Power Struggle

#ThePowerStruggleisReal

 

I may or may not have mentioned this before but I am, technically, not the only gamer in my household. The other members are not as "Soup" as I am (Soup, in this context, is my local dialect's nomenclature for: an avid gamer/a good player/any and every one who thinks games are cool). Basically, they (My household) are'nt as gung-ho and enthusiastic about games *cough* CASUALS *coughs*... but they do have their personal stints, on occasion.

My family consists of 4 individuals: myself, my lovely wife, our daughter and our son. (I just noticed that I inadvertently listed us in the order of "Most Hardcore Gamer to Least Hardcore Gamer") [and after typing that, I realized it was also in the order of "Head Honcho to... Not Head Honcho"]

My then girlfriend (Adult female companion?), now wife, and I each had our own little hobbies and activities we would do with and without each other. As we became more involved she let on that she loved Super Mario Bros. for the Original NES which she just happened to play on an emulator. She had played a few other games but she wasn't all that into them. If it wasn't MARIO, it wasn't MARIO. (I guess this means we were meant to be from the start. Our coupling was ordained by the universe long before we met. Serendipity, Fate, Destiny. Whatever you want to call it, that's us. *suggestive wink* [My real name is MARIO, incase you didn't know] After we moved in together she enjoyed games a bit more (i.e. she enjoyed that I enjoyed them and would try to enjoy them with/for me). Sometimes we had little tiffs when she decided that the PS3 was getting more attention than she was but that didn't dissuade her. Contrary to her initial inclination she did, eventually, find something (Other than MARIO *suggestive wink*) that she liked. One faithful evening after I asked her to hold my PS3 controller, while I went to the bathroom, she was catatonically enthralled by Persona 3. (Every now and again she asks when the new Persona game is coming out and if she will have to buy a PS4 to play it. Bless her heart! *big goofy smile*) [Of course, I give her my best non-distinct answer, in the hopes that I'm misconstrued and she just buys a PS4 to avoid missing out. Part 6b of Evil Plan #222 *maniacal laugh*]

Our daughter was the second to be smitten with Gameritis (The infection and eventual swelling of the part of a person that causes them to love gaming)! Many, many moons ago I came home from work and noticed my PS3 was not where it should be. I'm a bit of a stickler when it comes to my systems. They should be aligned this way, in this position, this distance away from potential disasters and most importantly, free of dust. (Yes, I'm weird like that. No, it's not OCD! *adjusts PS3 slightly, centers controller on system, removes 3 specks of dust*) My PS3 being outside of its assigned area set off warning alarms but I calmly and quietly asked why it was where it was. My lovely wife said she didn't touch it and informed me that she wasn't the only person in the house. This was her subtle way of saying "the kids did it". (This just made it worse for me. I had now moved to DEFCON 2 and total meltdown was imminent) The list of things that could go/have gone wrong instantly doubled in size and my mind raced between "Jesus, Savior. Pilot Me!!!" (Which is a phrase my Mom used to say when she was livid. I now realize that it was her way of warding off the urge to strangle my childhood self after I had done something wrong) and "Why me???" (I had been a good boy, I'm sure I had been a good boy, I tried my best to be a good boy all the time! I'm supposed to have good happen to me, right? Isn't that how it works?). While all of this is going on (The external conversation with my lovely wife and the internal conversation with Jesus Christ) our daughter runs into the room, grabs the controller, turns on the TV and the PS3 and then flatly tells me I will have to play later because she has to complete a stage before bedtime. (She has gone out of her way to buy me a game or 2 since then. She always buys an older, cheaper game that either completely sucks or doesn't interest me at all. Bless her heart! *big goofy smile*) [I don't tell her that the games she buys are crap because I'm hoping as she gets older and wiser she will be a more discerning game-buyer. Also I'm still trying to be a good boy and not be "that guy". Continuous Improvement Section 4 *activate halo*]

