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Remember, this is Super Bowl #42 -- The super bowl of life, the universe, and everything.

GAMING IS MY RELIGION

This article was originally written for a college writing course, the focus of the assignment being on Culture and Identity. I reprint it here because 1) it got a 98% and 2) it was a lot of fun to write. Enjoy.

Although I describe myself as an atheist, I don't really consider it a full enough description of who I am. Atheism describes what one is not: neither a believer in supernatural entities, nor a follower of religion. However, there is a certain force in my life that has filled the niche that most people find in the rote and ritual of faith: computer and video gaming. It might seem preposterous that an activity associated with slackers and geeks can take the place of a system of belief, but it's been something that's shaped my outlook on life.

For as long as I can remember I've been a gamer. My dad probably didn't intend for me to travel this path, but he was the one who first showed me the way. I was three when he showed me First Letters and Words on the Commodore Amiga he used to do work on at home. It captivated me enough to convince him to buy other games for me. From that led to more learning-oriented games, through Math Rescue and the Carmen Sandiego series, to the ones more purely for entertainment, the Commander Keens and Wolfensteins and Duke Nukems.

The early 1990s was the heyday of a relatively new concept in computer games: shareware. Rather than release the whole game, companies released part of it, which people could then do with as they pleased: either charge for it or give it away, either on diskette or on BBSes. This gave companies the ability to put out new games at a more rapid pace, since if no one was interested, companies could move on to other projects. If interest grew enough, companies could finish their shareware games, which people could then pay for. The company most responsible for popularizing this concept was Apogee Software. They had many disciples, of whom id Software, Epic Megagames, Microprose, and Psygnosis were but a few. They were my priests, and every few months, they had a new story to tell. Commander Keen! Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure! Major Stryker! Duke Nukem! Jill of the Jungle! X-Com! Novastorm! Each name holds a few memories, of moments wasted in the holy light of pixellated images on an old CRT.

While my parents never let me own a console, I had no shortage of friends that did. I must imagine that my friends never understood why, out of all their toys, the one I liked best was their Sega Genesis or their Super Nintendo. I never was very good at games that required a controller (and I'm still not very good with a gamepad), but I enjoyed watching them play. Better for me, since they usually were much more skilled. How boring, you might think, to watch someone else play video games! Not for me. There was a rush of excitement at finding out what lay just out of sight. What happens on the next level? and the next one? and the next? I didn't have to be the one at the controls; I just wanted a good view. It still excites me to explore somewhere new, in real life, as in games.

Since this was before the internet, I had little no no way to find like-minded gamers. When people asked me what I liked to so, and I told them I liked computer games, there was always a barely detectable odd look. I don't think they thought I was a weirdo, just that they didn't understand. I remember having what I can only fathom is a similar reaction when hearing from my 7- and 8-year-old friends that they had recently gotten their first communion. They knew exactly what it meant, but it was completely alien to me.

As a result, my social circle, which revolved around other people whose primary interest was gaming, remained small. My first and most stalwart companion in this regard was my own brother. My dad worked as a software engineer, and as the result of coming in contact with a lot of discarded tech, he had managed to get each of us a laptop. My brother and I played games via null-modem cable. What this meant was that we actually had to run a cable, several feet long, from my room, down the hall, to his, and plug it in to both our computers. The cable was just long enough that if we both moved our laptops a few inches to the side, we could connect them together without creating a tripwire across the bathroom door. Once we connected, we spent many an hour blasting the hell out of each other in Duke Nukem 3D and Worms 2. Neither of us had a big enough allowance to buy our own games, so we often pooled our money to get the requisite forty dollars. It created a feeling of kinship between us that I haven't been able to duplicate anywhere else. I've never felt a great attachment to many people, except for the few I've been able to sit down and play a game with. I can't even remember the names of most of the people I hung out with in middle school, but after playing a few rounds of Unreal Tournament with the guys in Intro to Programming Languages class in high school, their memories will always be with me.

It wasn't until late in high school that I felt like a part of a much larger community. I first became aware that there were a lot more people who played games, when my house started getting freebie issues of Computer Games Strategy Plus magazine. I also came to realize the sheer volume of it all--there are this many games, and all of them are this good? This magazine came with a monthly demo CD. Each of these CDs was my most prized possession until the next one arrived. I never felt like I needed something else to do with my spare time, because CGS+ delivered!

Through the games on this demo CD, I discovered games that could be played over the internet. At first I only dabbled with this, but once I reached college, my love for online gaming became so much deeper. It turns out that UMass Amherst's Computer Science Talent Advancement Program (CompSci TAP), to which I had been admitted, was a haven for gamers. I had talked briefly with people I had played online with, but now I was living with kindred spirits. Though I was living in a dorm I would move out of two years later, I felt like I was home. Home, where people understood. Home, where there were people I could talk to.

It was while I was in college, in this home environment of primarily gamers, that my vocabulary began to change. We would pepper our speech with AIM shorthand, pronouncing them as if they were words. Someone said something funny? You would hear someone say, between laughs, "lol" or "rofl."Someone acts like an idiot? He would be called a "noob." Someone gets defeated, outwitted, cut down to size, or one-upped? We would have said he got "owned." I still regularly use these last two in everyday speech.

The peak period of gaming for me was in those two years I spent at UMass Amherst. World of Warcraft was unleashed in November of 2004, and no one on the hall was left untouched by its wrath. If any one thing was responsible for making me leave Amherst, Warcraft was it. I spent hours every day exploring a vast world, gathering experience, fighting battles, and occasionally skipping classes. Some of my friends built up their characters and deleted them, as if they were disposable. I never quite saw it that way. I felt that Omni, my raven-haired, dark-skinned human priest of the light, was too much a part of my soul to callously throw away, or worse still, to sell on eBay, because he wasn't fun to play any more or because he wasn't powerful enough.

Unlike many other games I had played before, World of Warcraft kept track of how long I had been playing all of my characters. How addicted was I? In total, I have spent a total of over 125 days playing, out of two years. Taken all at once, if I had started playing on New Years' Day, and continued playing, all day and all night, without stopping to eat, drink, or sleep, I wouldn't take a break until around Cinco de Mayo. If I had been a religious person, attending a two-hour sermon once a week from birth until age 21, I would have only spent a total of 91 days in church. This is the length and breadth of my devotion, and that's only for one game. There were many that came before it, and there are still more yet to come. Gaming has given me a sense of wonder, many new friends, and a lot of memories, and I wouldn't have it any other way.