One of the things that I’m really enjoying about Wardrox’s latest (shameless plug alert!) pet project, Wire.vg, is that it is successfully helping me wade through much of the “stupid” that passes for videogame coverage on these here interwebz. Seeing as I like to talk about games and my life generally serves up opportunitites to do this, I’ve been promoting the new site whenever I can. God knows Wardrox’s other projects are likely doomed to crushing Dennisdyackian failure.

Aside from the usual places like videogame or electronics stores, I’m finding that there are more and more Dads talking about videogames while waiting for their little ones to go potty in public washrooms. Now, this isn’t as odd as it might sound. Raising children involves many ignominious changes to one’s life and standing in a public washroom singing softly to your son or daughter because it helps the “poopydoopy” come out, is just one of them. Public washrooms in restaurants, is just the latest place I have found other like-minded grey-hairs who like shooting things in the face.

I won’t bore you all with all of the debates that have gone on but I will state that the majority of videogame talk among men in washrooms, while waiting for junior to relieve himself, revolves around First-Person Shooters. I know, not exactly a surprise. Seeing as it’s Canada, up here we also talk a fair amount of hockey in washrooms but that’s just not relevant here. Occasionally we’ll also debate whether we in fact buy beer or just rent it, but that’s not germane either.

On one occasion recently I was talking to another Dad about Wire.vg while our kids were doing their business at a chain restaurant, when a third dad and his toddler came into the bathroom. I was talking about certain stories about monthly fees to play online shooters.

“The monthly fee idea seems kind of troublesome at first, but if it buys me special features and I get DLC and maps included then it’s a maybe for me.” I was saying. “If there’s a way to get all of the little rats off of Live that talk crap to me, and shouldn’t be playing anyway then I might consider it too.” Responded my new bathroom buddy. “The idea of contracts scares me because I don’t want to commit to anything for too long, but still…”

“Yo, screw Activision and their money grubbing nonesense.” Responded the third, obviously younger Dad, who was ushering in his toddler. “I’m not some loser MMO geek who is going to get sucked into paying a monthly fee for a game I already bought for my Xbox, that I already pay $60 bucks a year for the privilege to just use all of the features on the disc for Live Gold. If they go to this monthly fee I’m done.”

“But what if you got all of the DLC for a game included? What if you didn’t have to put up with a bunch of little welfare losers who skipped out on their third try at grade 10 to play videogames? Seriously isn’t that worth 10 bucks a month?” I asked. From the look on the face of the younger Dad, it became obvious that he might be one of the little twerps on Live or the PSN we were railing against. In retrospect the flat-lidded baseball cap that was turned to the side of his head should have been a clue. Any grown man who is a parent and wears his pants around his ass should be on federal watch-lists as far as I’m concerned. As I looked closer at him I noticed his pants were tucked into his socks. Good God he was even wearing fashion running shoes without laces.

An uncomfortable quiet came over the men’s room of this “Family Friendly” establishment. Then it dawned on me…he said “yo”, seriously, he said fucking “yo”. I wasn’t aware that people that did that without healthy doses of irony in their voices. Then he said it again; “Yo, I don’t care anyway, I’ll find a way to pirate that shit if it comes down to it anyway.” Now, my son is seven, he’s old enough to have heard the word shit and a fair number of other choice bad words in the schoolyard now but my bathroom buddy’s little guy was around three I think. He picked up his ankle-biter, they washed their hands in silence, and, after nodding at me, they left to go back their table for their nachos and chicken strips.

I turned to my son and gestured towards the door of the bathroom. Pale-One-Pac then turned to me and asked; “what’s that guy’s problem?”

“This is real life, he doesn’t have to put up with nonsense or coarse language if he doesn’t want to. Just imagine how many guys like that would pay for exclusive services in videogames and I think you’ll see how successful that development might be.”

Image: Flikr/dno1967