Adventures in Middle-Aged Gaming: My Optometrist is a Filthy Spawn Camper!
[This is the first in Phil's new weekly columns giving you, the fresh faced reader, a small insight into the world of the middle-aged gamer.]
Many may think the life of a pathetic middle aged gamer revolves around anti-depressants, Viagra, and the constant pursuit of escapism. And they’d be right! But occasionally reality worms its way into my consciousness. Despite being in denial for years now about my eyesight, it has become inescapable. I need glasses. My family, my extended family, my wife, everyone I know practically, wears glasses…except for me. So, off I trudged recently to see my wife’s optometrist for an eye examination.
Needless to say I was not in the best of moods. The prospect of having to wear glasses when I read or game is not attractive out of sheer shallow pride. I have taunted my loved ones for years with my perfect eyesight, and now I had to be examined by some pencil necked twerp who was charging me money for this privilege so, I was feeling grumpy.
In the course of the examination, my Doctor asked about what I ‘œdo.’ I talked about my work and, of course I talked about video games. ‘œOho!’ He said. He too is a serious gamer he said. Immediately my stuffy thirty-something optometrist started calling me ‘œdude’ and asking what games I had. I started to talk about Sacred 2, Killzone 2, and how hopeful I was for Fat Princess when he interrupted me to say; ‘œI fucking pwn at Call of Duty 4.’ That’s right, an educated professional-a physician in fact, used the term ‘œpwn’ with not the least bit of irony in his voice.
‘œYou don’t say,’ I responded, glaring into the bright lights of his machine. ‘œI’m a sniper dude, seriously, I’m good…I mean, if I get you in my sights yer, I mean…yer dead’ he said. Then he shrugged like it was just a fact of life that he should be so awesome. So then we talked about maps that he prefers, where he can camp and pick off people easily. ‘œSo you’re a fan of Creek?’ I asked, with a heavy dose of irony in my voice. Which went completely ignored by the way.
After a while, clearly Dr. Spawn-Camper was feeling like we were best buds because the talk turned to the Wii. ‘œY’know that Wii…I have no time for that.’ He said. So I started talking about the first party games on the Wii, and some thoughts I had about Third-parties like The Conduit and Mad World, and he interrupted me again. ‘œI know’ he said, ‘œMariokart is great but frankly I just want to mod my Wii like my 360.’ So you’ve modded your 360 I asked? ‘œOh, yeah,’ he said ‘œI got some guy to do it for me and install like 70 games on the hard drive I didn’t have to pay for.’ ‘œNo shit” I said…
I think Dr. Spawn-Camper realized that he’d gone too far, told me too much, because he got very quiet and an awkward silence settled in. Maybe it was the look on my face? Maybe it was my own, now quiet and thoughtful mood? Or, maybe he could actually read my mind, and hear what I thought of him. That I thought that it was one thing for some minimum-wage earning kid in his teens to mod a console and pirate some games that he couldn’t afford anyway, but it was definitely another for a professional to pay someone to mod his console and install around 70 games on it that he could easily afford to pay for himself.
I know I’m being ridiculous. Piracy is everywhere, it’s embedded into the culture of my dearest past time and I generally don’t care. I pay for my games, if a game pisses me off or if a publisher is particularly annoying, I’m looking at you EA, I only buy their games used. But I still buy them.
I started to wonder how Dr. Camps-A-Lot would feel if rather than paying for my examination today I just waited outside of his office for someone with a similar problem with seeing small print and just copied their prescription? I wondered if he got the irony of his pathetic profession that relies almost entirely now on machines to perform the examinations and that he is essentially a technician with a Dr.’s title? And I wondered what kind of treatment I was likely to get from a fucking spawn-camper pirate scum bag like this?
When he handed me the prescription, I said thanks. And then I went to the drug store to buy pre-made reading glasses. And I definitely did NOT pick up any Viagra…because I don’t need that either.
Image Source: Plutor’s Flikr (CC) [Ed: removed image source: safoocat's Flikr]
this really is a sad story. it illustrates perfectly that there just is no mens rea regarding software piracy.
that a professional starts blabbing like some 14-year old and uses slang like “pwn” and “dude” just lets me puke.
But did he pronounce it ‘pown’ or correctly as ‘own’.
@Halfleft: he used the term that would phonetically appear as “pown” but I used the common spelling “pwn” because that’s what we all know it as.
Tisk tisk. The Pure Pwnage series teaches people to say it ‘own’.
That was a great read.
My photos of which you are using one above is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. All I ask is attribution and that you ask to use the photo, not just rip it off.
Michelle Ress
@Michelle Ress: Hi, terribly sorry for any problem. I (the Editor of this article) didn’t spot the “No Derivative Works” part of the CC and will replace the image immediately. I did include an image source at the bottom of the article for anybody who wants to see the source of the great pic. Again, quite rightly I’ll fix this.
What an asshat. Also, Michelle Ress claiming the Attribution-no Derivative works card makes me very happy. New-age copyright is so awesome (if it’s not a joke).
IRONY!
I didn’t say you had to take the picture down, just post an attribution. I did think it was a bit ironic you were putting down your doctor for stealing games while you were stealing pictures.
Today I thought what if he sees what you wrote about him. . .
Michelle
@Michelle Ress: I’m the Editor, but not the author of this article. The Creative Commons license stated (as I was in error to overlook) that the work can not be altered. As I wanted the header image to have a higher contrast and added text, finding a new image with a CC licence that allows me to modify was the easiest solution. Attribution (in the form of an “image source” link) was present in the original article.
