Lost Luster

I haven’t blogged in a bit. I have abandoned IRC. I haven’t picked up my phone or listened to voicemail in a week, and Twitter has lost most of its charm. Facebook? I think I remember Facebook, but I haven’t superpoked a friend in god only knows how long. I haven’t been at the bar, haven’t eaten out save once or twice, haven’t done coffee with friends in ages. Most recently, I have failed to watch my ritual 3 or 4 films a week, and the consoles at our flat are collecting dust. It’s not that I’m angry. It’s not that I’m overwhelmed. It’s not that I’m even busy. The truth is … *deep breath*, I’ve rediscovered Magic: The Gathering, and since last week when I put together my very first deck in more than a decade, leaving the house to do anything other than play Magic has become a trauma.

For what seems like forever, I have been inundated by technology. For the last year, I have worked in virtual worlds by day, played videogames by night, and watched films in between. Weekends were reserved for parties and bars and coffee and restaurants and friends who were also in the industry. Conversation rarely extended beyond shop-talk. Lately, I’m disaffected. Even the Sony Home beta, which many of us have salivated over for months and months, has quickly lost its luster. John was accepted to the beta, and his first Home interaction yielded the following: one avatar was dancing alone and obnoxiously bumping into objects; one avatar was running around in circles; one avatar asked John why he didn’t have a mic and followed up by insulting the avatar’s appearance and asking if John was poor. Virtual worlds have just felt like MySpace heavy in recent weeks, and my lack of enthusiasm for tech and gaming has never been so pungently present. Everything seems like a version of something else, some other game or virtual reality that also expressed the most pathetic and degenerate aspects of human nature, some other game or virtual reality that might have cured boredom were we slightly more imaginative as an industry.

The most exciting arrival in tech and gaming is Mass Effect, but the more I think about what makes that game so enthralling, the more I wonder what I’m missing. Mass Effect’s interactive storytelling makes it the most compelling game on the market, in my view. But what is interactive storytelling? It’s just a game with a great and partly self-authored story. I found myself wondering last week why I should bother to load Mass Effect or log into Second Life when I can just play a good old fashioned board game or pick up a deck of cards or take photographs instead.

My disaffection isn’t permanent. It’s a phase, and I think a healthy one for those of us who spend our entire lives in front of computer monitors, only to break away from them to fondle our consoles and watch movies. Now I will never, ever argue that technology is the death of healthy social interaction. I don’t believe that, and in fact, I will argue to the death that tech has facilitated greater and more rewarding social interaction between people. But lately, I’ve just been yearning for something else, something that feels different even if it is also just another version, something that feels like mental exertion and total exasperation. I’ve been yearning for anything other than the near total apathy I face with regard to the entertainment in my life. I’ve been yearning for the turn of a page, the touch of a card, the feel of little plastic soldiers and dice.

I’m not sure how it happened, but one day, John and I went to the comic store and bought some Magic: The Gathering cards. How I had loved Magic when I was young. The strategy, the long games that ended in the loss of my favorite card and utter despair, the ferocious and enormous pride of doing 7 points of damage to the best player’s favorite creature. It was … well, magic. And although I’m a decade older and a very different person, Magic is still the same.

Playing Magic: The Gathering when you are nearly 27 years old is like being a drug addict. You feel like you can’t tell anyone. You’re too old. You’re too tall. You’re too cool. Magic is for kids and losers, not people that eat at the best restaurants and wear designer jeans. What would people think if they knew about this Magic: The Gathering problem? You would fall from the grace of geek and plummet into the depths of dork. It would be shameful, and your friends would never understand, would never forgive you, would want you to seek treatment, would laugh at you. They would all laugh at you.

Since I picked up Magic for the second time, I have haunted game stores. Yes, most Magic players are 12, Asian, and male. But there are a few like me. The guy behind the counter at Gamescape was in his twenties, had his bridge pierced, smelled fine, and didn’t wear glasses. He wasn’t pedantic, didn’t scoff at my request for a common Magic card, and he offered John the Warhammer Fastasy schedule with a casual flip of his hand. And while Warhammer may be more respectable than Magic in most circles, to spend every other Saturday night for three or four months in the back of a game store fretting over your hand-painted Undead army isn’t exactly glamorous.

