The first video game I ever played, and I am sure this is the case for many other millennials, is Super Mario. It follows a stoic, surprisingly agile, mustachioed plumber on his quest to search for his lost lover, Princess Peach. Blocking his path are large gaps leading to oblivion, and other tiny enemies such as Goombas and Koopa Troopas.
I still remember the first time I saw my friend controlling Mario on TV, and hoisting his first flag. My tiny brain metaphorically exploded. His video game setup was a keyboard, with a space where one can insert a chip-based video game cassette, usually carrying a false promise in the name of 99999999 in 1.
If you are lucky you get ten games along with Super Mario. Contra, Duck Hunt, Excite Bike, Bomber Man, Adventure Island and other names I am sure I am forgetting.
Sunday afternoons (after Shaktiman, of course) were usually spent on these games at my friend’s house, much to his mother’s dismay, mostly watching him play, but if I was lucky, getting to control Mario and helping him on his quest.
After months and months of desperate begging, and risky promises, one night my dad brought home our very own keyboard video game setup with a 999999 in 1 cassette. I later learnt that he had to borrow money, even for that tiny purchase.
The excitement I felt, the swell of my chest every Sunday, anticipating playing these games, sharing the multiplayer joystick with my sister, and other friends, finding secret tunnels, pathways, and sometimes hidden levels is palpable. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that excited about anything in my decade and a half of adult life. That probably deserves its own essay.
Around that time, my aunt from the US gifted us an old black and white Windows computer. It operated on MS-DOS. So, we had to type out commands and execute a program. Two bulky strangers visited our house on a rainy night, just to set up that computer and get it up and running. They spent the night in our newly found computer room. I remember watching their every move, in anticipation to see this so-called computer machine in action.
The bulky strangers left a notebook full of scribbled command shortcuts to open essential applications. My game of choice soon became Wolfenstein 3D, a pixelated first-person shooter where the player must fight Nazi guards and soldiers, dogs, and other enemies while managing supplies of ammunition and health.
Every evening after school I began playing Wolfenstein 3D and Road Rash, an 8-bit motorbike racer, where you get to kick your enemies while riding the bike.
But soon I had to trade in Shaktiman and video games for a confused attraction toward girls, along with books, films, and mostly studies. I stopped playing video games for decades.
— Some 20 years later —
It was a sunny Sunday afternoon. I was thoroughly hung over, sitting in my bright apartment, half-watching a food documentary while scrolling through TaoBao, a Chinese e-commerce app. I was living in a small mountainous town in China. My options were either to take a nap, watch TV, or buy stuff on Taobao. I was kinda doing all of the above. Hangover and Taobao are a dangerous combination, as one often ends up placing regrettable orders. That’s when I saw a listing for a brand-new PlayStation 5.
Now, I am not a gamer. You know full well the extent of my gaming experience. So, why then, my heart skipped a beat? Why was I excited? I felt a familiar swell in my chest. I spent the next few hours watching YouTube videos on gaming consoles, whether XBox or PS5 is the better console, what to consider when buying and the deadliest mistake people make when buying a PS5. I swear it said deadliest.
It was 7 pm and I had just bought myself a PlayStation 5.
It was time to freak out, and question my life choices that led me to this moment. The familiar guilt and shame spiral took over. I immediately started looking at return policies, and order cancellation requests. That’s how I am. That’s how my family is. A certain kind of poverty mentality was pre-installed in the Sampathkumar family. Anything that’s not productive, that’s not an investment, and anything that has to do with your own pleasure is strictly frowned upon.
The money spent on your own joy, could have been saved for a rainy day. What if you lost your job, what if there’s a health emergency, what if you got robbed, what if the worst thing that your brain conceives of, happens.
This airport tea is expensive. Even though I would love a glass of tea and a couple cookies right now, and I am hungry, I will starve myself until I reach home, to save that hundred rupees. I will feel proud that I saved that hundred rupees by denying myself some much needed satisfaction.
This is my family in a nutshell, even when I got a job later in life, and lived a comfortable life in China, and when we were not scrounging for money. It’s more about the habit that was forged through years of abject poverty, than about the lack of money at the moment.
So, yes, I was ashamed, freaked out, anxious, self-abusive, for this one PS5 purchase. In fact I never bought anything for my own pleasure, until that moment. The closest was my camera purchase, which I use for business and films. (I think I am going into justification mode, even now. Sigh!)
I was also excited at the same time. I was watching PS5 videos, while I was shaking in anxiety. It was a strange mix of emotions.
A week later, my brand-new PlayStation console was delivered to my doorstep. I spent the afternoon, reading the manual, figuring out the connections, and finally turning it ON.
Work was busy, and I also had an active social life, so the console just sat there for months collecting dust, until one weekend, I was going through the game list, and found a game called Wolfenstein II – The New Colossus. I came to know that this is the very same Wolfenstein 3D that I played all those years ago on my black and white computer.
It seemed like we both had one hell of a life. Wolfenstein’s protagonist, William “B.J.” Blazkowicz, looked stunning, with sharp jaws, and six-packs, while I went through my own transformation over the years. We looked into each other’s eyes, and I started playing. At first, passively, but over the weeks, I was thoroughly immersed in the game’s world.
I am a World War II fanatic. So the game rewarded me, not only with an incredibly fast game play, but also with stunning art design. The game is set in an alternate history, where Nazis won the war, and is now governing the US. There’s a segment in the game, where you have to traverse through a North American-Nazi occupied city. I must have spent hours just in that city, reading all the artwork, wall art, movie theater posters; all lovingly created and displayed. What kind of films would they play in a Nazi occupied US city? I got my answer, and I was absolutely immersed in this world.
Eventually I completed the new Wolfenstein.
After a couple of years, it was time to move again. I packed my PlayStation, along with my other belongings and moved to Canada. New city, new job …
Thanks to my friend, some influential books, and therapy, a brand-new relationship with money, and pleasure.
I am now a proud owner of PSVR2, a state-of-the-art virtual reality system, and a Logitech wheel kit, and without any of the old guilt and anxiety. They were my companions during a brutal winter. I am happy I have these gaming accessories. They bring me joy. I am happy I finally allowed them to bring me joy.
Gaming in virtual reality is an unmatched experience. I didn’t get used to the motion sickness, and the heaviness of the headset itself for about six months. I was this close to selling it. But while in the process of selling the headset, I fell in love with it again.
I can’t begin to describe the feeling I had when I first started playing Resident Evil: Village in virtual reality. When I walked through the halls of the ancient castle, in search of my missing daughter, I heard footsteps behind me. I had to physically turn and look, only to find a monster standing right behind me. I screamed in my empty apartment.
Or the fear I felt, when I was solving puzzles in one of the dark caves of the village. I love it all, the fear, the joy of completing a level, the physical exhaustion I feel after a session, all of it.
When I play Gran Turismo 7, a car sim game, where the driving physics match the real world, I get gooseflesh. Or the first time I sat inside the car and held my steering wheel, and started driving in rain with the windshield wipers ON, I remember the feeling.
It’s hard to explain. I think it comes down to a sense of appreciation. Appreciation for all the artists who work on these games, to create these beautiful unlimited worlds, and all the loving details that they add.
It is truly a life within a life. And it is finally helping me to get out of my poverty mentality, get out of my guilt and anxiety spiral, and genuinely accept and take ownership of my joy and pleasure.
Autoboy Chronicles 