On Gaming- A Guest Post by Runa Chatterjee

The post below is written by a good friend of mine and a fellow gamer, Runa Chatterjee. She’s been playing games her entire life and this is her take on gaming. As a gamer myself, I find there are points this article raises which are quite valid. Have a read, and welcome Runa to the blog people!

The Bilge Master

So I’ve played video games my entire life and it never struck me as something special. Not the playing video games bit and not the ‘girl-playing-video-games’ bit. I remember playing Prince Of Persia (the old ones!) with my father and then later migrating to different genres and different kinds of styles.

And that’s all it was. Just me and playing video games.

Later, this part of my life took on an importance I had never expected, both in my enjoyment of it and how others saw me doing it. I was a girl who loved playing video games, so many cried foul; and the other side, there were many who disdained the very thought of video games. Like, video games? Isn’t that what kids play?

God, I cannot tell you how tired I am of that argument. Tired of explaining myself not just as a woman who enjoys video games but as an adult who enjoys video games period. No, I’m not waiting for more ‘adult’ things to discover, I found what I love and fuck you for thinking I need more. Because seriously, random people who judge me, you need to check out video games.

Where you can be a sneaky assassin, teleporting through the alleyways of a steampunk-esque alternate London, a Ninja warrior from space, a white-haired gruff mercenary who rips monsters apart with the silver of his blade. A farmer in a small country town, raising her plants and maybe having a romance or two, a woman trapped with a crazy AI in an underground scientific lab forgotten to man, the second-in-command to an Evil Emperor who is plotting to take over the world. You can love, hate, fight, destroy, build, create. Video games are breaking barriers previously known only to your imagination, taunting the very narrators of their stories (check out The Stanley Parable y’all) and building a rich sense of history and culture within individual games (check out the history and lore of the Warcraft, Starcraft, Guild Wars etc universes)

When I’m happy, I played video games because I’m happy and it’s perfect. When I’m sad and I needed to hide, I found Geralt of Rivia (of The Witcher fame) waiting for me under the long shadow of an unknown wood, with a monster to slay not far away. For many of you (us) who are readers and book-lovers, we know this feeling and it’s an intoxicating feeling. But the problem with books is, lovely and amazing and wondrous as they are, all good stories come to an end. As they should.

And video games too come to an end, but not before endless hours of fun in between. Hours spent doing what you want. Hours you can only imagine between turning the pages of a book.

(Seriously, as a voracious book reader, let me tell everyone that comparing a book and a video game is pretty much impossible since they’re very different genres. I’m bringing books her as an example of so called ‘high art’ as compared to the ‘low art’ of video games.)

So guys, those who ‘mistakenly’ disparage people who love video games: How about you don’t and maybe find a game or two and see what they love about it so much? Maybe you’ll find a whole new world. Jussayin’.

The Door

Ten years.

Ten years is a long time. It’s enough time for thing to change, but some things remain the same, even after ten years have passed by. He met the sage ten years ago today in a toy store.

It was his birthday and he wanted the new Batman doll- Anti-Freeze Batman. He always had a soft spot for Mr. Freeze, but his favourite villain had to be Poison Ivy. Anyway, he met the sage in the toy store and the sage spoke to him and his parents.

The sage told them about the door. He predicted that one day, in the future, there would be a door that needed to be reached and that once it was reached it would either have to be opened or kept closed. This, he had said, while smoking a strong cigarette, was something that only he would know to do.

Thus, ten years ago, went his meeting with the sage.

Okay, let’s call him A. A is the man who had to find the door. A is the man to whom the sage spoke. Yes, let him be A. I like A.

A did not forget the incident, though he was not able to remember the face of the sage. He passed out from elementary school and then when it was time to pursue higher studies, he hit a stumbling block. A could not decide what he wanted to do. He had taken up 

science in his high school days, but his results were dismal.

His uncle counselled law, his father engineering and his mother literature.

In this interval, ten years had passed. A could feel something in his bones leading him on to a path. At the end of the path, he knew, would be the door.

A walked down following the path, to where it bent in the undergrowth and he took a left turn emerging onto a clearing with a wall in front of him. In that wall was set a black door, with intricate carvings in gold on it. It was not locked, but it did not have a handle either. It was smooth, discernible only by the gold carving.

A touched the door.

The door opened.

The Bilge Master