A Traditional Gamer

I’m not even going to pretend like I can relate to kids today in regards to how much or little (most likely little) they appreciate the little treasures in life. In this age of high-speed internet, iPods, and the various other forms of technology that bring instant, on-demand entertainment of every kind, I would imagine something as trivial as getting one new video game is just a blip on the life radar of a kid or teenager who never had to worry about rewinding or fast-forwarding a movie. But for those of us who grew up in the days when video games came on cartridges so big that we had to lift them with two hands lest we pull our backs out, each and every new game was a magical event. This was especially the case for the kids like me who didn’t get them very often, and almost never outside of a birthday or [insert religious holiday of your upbringing]. One of my favorite new-game rituals was actually opening the thing up for the first time: Tenderly removing the outer plastic so as not to damage the box (that my mom would end up throwing out with the wadded up wrapping paper and TMNT action figure cardboard backings soon after anyway), sliding the game out in a manner that suggested I was expecting the actual characters to be riding on top of it, and perhaps my favorite pre-first-play ritual, reading the instruction manual. There was a time, young grasshoppers, when the manual was the only place to learn how to play the game, what the game’s story was, and what the names of the heroes and villians were. Such information was often not even found in the game itself. Anyway, the best was on those rare days when I was actually along for the ride to purchase the new game, and the treat on those occasions was that I’d get to excitedly open and ogle my new game’s assets on the car ride home.

Yeah, they say life goes on, long after the thrill of getting new games is gone. And once you’re old enough to buy your own games on a regular basis, a lot of the magic disappears. But I still often find myself opening and peaking at games I buy on the car ride home (which is a slightly more dangerous proposition since I’m also now driving said car), and if I don’t do that, then I most certainly open them as soon as I get home. Maybe it’s a combination of trying to keep that sense of childlike discovery alive inside my cynical adult body, and a purely Pavlovian reaction that I do almost without even thinking about it, but I still open most every game that I bring into the house even if I have zero intention of getting to it anytime soon.

But who would buy a game they don’t plan on playing right away? Well, someone who tries to support the industry that he loves, and especially the people who he feels are trying the hardest and taking the biggest risks. I’ve always taken pride in trying to buy games that I want to “support”, even when I don’t think I’ll be playing them anytime soon, because buying a game 6 months after the fact in a clearance bin or used from GameStop isn’t doing the game’s developers any favors. I bought Okami for PS2 immediately after its release, for example, even though I’ve yet to have the time to devote to it. And yes, I opened it right away.

You should always uphold your own personal traditions and principles. Nobody knows that better than me after what happened to me recently. Now you’ll notice that I kept saying how I “almost always” open every new game that passes through my doorway. Well, sometimes, for whatever reason, I don’t. And it’s a very, very rare occasion when this happens, and it’s usually by some fluke or string of events that I just toss a game onto my shelf without shuffling it loose its shrinkwrapped coil. I’d venture to say that, of the 700+ games I’ve purchased in my entire life, less than 10 weren’t opened within hours of purchase. I don’t know percentages so I’m not going to try and give one, but it’s very low. And okay, so sometimes a game comes out that I know needs my support and that I know I’m going to play and probably love one day, but maybe I opted for, say, a new Grand Theft Auto instead and that game got forgotten until I ran across it later on, lying pitiful and quivering in a $10 bin at Circuit City. Such was the case with Psychonauts, Tim Shafer’s brilliant platformer for Xbox. I bought it cheap, and I didn’t open it until a few days ago when I finally decided to start playing it (absolutely love it so far, not surprisingly). Upon tearing away its plastic for the first time and opening up the game’s case, I was immediately greeted with this:

So yeah, in case you can’t tell, it says “Congratulations, Psycho-Soldier! You’ve Won $5,000″

That is, I would have won $5,000 had I redeemed my prize by 07/19/05. Three years ago to the very day that I finally opened the game. I went against a tradition that I almost never break, and a principal I uphold as often as my meager bank balance allows, and it cost me $5,000. Kiss my ass, karma.

UPDATE: I shared this story with the forums at 1UP.com because one of their podcasts, 1UP FM, was doing Psychonauts as the featured game on their Backlog segment (where they choose a game and play it for a month, discussing it amongst themselves and the listeners each week). On the fourth week, they closed the show by sharing my story, which in and of itself was cool enough. But then, the following week, they had Tim Shafer (creator of Psychonauts and other classic games like Full Throttle and Grim Fandango) on for an interview, and they brought me and my story up to him! They all talked and joked about it for several minutes (you can listen to them either directly from the website or on iTunes). It’s pretty awesome to have something like this happen to you, and have the game’s creator find out about it personally. My foot is in the door! Okay, not really…