I just had to wish a friend happy birthday 5 minutes ago. I told her I didn't get her a present because I'm broke and sweet and understanding as they usually are - friends that is - she said it was ok.
But it reminded me of something from back in the day. Remember how your parents would trick you into getting you a birthday gift, even if it's 3 months before your birthday, and calmly tell you "Now this is an early birthday present." That kinda sucked bricks for me, because now I have zero expectations of a day that usually becomes the only one I ever look forward to throughout the year, and I'm supposed to find solace in the fact that atleast I have a SEGA now, which kinda does nothing when the only game you have on it is Street Smart, a ruthless look into the lives of street fighters who ALSO have to be smart about the money they bet on each fight.
I think I'm the only guy who ever bet on the person I was fighting against. I made 6 billion dollars, but never finished the game, and even most of THAT money went to my character's hospital bill.
I've always loved video games.
Sometimes I sit and think about the maybe 2 years of my life where even I found something I cared about enough to become a real part of.
Just like everything else, it got tainted by corruption, desire and more want for some idea of payback for putting in all those years on a crappy rolling chair and a pc screen. People all around living out their fantasies of being called names that their juvenile minds thought would be a fun thing to be called in a fictional universe like MADDER or JACKOLANTERN or ETERNAL or NOT ETERNAL or NINJA or BLADE or BLOOD or SHOT or BLOODSHOT. It was really something to see.
"VULTURE!!! Behind you!!!"
A man with the nick 'Vulture' turns his mouse to see around his character in the pc.
I turn my ACTUAL head around to find a loser who would name himself Vulture. I laugh about it. Loudly.
My name? Lodhi. It was quite brilliant. Anytime someone called it out, I somehow immediately knew they meant me. What with it being my name and all.
If anything REALLY used to bother me about gaming arenas, was how a man sitting 3 feet away from me can actually be bothered to TYPE a comment to me instead of saying it. I get depressed when I see things like that, you know? Like how dependant we've become on technology that we think it works better than just telling someone something? Most conversations of mine went like this.
GoDsmACk: Lodhi, check the A area with ur sniper, i think we have something going on there.
Lodhi: You're sitting right next to me asshole. Stop stuffing chips in ur face and take a minute.
I do have a lot of patience, sometimes. But barely any for people who use CAPS in the most unreasonable places in their nicknames.
Then there's people on msn who do it with their actual typing. I have deleted them from my list. I'm not being a bitch or anything, I'm just particular about the company I keep. And my decisions in this matter may range from the CAPS thing to things like adding twenty Z's at the end of your good byes. AND your hello's. I mean, really, what the hell is that?
Ah but the politics of so called adults hell bent on corrupting even a tiny fun little thing like lan gaming. I knew I should have seen something coming when CS (That's counter strike, a game which you will not care about much after you realise that the prize money going to 5 people really goes 16 different ways...it's called FRIENDSHIP tax) teams from all around Karachi started bringing prinouts of maps and studying them with markers and pencils before any tournament.
I was in a team called DODT. I'm sure if I was to leak out even HALF the nerdish things the boobs in this team used to do, they'd come after me with a sword. But thats ok, because it would probably be in another VIDEO GAME anyway! Most of the guys in this team were either too weak to lift a sword, or too old to be talking back to a mother who would tell them they can't have any swords in the house, without having to suffer the humiliation of having their noses rubbed in the fact that they still lived with their mothers at 32.
I liked the people though. Can't say I didn't. Honestly. I was always there to entertain anyway, right? What do I care as long as they're laughing. That's all it is. Laughs. The world is such a big joke most of the time that it's refreshing to me to see people laughing sometimes. Because that makes me feel that atleast people get this incredibly unfunny universal joke.
In my later days as a hardcore gamer, or a CYBER ATHLETE as one friend - who I quickly grew to hate and eventually cut contact with completely - called it, I was in a team called LORDS. It started with four people and one whore. And we were the best of the best. We beat two tournaments hands down and retired undefeated for all time.
Atleast I did. There's always someone still willing to hold onto something so bad, that when the music stops, they keep tapping their feet just so they have something to dance to. I wished them the best, and ended my run in the gaming world.
In the end, it was funny to see how a group of guys turned into men throughout the years. Some people went onto bigger things, some didn't. But when you sit and think about it, what was the point of sticking around when the very purpose of the game, which was to have fun, was shot out of the sky like it never existed. When it became only about winning, and proving the other person weaker, or not as skilled, or not as talented as you were. So you could go from arena to arena, city to city, person to person, just telling the same old stories again and again about how you were the 'King of the Realm', the 'Master of Mankind' and the 'Decider of Destiny for the Weak'.
In a fucking video game...
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