Why Game? 1 - TextFiles.com

than one-hundred percent on tests the day
after they were taken. When she did this after
the first test, mine was one of the names she’d
called out. As at least twenty-five people in the
room looked at me with an expression of burn-
ing hatred, I shrugged. I had not tried, truly,
hadn’t even studied, it wasn’t my fucking fault; I
wasn’t an A-student because I had ever wanted
to be one, stop looking at me that way.
That day after class, Billy found me. He
was a kid who breathed through his mouth and
found climbing a single flight of stairs exhaust-
ing. He was also a year younger than me - he’d
been taking that Algebra II class anyway be-
cause he was a Mathematical Child Prodigy.
“You’re smart. Let’s be friends,” He said.
“No,” I said.
He laughed.
“You’re funny, too!”
* * *
Billy found out that I played videogames.
This was exciting to him because, hey, he played
games, too. He had a PC and all three consoles
of the current generation.
He liked Starcraft, and told me all about
the strategies he used to play it. He frequently
did this at some length.
“I like Starcraft because it is such a well-
made game,” he’d tell me, and I’d feel a weird
echo. “It’s so…so balanced. You’ve got the
Terrans, and…and the Protoss, and….,” he was
breathing heavily here, again, like he was too
excited to finish his sentence, “and the Zerg.
You know what? I like playing as the Zerg…”
Every time I tried to talk to Billy about
electronic games of any sort, there would be a
bizarre barrier of understanding. I’d managed
to get him to understand one day, for just a
moment, that I did not like Starcraft. He asked
me why, and I told him. The game, I said, feels
cold to me. It has no personality. No feeling. It
boils down to nothing more than numbers and
balance. It is soulless and empty. I play it and I
feel tired and drained.
Billy would listen to this, and then tell me
that the game feels less empty if you play as
Zerg, because then you can have more units.
I’d give up.
For at least a little while, Starcraft turns
everyone who plays it into Billy. The effect may
or may not wear off, given time, but it is har-
rowing and freakish.
The first time I played the game, I was
thrown into a state of abject confusion. A friend
of mine, functionally identical to Daniel and Billy
but not either, as this was a while after the for-
mer and before the latter - - was yelling at me.
“No, no, do it faster! Faster! Faster, you…
you’re going to get killed! Don’t you fucking
know what this game is like? Wait, wait, hit
F10.”
he said.
I did. The game paused.
“Let me teach you about the hotkeys now,”
* * *
If the mere existence of Starcraft is char-
acterized by a certain amount of arbitration,
so is every individual aspect of its design. The
interface gets in your way ninety-nine percent of
the time. It is supposed to do that.
A Calculated Assault on Starcraft and All it Stands For: Why I am Not a Gamer 39