A Pilgrim's Digression

Yes, I play a video game as a hobby.  Some would say World of Warcraft is a lifestyle choice, not a hobby, since it consumes so much of its players time and lives.  But I still call it a hobby, like playing golf with one’s buddies on a Saturday afternoon…er, playing golf four or five hours a night, five days a week plus weekends.

I am often ashamed to admit to my lifestyle in mixed company.  Saying that one’s hobby is a video game is often, to another man, a signal that he can feel superior to you.  It allows him to say that in his free time he goes to the gym/plays a game of football with his friends/rides a bicycle/runs a marathon/makes love to multiple women at the same time.  Or just watches sports on TV.  Yes, even watching sports on TV trumps video games in manly culture.

Never mind that in his man cave, you will probably find an XBox and a Rockband setup, which he uses to jam to “More than a Feeling” when he’s feeling special.

When we have company over, and I’m starting to feel anxious because it’s getting close to raid time and even though I’m enjoying this time with friends, I need to go play, even my wife feels entitled to tease a little.

“Look at him.  He’s getting the DT’s.  He’s gotta go play with his goblin soon.”

That’s what she calls it.  I’m not socializing with friends while playing the most popular MMORPG in the world.

I’m playing with my goblin.  I am, in effect, masturbating.  Yes, I said it.  Video games equate to masturbation, at least in the minds of many people.  There is no more pointless, time-wasting activity in the world than playing video games and masturbating, hopefully not both at the same time.

Our grandfathers liberated Europe at the age of 20, perfected the Atomic bomb and invented television, came home from the war and got jobs with Chrysler or Dupont and had already raised families by the time they were 38.  What have we done?

I’ve…played with my Goblin.

“It’s not a Goblin,” I tell her.  “It is, in fact, a Gnome.  I play with my Gnome.”

“Ouch.  I always knew you had self-esteem issues, but that’s just…ouch…”

It’s an odd world we live in today.  In fact, I just enacted a version of the above scene.  For those that don’t know, part of the week while I work in Washington, I live with a friend, N., in Silver Spring, Maryland.  I used to live with N. and her mother, but her mother died about a month ago.  N. has been asking me to watch this movie with her for a couple weeks, The Bridge.  It’s a documentary about people who suicided off the Golden Gate Bridge in 2004, complete with footage of them going over the rail.  Real morbid stuff.  But the subject fascinates me, and I did want to watch the movie.

Well tonight her brother Bill stopped over, and we were eating dinner and talking, and she suggested we all watch this movie together.

Immediately, I started thinking, “Wait, I’ve got a raid at 8:30.”  Do I beg off again, saying I’m too tired or whatever?  I don’t think she believes that anymore, anyway.  She knows I have a computer in my room, but I have never admitted what I do with it.  She probably thinks I spend my evenings watching porn.

No, I play with my Goblin.  Innocent, harmless solo play.

But I’ve never admitted it.  The closest I ever came was to tell her I “sometimes” play online games with my friends.  Only sometimes.  Not very often.  Eh, maybe once or twice a month we play a game of chess over at Yahoo! Games.  It’s strictly an intellectual way of keeping in touch over a long distance.

So I’m sitting there thinking, “Yeah, I want to watch this movie with them, but it might run too long.”

“How long is it?” I asked, “‘Cause I really gotta get some sleep.  I get up at 4:30 you know.”

The latter is true.  I do get up at 4:30, but sometimes stay up playing WoW until 11:30 and occasionally even midnight, if a raid runs really late.

“It’s about an hour and a half,” N. said.

I calculated that I could just spare 90 minutes, if we didn’t waste any more time.  It would bring me upstairs right about eight o’clock, plenty of time to call my wife and chat, then log on and play.

So we watched the movie, and I did not calculate into my plan that the movie would be so powerful and emotionally draining, that all three of us would want to sit and talk about it afterwards.  It’s powerful stuff, moreso than the schlocky “Faces of Death” or any of the other online junk where you can watch people die in horrible, almost stylized ways.

These people, in their last despair, simply go over a rail and tumble, usually head over legs, to their deaths in the water below.  120 miles per hour they fall, hitting the water as if it were a concrete sidewalk.

So we sat up talking about the movie, and it was good conversation, but I kept sneaking a look at my watch.  I felt guilty.  I couldn’t tell them I had to leave to go play with my Goblin.  I couldn’t tell them anything, really, though I was looking for an opportunity to stretch and say, “I’m so tired!  Why look at the time!”

But I was enjoying the conversation, too.

Eventually, I did get away and hurried upstairs about a quarter after eight, with just 15 minutes to spare, only to find out that not only was today a maintenance day, but I’d forgotten that it was also patch day.  And when I logged on, not only did I have to download and install a patch, but the installer was bugging out.  I went to the WoW forums and yes, there is an issue with something called a “tracker” not responding.  I just have to leave my Blizzard downloader spinning it’s wheels, and eventually it will connect and download the patch, probably very slowly.

So I had to beg off the raid anyway.  No playing with my Goblin, not immediately, anyway.

So instead I wrote a blog post which, because so few people (if any) will read it, probably amounts to playing with my Goblin all the same.