Sorry for all the bother. Hopefully everything is sorted now :)
@Michelle Ress: My wife asked the same thing about whether Dr. Spawn-Camper might ever see the article. I haven’t used his real name of course. I’m not in the business of embarassing people publicly but if I fret about everyone’s feelings I’d write very little.
Would you avoid taking a picture that was important to you, if it made someone else look badly?
Well, I pirate music and used to emulate SNES games but I still buy CDs if I like the music I can find and searching for old copies of games can be quite fun. But pirating new games (especially em mass) is just being a cheap bastard.
As a result of this I’ve changed the license on my photos anyone can use them share alike, just need attribution. I’m sorry I missed the attribution at the bottom of the article.
I read the whole piece looking for it.
Then I decided to subscribe so my posts wouldn’t be greyed out but I flunked the test, 46. Truth is I spend several hours a day gaming online but the classic games chess and backgammon mostly .
Any how you mentioned how fretting about folks feelings would impede your writing and it reminded me of a picture I took once of someone who didn’t want to be photographed:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/safoocat/2412611082/
If I may so I can relate to that.
@Michelle Ress: No worries with not spotting the link, and I think it’s a great idea to change the commons licence. I’m still trying to decide which licence the work on this site should fall under. Also, that’s a very interesting photograph. I love the loitering under the no loitering sign.
Perhaps I need to change the way the test works a bit. You’re most definitely not the kind of person I want to be preventing from signing up.
Hadn’t noticed the no loitering sign, had to enlarge that to see it. I was thinking of studying up on the lingo and retaking the test as I’m enjoying the interaction here and do want to keep current. I’m 67 years old but spend most of my time on line so am not totally obsolete yet.
I’ve been playing chess most of my life and have a lifetime membership at gameknot.com, the premier chess sight. That’s likely the only game I would devote considerable time to though I did read a backgammon book when I went as far as I could on my own and it did allow me to take my game to the next level.
I like the website here, the title too, and the polite interaction.
@Michelle Ress: I’m sure you would be more than welcome. I like to take pride in this community being a tad more mature than your average video game website. If you need any help with the questions and google can’t help, be sure to ask :)
Also, once you are signed up, we have a section for introductions in the forum.
I played chess for a while as a kid at my grandparents house, but moved into computer games shortly after. Specifically a game where you build and expand a railway network. I think the logical thinking in both games helped me become good at the computer science I study now.
@wardrox: I hope that’s the format, if not let me know. That train game, I love trains, always have, wish the USA
was more into them frankly. I’ve ridden the bullet train in Japan way back in the 70′s and we still don’t have an equivalent.
I’m not sure what it is about chess, many games come and go but chess is always there. It’s a female power game. The queen is the strongest peace, the king one of the weakest.
The test, I think I did worse this time than the first time. Are they trick questions? Am I supposed to give smart ass answers or try for the correct answer? Also how does the scoring work? You have to get <20; I counted 10 questions, my last score was 58 how was that computed?
The test itself is a game.
We had a video game once called Blood Bath, have you heard of that one? It's a shootem up game, rather primitive but with a certain violent appeal.
@Michelle Ress: the name rings a bell, but I couldn’t tell you what it is.
Each answer to the test is given a value, the more incorrect, the higher the value. There is then a simple cut off you need to score less than to get the sign up. The first few questions are maths, the second two should be solvable by google, and the last few are almost parody questions (to which the answers are; “You don’t”, “This site is called…”, “Getting an opposing…” and lastly “No”).
The test is indeed a game, hehe.
Hi Phil,
This is embarassing. The first attempt was my best score followed by 58 then the last time 557 so I must be moving in the wrong direction. I’ll try again. Would one be correct in assuming the math is straight forward and one and one does = eleven? ;)Michelle
@Michelle Ress: I’m John (nick name wardrox), the EiC of the site, Phil is Philbart999 in the comments.
The maths is fairly straightforward as long as your read the questions carefully, but even getting those questions wrong shouldn’t be raising your score that much.
(FYI the other answers, apart from the maths, are “Chief”, “A games console …” and “The Playstation 3″) :)
Hmmmm, I love that you have take a quiz to join the site, but I’d like to see Michelle’s name in clear text. She clearly would be a cool addition to the community.
If you’ll excuse me, my wife is the focus of the next “Adventures” so I’ll be consulting a lawyer prior to that being publsihed. ;)
Hi, Thanks Phil, and thanks for using my picture the first time. Btw I passed the test on my own this morning. Several tries back I started tracking which answers I was picking and further educated myself both on the test and on the likely response that would be site appropriate and voila’
it worked :) so now my posts will show up white instead of grey.
All this writing even got me writing on my blog again,
http://safoocat.blogspot.com/
something I hadn’t done in a long time cuz I figure hardly anyone read it anyway but now I’m writing it just for the joy of writing. I put the profile from negativegamer in a blog post.
Well I’m out of rice and I can’t eat the garlic straight so have to attend to the bowl. Michelle
Welcome safoocat! Clicking on your blog now as we speak.
@Philbart999,
Thanks for visiting my blog and leaving a comment. Nice family you have there. Btw how’d those glasses turn out?
When you were talking about your pride in not having to wear glasses all those years I was thinking of the good things about wearing glasses, you know like how a windshield keeps the bugs out of your teeth? When I clean
my glasses at the end of the day I can see all the stuff
they kept out of my eyes and they’re cool, think Ray Charles
Your optometrist is a wuss. I hate gaming cowards.
You know I considered joining the site, but if someone can fail the application? Screw that! I don’t think my ego could take failing an entrance exam to a gaming site. A Big Brother site sure, but gaming?
If you’re a gamer you should pass the test easily. I’m not familiar with this culture so that’s why I flunked it. Btw, I eventually passed. Michelle