My Gaming Pedigree (3): Part two of two parts

This turned out to be a long post so to make it more palatable it's broken in two parts. This is part two...sorry for disorganized posting cold medicine is wearing off.

I was just getting into another Monkey Island game at my friends house, when something happened to me and a work friend.. I was at a party (a house party with some work friends at someone's home I'd never been to before). Some guys at the party hassled us a bit, unprovoked but we ignored them and decided to split early. As we went back to our cars everyone got into one car except this one friend who got into my car with me. Gentleman, totally punk and gentleman. As we were locking up we were mugged by the same group of guys from the party who hassled us (the rest of the "friends" took off scared). He was pulled out of the car by about 5-6 guys and they kicked, punched and beat the crap out of him, stole his watch, his wallet. There was blood...everywhere. They yanked me out of the car on to the ground. I was in in skirt and blouse and they all surrounded me. I remember the runs in my stockings, oddly. I remember thinking this sucks there is nothing, nothing I can do about anything any of them might decide to do with me except to fight and scream as loud as I can manage. That was my worst moment but I didn't cry, apparently I just looked really pissed off. Finally, one of them grabbed me, pulled me up and made me give him my wallet before they all left taunting and laughing. I remember after...bawling and checking on my friend. I pulled my friend into the car and drove still highly upset. Just 7 blocks away I nearly ran over one of the police officers at one of those drunk driver speed trap spots and he was really pissed (pulling gun and all) until he saw my friend's bloodied face and my shaken condition.

What does this have to do with games and me? A lot. I have been fortunate that I have not lived a life full of certain types of violence and this experience at the time just completely crushed me. Now, I'm older, I've healed from this and I know that this experience as bad as it was, could have been a HELL of a lot worse. Some of you may have experienced much worse and for that I really am sorry. But for me, like that sunset or sunrise at the beach or running the bases I had never experienced anything like this personally. This was new for me, an awful, awful new. I found in the weeks and months that followed I was very affected by this experience. I didn't like to go to places where I didn't know all the people going to be there. When most of my friends were clubbing, I was coming up with excuses not to go. Where I was a very outgoing person I became very introverted. I had this desire to reach people,, but was afraid of the risks. One of the risks caused a nice guy who was being a total gentleman to have reconstructive surgery on his nose among other problems. I became a little less trusting and more willing to hang back and warm up to new crowds of people. That's probably a good thing. But the bad part was that I didn't feel comfortable around people for a time. So what did I do? Did I hide? Not exactly, but perhaps in a sense...for a time.

I went to Radio Shack and I bought a computer and modem. I discovered Compuserve and other such places. I developed my computer skills. I discovered bulletin boards and chat rooms. (I don't mean the kinky stuff necessarily... just that people hung out and I felt comfortable talking in this way). It was at the time just what I needed, just what I could handle until I healed and found some perspective. I didn't become a shut in. I didn't stop functioning or lose myself. In a few weeks I returned to doing stuff I loved to do socially and went to parties and hung out - but only with friends I knew, or to places I researched. And for a time I was pretty slow about making new friends, very careful about my environment and who might be a part of it or attracted to it.

But, I played a HELL of a lot of games. Please, please someone tell me they played the Tex Murphy series games too cause I could NOT get enough of them...or the Gabriel Knight series (Excellent, excellent weaving of fact and fantasy in these games). Of course I was all over the King's Quest series ( they got a little sappy at one point but still fun) Oh and forgot to mention Betrayal at Krondor older game but ran well on my piece of crap computer and was based on a series of book I had read. Then...one night a friend slipped me a few floppies with a giggle and said how high can you score? And I was introduced to Larry "Polyester is the only choice for clothing" Laffer in Leisure Suit Larry and the Land of the Lounge Lizards. I am blushing as I type this, as I confess how much I loved this game and that I scored a perfect score. What does this say about me? I'll let you figure that out... :D But I had certainly never played a graphical game like that before and it was a fun, punny, funny, somewhat tongue-in-cheek little distraction. Amazing when you think of the types of games you can find in that genre now.

And for my aggression, for my need to excise my demons, the game that probably helped me to do that the most during that time period was Doom. I was dangerous with this game, playing hours and became quite competent. It was cathartic, empowering as demons were dispatched with rifles and chain saws. Especially later when I had to go to court to testify and face one of the guys they caught from that night. Doom was down right therapeutic. (Much more than Wolfenstein). To this day, it never fails to make me smile.

My perception at that time, computer games were a different form of enjoyment for me than video games. Someone pretty special to me introduced me to probably one of my favorite computer games of all time that sort of bridge my perceptions of them both to be on the same team, but we'll get into that later. In the meantime, while all of this has been/was happening my video game passions were reaching all new levels. One day playing games with my nephew my sister comes into the room with a newspaper ad asking for people who like to play games to apply for a job. As she was probably more concerned that I was bringing my nephew "The Genius" (her son's) GPA down by 1/2 a point (I have always teased her about her motives on this point she swears she meant it positively for me! ). I applied and got the job. I was working for videogame company and all I had to do was talk with people about something I loved. Getting paid for something I loved, that is part of the dream isn't it?

So that is where I'll pick up next - when I started working at this company it was during it's ascension and let me tell you - working for a videogame company that is making money and popular is awesome as working for a company when everything is going bad and profits dry up, which really, really sucks. And then of course there is working for a videogame company when said company is called on carpet to account for their game content to Congress...or better yet manning the lines when people called to express their views about such games as Night Trap and having discussions with people from religious groups, women's groups and...well it was crazy..

So yes my next post will be all about my Sega years. Some of the most fun most times if not most frustrating times I had. It's funny I don't plan these posts i write and what comes out comes out, so I didn't really intend to share so much of myself but I'm going to leave this post here unedited save for spelling, hopefully because this is all a part of the reasons why I love games so much.

Whew, this was a long one! I blame the cough meds...If you read all this really, thanks for looking!