Many people have hobbies or special interests, and my boyfriend happens to be a gamer. I know what you’re thinking – I’m going to bang on about the old stereotype where the attention-starved girlfriend looks on hopelessly as her guy mercilessly kills more zombies… or Nazis… or Nazi zombies.
Well, yes. But, unlike many others, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I was a sheltered child who preferred reading to other, more gory pastimes. The closest I ever came to playing a video game was a peak over my sister’s shoulder as she hopped along as Mario on her Gameboy Advance.
So, when we were in the initial texting stage of our relationship, my rather-creative boyfriend would tell me he was “just dipping into Plato’s Republic – it’s some enlightening stuff!” when I had no idea that, in reality, he was into his fourth consecutive hour of Black Flag.
Fast forward a couple of months later when we both moved to York and slowly but inevitably started living together. Suddenly, my ears were filled with jargon like ‘Steam sales’, ‘first-person shooter’ and ‘DLC’ – I was completely lost. Instead of the those cosy, cuddly evenings I’d imagined, drinking hot chocolate and snuggling up by the fire (okay, perhaps I’m being a little bit far-fetched… radiator), I was desperately breathing through a blocked nose and suffering from the flu, trying to block out the screeching and explosions played at full volume from Need for Speed. Not the most romantic of situations.
Well, when the ever-growing tension finally built up into an argument, he put forward the point that his gaming was just the same as me reading my books (not quite correct as I am a literature student, so reading is kind of my day job, but I let that one slide). So I asked, ‘How on earth can mindless, noisy violence have the same effect as works of literature, treasured for evoking new thoughts and empathy and understanding of others?’ He looked at me, smiled and said – ‘Bioshock’.
I wasn’t convinced; but I dutifully started playing, taking about 20 minutes to learn the controls and get to that sodding lighthouse right at the beginning of the game. Then, as I approached a Big Daddy and quietly muttered “sorry” under my breath before raining bullets into him, I felt all the pent-up annoyance ebb away. I can’t lie, shooting people feels good – really good. But I still didn’t think that it could be classed as ‘on par with’ A-level Literature – then comes the story. After completing it with him, I took back everything I ever said about video games not making you think – it mangled my brain for weeks!
So, by the summer term, I was actually taking an interest in what my boyfriend termed his ‘morning newspaper’ – a daily half an hour spent trawling through IGN and Polygon, and was able to have meaningful conversations with him about whether the processor on his laptop would be able to play games this side of 2004 without diminishing the graphics.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a hardened gamer by any stretch of the imagination, and I still look blankly at his excitement about the new Wolfenstein (do Nazi games never get old?). But on the whole, I have to agree that gaming can, in its own way, does so much more than literature with its interactive element.
Which is now why one of my favourite things to do on a night is watch my boyfriend play The Walking Dead while I chip in as a back seat driver. And although I still disagree with some gaming morals (don’t even get me started on Pokémon), I’m glad that my mind was changed about how gaming is an undervalued art form on a level with film and literature. Now for my revenge – to make him give Ulysses a try!