Now I’m sure that I’ll get over the feel of that card, the tearing of that plastic wrapper on Settlers of Catan, the turn of a page in that book I’ve been meaning to read for months. I’ll get back to gaming. I’ll make trouble in Sony Home. I’ll renew the Xbox Live subscription that we paid for weeks ago and haven’t used. I’ll drink with friends and talk industry gossip. But for now, I’m spending my evenings in the living room, huddled over a pile of red and black cards that have inspired more passion in me in one week than I’ve felt in ages. Quite simply put, it’s magic.

Blind Faith, Modding My 360

Yesterday’s thorough investigation of Craigslist led me to three potential Xbox 360 modders, none of whom I knew. After settling on the more local modder, John and I packed the Xbox into our trunk last night and made our way to the provided address. Not 15 minutes into the drive, I realized that the modder (whom I’ll refer to as George to protect his identity) did not live in the posh area that he had advertised in Craigslist, but that he instead lived in a fairly sketchy ghetto just south of San Francisco.

Sign 1: Modder does not live in professed posh neighborhood but instead lives in the ghetto.

We arrived at the location and George emerged like a eel from behind a gate. He seemed nice enough even if he was painfully thin. After 3 sentences had been exchanged, John dumped our 360 into George’s loving arms and hopped back into the car. We began driving away at 5 mph, and as I watched George in my rear view mirror, I noticed that he was not returning to the gate from whence he came. Instead, he walked around the corner and onto a different street. We noticed him double back as our car merged with traffic, but this new development left me mildly concerned.

Sign 2: Modder does not go back the way he came after retrieving The Precious.

I turned to John as we drove off into Xbox uncertainty and noted that George may in fact be stealing our Xbox. I suggested that George’s behavior was suspicious. He didn’t live where he said he lived. He didn’t give us any information about himself. All we had was a common first name, phone number and an address that looked to be illegitimate. Walking away with our brand new 360 would have been the easiest thing in the world for that George. Moreover, we just dropped it off and vanished. We didn’t wait for The Precious in the parking lot. We didn’t hover nearby to protect her. If she was about to be kidnapped, we had facilitated the thievery. I smacked my forehead, and looked at John helplessly. He shrugged. It was too late now. We just had to exercise some faith. This was life, and our 360, The Precious herself, was not exempt from the process.

Sign 3: We had no info about the modder. George was a complete enigma.

We returned home and one hour later began tracking back to the ghetto where our 360 either awaited or eluded us. We pulled up in front of the gate where we had dropped off The Precious. I held my breath. This was it, the moment of truth. John made the call.

George emerged about 1 minute later cradling The Precious. Not only had he done a flawless job modding it, but he charged us mere pennies, emailed us the firmware in the event that we felt like reverting one day, and offered to burn us games and update the mod if and when necessary. Turned out blind faith didn’t bite us in the ass after all. Instead, it served us quite well.

That George, what a winner. High praise to modders in ghettos everywhere.

Exit Music, My 360

On Sunday, January 20, 2008 at approximately 7:56 pm, it happened. The red ring of death docked in our living room. Our Xbox had failed.

At first, we pretended as if it hadn’t happened. We went into the other room, told ourselves that it was just a figment of our imaginations. We would go away for 10 minutes, come back, and everything would be fine. So 10 minutes later, we returned to the living room with the expectation that our Xbox 360 would be green as money and ready to play Mass Effect at a moment’s notice. I pressed that little 360 power circle and was prepared to scold myself for such a silly red ring of death Sunday night scare and partial meltdown. RED!

My face felt warm and wet. I looked in utter panic to John who shook his head. It couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t. But John’s expression told me that my worst fears had been realized. Complete hardware failure. The 360 wouldn’t come back, not if we wrapped her in towels, not if we unplugged her and tried to revive her. There was nothing we could do. It was over, the end of an era.

