Last Tuesday
Meshal and I met once again in the Union Grounds sandwich area and grabbed
lunch together. This time, however, he was a bit stressed. “My computer is broken,
so I can’t play my online games… it’s terrible,” he said dejectedly as he sat
down and threw his bag beside the table. As I have previously mentioned, Meshal
is quite the avid gamer from FIFA to first-person shooters. Mostly, however, he
is a fan of online PC games and role-playing games (RPGs) such as World of
Warcraft. He claims he used to be addicted to WoW before he made himself quit,
but he has recently gotten into different, smaller based games of a similar
nature. His laptop had fried somehow and he couldn’t get it fixed so he has
been reduced to playing games on handheld devices like his phone and Samsung
tablet. This was where the problem was stemming.
“TCU wireless is
stupid,” he complained, “It’s impossible to set up on this tablet!”
“I can try to
set it up,” I replied, but I was not so sure of my capabilities as an IT
consultant. I agree with him, stu-wireless is stupid. It’s a pain in the @#$%
to set up and it logs out constantly. CONSTANTLY. But, due to the fact that (1)
I’ve had to set it up on two phones and a computer over the last two years (as
well as deal with updating everything again when I change my my.tcu.edu
password) and (2) he did not even know what a my.tcu.edu profile was or that he
even had one, I figured I could at least help him. So the next half hour turned
into a struggle of getting off SETUP-stu-wireless and onto stu-wireless,
signing into his my.tcu.edu account and changing his mobile devices settings, and
guessing and checking with all the random number/letter passwords and usernames
on a list he obtained from the student help desk.
Finally, we were
successful. So he then proceeded to ignore me for the last fifteen minutes as
he excitedly and intensely signed into a game that he needed to catch up on in a
conquest to destroy some opposing army.
I know what it is
like to be sucked into a game that takes precedence over all else at the time and
makes you a hermit. During the summer and winter breaks, when I actually have
time to do things that actually are not productive, I go on massive video game
binges for hours at a time during the day. Sometimes it’s a very old game that I
play and try to beat again for the sake of old memories and nostalgia.
Sometimes it’s an RPG that can take hours and hours and hours of gameplay to
even barely scratch the surface of what lies in the game.
While I have
extensive gaming experiences from before I came to college, my best friend
wants to enter a career in making video games and, therefore, knows what true
gaming is all about. He goes to Baylor (boo I know) and is in their Film, TV, and
Digital Media (FTDM) program which, apparently, is considered a “lone wolf”
major within the school, not hindered by the overly religious policies of the University;
as a program, it is considered one of the best in the nation in Video Game
Production and many professors actually have strong connections in the field of
video games, film, television, and hardware designing. For example, one of the professors
there was the guy who came up with and developed HD television! Talking with
him and Meshal always reminds me of my broken XBOX at home (probably for the best)
of how much I’ve changed in that aspect of my life when it comes to free time,
which I’m not even sure exists anymore. Alas, summer is approaching, at least!
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