The Play is the thing . . .

Sitting at the family kitchen bar while the traditional activities of a supposed pilgrim holiday unfold around me . . . I’m not paying much attention to them as I’m being attacked by spiders. As the women of my family worked at their well- practiced craft I did the same. Target the first spider and ‘rend’ it and then target the second and ‘rend’ it and then target the first and call down the blue thunder. It was close, but I survived to eat pumpkin pie.

Sitting on my lap was the one woman not engaged in the cooking, my 8 year old niece. She watched with total fascination through the window onto the world whose landscape was dominated by cartoon violence. When I killed a bunny I got the same, “You’re mean” from the good Dr. Polin with the same laugh backing it.

She asks, “What is the point of this game?” I smile knowing she knows better than I.

“What game do you like”, I ask. She mentions some name that sounds like a mixture of Japanese and gibberish. I continue, “What is the point of that game?” I watched with fascination as her face contorted and she would start to speak and stop herself.

After a few moments she said, “I don’t know”

I responded, “Yes, you do.” Smiling at her I waiting.

Smiling back she said effortlessly, “Because it is fun”.

Minutes later I had my 14 year old nephew crowding me on my other side. Too big to sit on my knee, but not big enough to force me out of my chair so he could play himself. He waited patiently and asked me questions that were far from random. They were questions about the mechanics of the environment. What can you kill? What do you get when you kill it? Is that the health bar? What is the bar under it for? Etc. . .

Once he was satisfied he understood enough is when he asked if he could ‘play’. Oh, how I hated giving up my seat, but I did not give up my identity. I sat next to him and walked him through the creating of his own character which . . . in the end . . . he made look like his favorite uncles. I asked him why hoping for some nice flattery. Instead, he explained he had only seen one type of character play and would not be playing long and wanted to get the maximum enjoyment out of his experience.

I was forced to retreat to the non-interactive TV technology. Occasionally he would come in and ask a question. An hour later he had leveled up twice as fast as I had and was as proficient in the game dynamics as I. As I chatted with him he explained the goals he had set himself. Once he had accomplished them he surrendered the seat back to me and I returned to my own character and my own goals.