And then my whole world fell apart. The ice cream cake in the freezer, reserved for gaming nights alone, would go to waste. The Wii couldn’t provide us with Mass Effect! The Wii wasn’t cut out to play Drum & Bass! The Wii wouldn’t display Coen Brothers films! The Wii was only good for tennis and families, not young gamers with passion and ice cream cake! We knew what we had to do. But how would we accomplish the task?

And in the distance, I heard Thom York sing “Exit Music”:

Breathe … keep breathing
Don’t lose … your nerve
Breathe … keep breathing
I can’t do this … alone

If we hopped into the car, we would risk losing our highly coveted San Francisco parking space. It was cold outside and threatened to rain. But this was an emergency. We started the vehicle engine and proceeded to drive down Geary St. toward Best Buy. But a quick pull into the empty parking lot threatened to spoil our plans. As we suspected, Best Buy was closed. And then the panic began to leech out of my bones and into the car. It was Sunday. Of course! Everything was closed! How could we have been so stupid? I oscillated between self-loathing and exasperation for a time before deciding that if need be, we would drive 2 counties north to Walmart where surely a console awaited us. But no. A call to Target informed us that we had 30 minutes before close to arrive, purchase, and breathe again. Thom York sang:

Sing us a song
A song to keep us warm
There’s such a chill
Such a chill.

The San Francisco traffic gods took pity on us that evening as we drove south toward Target, toward salvation. The desperation was palpable as we pulled into the enormous parking lot. We rushed to the gaming area. Two college-age kids were ahead of us in line. They were asking for a 360. We listened in pain as the clerk said that the Xbox was sold out, nowhere to be found … anywhere. The news was not alarming. We had suspected that it might have been the case, and although the traffic gods had shown us mercy, we had clearly angered the console gods. We had to pay. And pay we did … for a PlayStation 3.

As we arrived back home, we could breathe. We had a lovely little PS3. It would care for us, play our DVDs, our D&B, and yes, there were PS3 games, many PS3 games to be played. And at the console gods, I heard Thom sing:

You can laugh
A spineless laugh
We hope that your rules and wisdom choke you
Now we are one
In everlasting peace

We were one, just me, John, the Wii, and the PS3, and it would be a new life, a new and exciting life.

But the week grew cold. The poinsettia died. And the PS3 was lovely, but Mass Effect lingered savagely in my mind. I had been waiting all that time for John to beat it before I played it for myself, knowing that once I went Mass Effect, I wouldn’t go back. And the opportunity had been cruelly taken from me by the console gods and their red ring of fucking death.

We hope that you choke … that you choke
We hope that you choke … that you choke
We hope that you choke … that you choke

And as Mass Effect nagged at me, Monday dragged. Specter Shepard, I wouldn’t become her. Tuesday I spent in spiteful darkness. And by Wednesday morning, the pain had become too much. I awoke for the third day in a row to Thom singing:

Wake … from your sleep
The drying of your tears
Today … we escape
We escape.

I looked over at John, who lay beside me. He had downloaded flOw. He had fondled the Home trailer lovingly. We had played Resistance and Uncharted. He was at peace with the PS3, had even grown to love him and his sleek black lines, sharp edges, effortless operation. And even though it would hurt both John and our PS3, I no longer had any choice, no agency, no will. I was defenseless against Mass Effect and the 360 that I longed for. The pain had to end soon.

And at lunch that day as I slipped out of the office, I looked at John before closing the door behind me.

Pack and get dressed
Before your father hears us
Before … all hell … breaks loose.

At 45 miles per hour, I raced to Best Buy. And there, so near the floor, so hidden from view, I saw her. She had been waiting. $350 later plus tax, I triumphantly threw the 360 in my trunk. It was mine. I would play Mass Effect! I would be Specter Shepard! I would fight Matriarch Benezia, and I would take Saren down! I roared in my victory over the console gods.

We hope that you choke … that you choke
We hope that you choke … that you choke
We hope that you choke … that you choke

And with that final curse, Thom York stopped singing.

Now we are one
In everlasting peace

But the next day, my wallet began crying, and I once again heard the deafening roar of the console gods’ laughter. I had won the battle, but they had won the war.