game itself. There will be times when you understand the
rules and navigate through the various chambers and chasms. There will be times
when you need a character or two to follow for guidance to a certain level. Sometimes you have a
variety of weapons to use and other times you need a tutorial on how to push
the little red button to enable a
stun gun thingy or something. There will be times when you have to check your
health and take a few minutes to restore what was lost. There will be times
when you are ready for your next boss battle and times when you need to save
your level and come back to it later.
But overall, your avatar is unique and real and something
you grow accustomed to as if it had been with you all along.
I myself have only played one real video game in my 42 years
on the planet. Sure, I was a child of the PacMan era and yes, I know my way
around a Space Invaders but truthfully my only video game on record is Ratchet
and Crank. It may even be called Ratchet and Clank- I never can get it right.
It too me about a month to finish and I had to set the oven timer for 1 hour
increments so as not to get lost playing the game for days on end.
That being said, I am capable of discussing in great detail
any of the following video games:
Candy Crush
Duke Nuken
Company of Heroes
Bio Shock
Bio Shock Infinite
Batman: Arkam City
The Last of Us
Portal
Far Cry
Uncharted
The Legend of Zelda
Mass Effect 1, 2 and 3
Half Life 1 and 2
World of Warcraft
Anything SuperMario
Call of Duty
Halo
Assains Creed
and the list goes on.
I was perfectly happy living a symbiotic video game
existence of this nature for years to come. That was until Cookie Clicker came
on the radar.
Now, I have not played Cookie Clicker and this is by no
means an endorsement. My beloved spent 3 days extolling its virtue. My
understanding of this game is that indeed the goal is to make as many cookies
as possible. Cookies are made by clicking the mouse button repeatedly. You can
then even outsource cookie making to “Grandmas” Whom you hire to do your cookie
baking bidding for you while you, say, go a for a walk with your incredibly
magical wife. There's also something about cats making milk but I must admit that while Jay was explaining this bit to me, I got a little creeped out and just shut off. Cats making milk? That's just weird.
Cookie Clicker is like the baked goods version of Candy
Crush. I have not played Candy Crush, either but I am aware that it is indeed
the technical version or crystal meth. I am told by those “on the other side”
that indeed once you get hooked on Candy Crush- you are pretty much done for. I
even went so far as to warn a friend against Candy Crush activities. Sure I was
meddling but indeed she was a doctor with a full time practice and two kids at
home. Her life was full enough already; she had no time for a video game
addiction.
I myself had never considered my beloved a VGA (Video game
addict). He always used enthusiastically but responsibly. There was indeed a
time and a place for Unchartered 1, 2 and 3.
So imagine my joy when last Sunday morning I was awoken to
the sound of a mouse clicking; not once or twice but at a rate of 120 clicks per
minute. Yes, the boy had gone mad….. Mad for cookies and I was now along for
the ride.
Make no mistake my sisters- I can handle the odd moment
listening to the merits of RTS (real time strategy) or FPS (First person
shooter). I can wax poetic and hold his hand and be ever so supportive while he
escape from a South American drug lord or asks me to guess how much Rock Star
Games made in its opening week of Grand Theft Auto 5.
But I do indeed draw the line at rabid clicking on a Sunday
morning.
And so my beloved and I had our first video game fight.
“Click it again and I’ll break your mouse pad” I threatened
from behind the pillow.
“Huh?” he asked innocently.
“You heard me,” I growled.
“But sweetie- it's Cookie Clicker. I've gotten millions of
cookies. I’ve got grandmas working for me in factories around the world. They
need me.”
My husband had turned from a sweet prince of peace to a
crazed Cookie Slum Lord with international chocolate chip cartel ties to baked goods. He had factories and seniors as slaves and had subverted several labour laws by my count. This had to end.
“Today is Sunday. You have until Thursday to get this shit
out of your system.” I announced, “now go downstairs and click your empire. The
bedroom is off limits.”
And there it was.
A study published in Pediatrics in February, 2011 looked at
the prevalence of video game addiction in a longitudinal study of 3500 kids in
Grade 8. The study used American Psychiatric Society criteria to diagnose video
game addiction.
The researchers showed that the percentage of pathological
youth gamers in Singapore was similar to other recent video game addiction
studies in other countries, including the United States (8.5 percent), China
(10.3 percent), Australia (8.0 percent), Germany (11.9 percent) and Taiwan (7.5
percent).
Video Game addiction has been defined as excessive and/or compulsive
gaming behaviour. The subject typically needs continued gaming in order to
function and becomes irritable or withdrawn when not gaming. Accompanied with
this is social isolation as a result of video game play.
In May, 2013, The Fifth version Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders known as the DSM-5 included INTERNET GAMING DISORDER
as a new condition requiring further study.
Further studies have shown that certain repetitive play
increases blood flow to addiction centres in the brain on PET scans of young
adults.
Does my beloved fall into this category? Hell no, my
sisters. Settle down. In a world where we often indeed rush to diagnose I will
refrain here and now. Sure the boy loves his games but indeed he is not an
addict. Does he have a temporary fix on Cookie Clicker? Hell yes. But indeed I’ve
given him until Thursday and then like any sympathetic supportive wife…. I am
shutting that shit off.
tehehehe ya its crack for gamers, pray that he doesint find out about the meta game .....
ReplyDeleteYou're crazy. Just let him enjoy his game. I was addicted to this game too for a while. If you show him that the game is easily cheated he'll get bored with it in no time. (that's what happened with me).
ReplyDeleteJust send him here --> http://cookieclicker.wikia.com/wiki/Cheating
He'll most likely be super tempted to do it and when he does he'll inevitably get bored because it's no longer a challenge.
You're overreacting in a horrible way and I would personally break up with you (but then again I would have gone downstairs to begin with if I was going to be cookie clicking at off hours of the night). But if you really want him to get bored of this game and stop it, let him be aware of the cheats.