My gaming hell

I first got into gaming when the Sinclair ZX81 came out. I'm 50 now and I have no idea when the ZX81 came out, however I do recall that I must have been in my 20's or so.

Either way it doesn't matter because I'm a dad maaaaan, and not only that I'm a workfreelancefromhomehousehusbandwithtwokidsthatdrivemecrazy dad type person. And if any of you fellow dads out there are in full time work and your missus stays at home looking after the house and kids etc. (like I used to be before I goddam well had to give up my premises thanks to that bitch called 2009) you will probably wonder what the hell she gets up to all day and how come you get home from work and the place is still untidy. Well let me tell you fella...

As I write this I have four sets of freakin' bed linen in four different states of wash, dry, on the floor and generally crumpled in a corner somewhere. The dishwasher isn't loaded yet and I'm on the phone trying to work, while editing a story for my other day job as an online editor/video maker. It's currently 2.00pm as I write (because I'm procrastinating on my fee paid work) and we've run out of tea! I'm supposed to be popping to the shops to get some but it's pissing with rain and I don't fancy it. Besides, I like coffee. It's a shame my wife doesn't. So I like gaming, hell yeah! It takes my mind off all of the above shit.

And this is my point. Gaming puts me into a vacuous drooling zen like state and I like it. I also like to drink a little (yeah, right) booze when I'm gaming so I'm usually pretty numb to the cold by the time I log on in the late late evening to play. And guess what? I only come for the single player experience. I first got into online gaming via the PC about ten years ago or so. I had a seriously bad Soldier of Fortune 2 death match habit. So bad it pretty much near ruined my marriage at the time which is why I gave it up. When I moved out I got a PS2 and this pretty much sealed my fate with regards to the single player experience because I dared not hook it up to the net for fear of never again venturing from the house. By the time I moved back I had formed a band, wrote and recorded a wickedly cool album, got on the radio, got on the front cover of Classic Rock magazine and was busy headlining gigs around SW London in some pretty cool venues, so I was too wrapped up in being an artiste' to play video games. But all of this was about to change after everything went tits up halfway through the difficult follow up album and I gave up the front end of the music business to become a part time music promoter a year or two down the line.

During this hiatus I still managed to amass a ton of PS2 games because I couldn't stop buying them for the kids. I quite like hanging back and not jumping straight into the expensive end of a console launch, preferring instead to hang on and buy in cheaply while cherry picking the best games a system has to offer. We did this with the Wii which arrived about two years ago. My daughter turned ten this spring and I somehow managed to convince her that she needed an Xbox 360 with all the works. How did I do this? Well, she was a Just Cause junkie for the PS2 and when we saw the JC2 footage there was no stopping her, or me, for that matter. I figured she was going to need an Elite console with wifi web connectivity, remote with Sky player (what a load of shite that is) and a fully loaded Amex Gold Live account just in case she wants to download 'the odd game'. We have been steadily buying some pretty cool games, again none of the rubbish because we're coming at this late in the development cycle, and I'm having a blast. She, on the other hand, isn't that interested in Xbox simply because it's not really a ten year olds thing. Shame we had to find this out after having spent all of that money, but yup, yup, yup... I guess I can't complain.

I’ve just noticed the time and I’ve got to go pick up my daughter from school and get the tea bags, all before the missus comes home from work expecting a ‘nice cuppa’ to be waiting for her for when she gets home. Yeah right. As if I haven’t got my hands full already! All this and I am still trying to teach myself Photoshop (yes the montage above is all my own work – I’ll be sure to update you as it develops).

There you have it. If the lads have me back I’ll get around to talking about why I like the single player experience and how the heck I got involved with an online multiplayer gaming community!

Screw you guys! I’m going home. ;-)