The final member of the household (And the gamer train) is our son. He started playing a while back but he was very sneaky about it. He would take my games and play at a friend's house (Which is technically true except his reasons are not as upfront as he implied). This misdirection worked for a while but I found him out eventually. Firstly, he would ask if he could lend said friend a game to play because the friend "doesn't have any games of his own" or "was tired of playing demos" (Our son insisted this was so). So I would give one of my games to our son (One that I didn't mind losing i.e. one our daughter bought) followed by The Speech that always accompanies the borrowing of my games. The speech basically goes something like this: bring it back, bring it back soon, bring it back working. After some time he would always bring them back, as instructed, but he would borrow another using the same excuse. At first he was contented with the games I gave him (Legend of Spyro, Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe, Naruto: Shippuden) but soon he began:

1. Taking what he felt like taking (The better games e.g. Dishonored, The Last of Us, Super Street Fighter 4)  

2. Not asking me for permission when taking said games

3. Taking 2 games at a time 

and I began to wonder what was really going on. It all became clear when I went to pick him up from his friend's house one day and after sitting outside for more time than I wanted to I went up to the house to inquire. Through the window, I see our son trying his best to beat Seth. The friend is telling him that I'm outside and our son brushes him off and goes back to the fight. The friend insinuates that I'm no longer in the car but on the porch. Our son doesn't hear a word. The friend lets on that I can actually see our son and have been looking at him for the last 3 or so fights. Our son turns around, looks me in the eye (With a look I'm all to familiar with. It's the old "I need to save the game" look that I used and use on my Mom and lovely wife, respectively), holds up his hand, fingers splayed and trusts it at me. Twice. (The "Give me a few more minutes" gesture, we locally follow the gesture with the phrase "Me a come, jack") He had a few more tries and finally gave up. When he finally got in the car I ask what difficulty he was playing on and he told me Hard Mode. I explained that his play style (Button mashing) wouldn't work on Hard Mode. I then asked why he didn't play at home but he just shrugged. (Apparently, he didn't want to play against me and decided that his friend would be a better sparring partner until he felt comfortable enough to take me on. The "borrowing games and going over by the friend" was a viable excuse to play the games he wanted to play AND get in enough practice to someday beat me. Bless his heart! *big goofy smile*) [The friend was not only a Fighting Game Novice but a Video Game Novice as well. He didn't even know how to connect the PS3 to the TV. Fighting the friend wasn't going to help him in his bouts with me and I'm glad he tried the Hard Mode attempts. Little did he know, I wasn't going to let him win... EVER. Noobs Get Rekt - Gamer's Pride 101 *serious face*]

 

Fast-forward to present day and things have gone further downhill. My lovely wife has moved on from the PS3 to the Xbox One. She loves Diablo 3. She has a Paragon 30/Level 100 Witch (She calls it that not me. I say Female Wizard. She insists it's a Witch) that specializes in Fire Magic. In the first couple months after Diablo 3's release we were at loggerheads, constantly. It got to the point where we would both get home from work and RUSH to our bedroom. The unspoken rule was, if you got there first you got to play first and the loser was left to wait their turn or do something else while the winner played. She actually tried to trick me and trip me (Literally) a few times so that she could get there before me (This is a prime example of being soup). "Husband, can you get my bag out of the back of the car please?", parking the car so that I'm furthest away from the house, "Be a nice husband and throw this in the garbage for me" and locking my car door "by accident" were just some of the ploys she used against me. I didn't worry about it though. I let her think she had me beat but I mostly had the last laugh. Especially, because I had either hidden the controller beforehand, stashed the game disc back in the case upon leaving home, unplugged the HDTV power cord early that morning or had the HDMI cord in my back pocket. (Me = smart) On days when I either fell for the trick or fell from the trip (Literally) I was relegated to the PS3 and the SDTV where I bided my time playing my older games, contemplating ways to avoid the tricks/trips and plotting my revenge.

