After the revolting and horrible news about Fallout 3 now being censored in all territories, I was a bit pissed off. Lets just say I may have had one end of my dvi to hdmi cable tied to my neck and the other end to the ceiling fan, with an old plastic picnic table chair underneath me. Luckily in what might have been my last moments, I saw the post on gamevideos of Ken Levine’s PAX keynote. I slowly loosened my fate from my neck, cleared my keyboard of the last remnants of my volcano taco from my taco bell big box meal, grabbed a small amount of hand lotion, moved the box of Kleenexes over to the monitor and began loading the Levine Keynote.
As I readied a turkey sandwich, (because nothing goes better with Ken then a good ol’ American sam-itch) I began to ponder what he would discuss during the keynote. Smearing the mayonnaise on the top of the bun, I remembered that I had read that he did not even talk about the development of Bioshock or any of his other games for that matter during the keynote. I’m back at the computer now, I take a bite, I feel the lettuce crunch, put my right hand on the mouse, left hand in my pants and click play.
Ken whispered sweet nothings into my ear for a full half-hour. He talked about growing up in the seventies, reading comics and fearing for his life. The more he spoke it reminded me of an episode of the wonder years if the wonder years sucked shit. I was shocked to think that Ken was an outcast for most of his life. Some fuck named Kevin PetraWEENIE (see what I did there?) used to punch him in the arm everyday on the bus. He used to read comics he hid inside his textbooks during his lunch period. He was as he said “a closet nerd”.
Mattel’s Closet Nerd Ken TM showed me a very surprising side of himself that may be hard to picture because of the tone of his games: his sense of humor. Ken Levine is a funny and clever son of a bitch. He spoke about his secret love for Magneto's daughter, the Scarlet Witch, described talking about D&D at the front of a bus full of Jocks and Freaks as being similar to singing in Hebrew in Nazi-occupied France, and when he proclaimed “when the dark lord of the sith offers you five, you give him five.” He described his childhood stutter so vividly that you would think he was baffling you with his speech impediment at twelve years old right next to you.
I think the thing that made me cum the most about his keynote was the level of appreciation he had for his “tribe”, one tribal brother being his friend and co-worker that did not make him feel ashamed for being himself. I don't think I ever had it even close to as tough socially as Ken did, because I had always had a “tribe”. Once all the kids moved up to middle school they got tired of playing fake gun games, but my friends and I bought airsoft guns as soon as we were allowed to and just kept the dream alive. My “tribe” would gather in a dark, dank, dingy basement and put in the latest Resident Evil or Silent Hill game. We would often take turns playing them together in complete silence while one of us traversed this horrific world until they could handle it no longer and had to pass the journey on to another. My fondest memory of this was deep into our first playthough of Silent Hill 3 when we entered a room with a giant wall-sized mirror. Suddenly the side beyond the mirror began to be covered by this living tissue. Then the tissue covered our side of the mirror. We froze…we literally turned off the game and watched infomercials for a half-hour because neither of us could continue. We still game together. Alex and I played the last boss of Gears of War for almost two hours trying to figure out the trick to him and why we kept dying. Turns out we just had to shoot him a lot. My friend Chris and I played (or mostly watched) Metal Gear Solid 4 for twenty-two hours straight until we beat it. I still play with my “tribe” now, but my new “tribe” usually involves beer and other illegal means and ends with me getting into a rap battle victory over Xbox live during some inebriated rounds of Halo.
The point is if I did not have my tribe when I was playing games, I may have tried to find some other social outlet. But my “tribe” has only encouraged and influenced my current love of games. Sorry for all this sentimental posting, but Ken reminded me again why I love games. But I still hate everyone from Australia for renaming my real drugs in Fallout, you Aussie rating board fucks.
No comments:
Post a Comment