Meanwhile, our daughter has blossomed into that age where she just locks herself in her room for days on end. She's either streaming shows, chatting online... or playing ALL the crappy games she's bought for me over the years. She no longer has to be worried about bedtime and plays for hours on end. I still don't know how she can put all those hours into those games. They're horrible! (I chalk it up to either her being really bad at games or her wanting to get her money's worth) She dabbles with a few fighting games now and then, where she makes a conscious effort to only choose female characters. Doesn't matter if she wins or not, she still chooses the girls (Passive feminism I guess). Don't even bother suggesting anything else, she's not hearing it. She also has a penchant for RPGs and Adventure Games (Like myself) and this happens to interfere with my plans (Sometimes) but I have learned to live with it. The cure I have come up with is to secretly play most of the RPGs I have in the seclusion of my room, without her knowledge, and finished them as quickly as possible before she finds out about them. This has gone well so far (Except for 1 time when she started playing Dishonored before I did because our son left it out after returning it from a visit to his friends house) and if at any point this fails, I have a last resort that I'm saving for just such an occasion (I'm telling her mother *serious face*). 

Our son has gotten over his fear of playing at home. He plays quite often but only does so when he has a new game to play. He tends to play in long bouts followed by droughts. It ends up being something like this: get new game, play for 12 hours on days 1 - 4, play for 9 hours on day 5, doesn't play for a month (This is where our daughter and I normally fight for game time), play some more, beat the game/get tired of it. His games of choice are any and every fighting game he can get his hands on. He has gone through so many over the years that I have lost track. I venture to say he has, in his short gaming life, played more fighting games than I have in my extensive tenure. (I think he is still trying to find a fighter he can beat me in. Good luck with that though) I must admit, however, I have lost a few games to him. He has won a couple rounds on Street Fighter and he normally wins (The first 2 or 3 games) on Naruto: Shippuden (Button mashers pwn in Naruto). He has put in a lot of work into his practicing and he has come a long way. I still don't consider him having "won" though because if we play sets he starts out with a (few) win(s) but always ends up behind. He (And you) may not agree but I am of the opinion that 1 win isn't really a win. When you win convincingly i.e. 3 sets or the majority of the battles, then you can say that you have beaten me until then... gitgud ya scrub! (Just kidding... about the scrub part anyway)

There is always someone trying their best to get their game on in our house and this (Even though it warms my gamer heart to have a family that loves to game) poses the problem of me finding an opportunity to play. Now don't get me wrong. I LOVE that my lovely wife actually wants to game, I LOVE that our daughter comes to me for help when she can't beat a boss, I LOVE that our son challenges me to a match now and again. Adversely, I DON'T LOVE having to watch my lovely wife run around the map casting random spells because she can't find the exit (top left of the map) while I could be playing Assassin's Creed Syndicate, I DON'T LOVE waiting for our daughter to make the jump she's been attempting for the last 5 minutes that she just can't seem to make but refuses to let me do it for her (Use the double jump) while I could be finishing up my Zealot playthrough of Dead Space 2, I DON'T LOVE watching our son and his friend vigorously press all the buttons on the controller hoping a special move will come out and exclaim how good they are when it just happens to come out then tell me they're ready to beat me (-_-) while I could be pressing specific buttons in the correct order and timing to achieve the combo Daigo did in last tournament. (You see where this is going, right?) I wanna play!!! *in my best whiney voice* I want to play when I want to play and I don't want to have to wait or fight or scheme to do so. It's hard enough having to struggle through work-life, social obligations and parenting (The collective commonly referred to as "adulthood" *shudders*). Not to mention the constant fear of file corruption, CD scratches and power outages (The digital age's trifecta of terror). It's hard on a gamer to deal with all of those and still have to struggle with "Please, please, pleeeaaassseee, let one of the systems be available". It's enough to drive any gamer insane.

All I'm saying is this. When it comes to T.A.G's household... the power struggle is real. (See the opening hashtag at the top of the page)

P.S.

If anyone says ANYTHING that even REMOTELY resembles "you're an adult now, quit playing videogames"... they won't hear anything from me but just know that I will be glaring at them intensely, deducting most of their cool points and placing our friendship in the "Under Scrutiny" section!