Batteries For Breakfast
By C.D. Allen
cdavidallen(at)gmail.com
I had a conversation with a friend today that seemed to me oddly relevant.
Sorry. A little bit of background: This friend of mine is the kind of guy that’s on top of technology. He’s got the nicest TV of anybody I know. He has all the latest entertainment hardware. All of his gadgets have remotes now; even the game consoles.
Wireless controllers. That’s the next step, right?
If you misplace the remote on a DVD player in a pinch you can get up and use buttons on the unit itself. There’s a little more obligation involved with a wireless game controller. If you misplace it or, even worse, break it you can’t play your game for a little while. Now there’s another factor in keeping that particular game running. You have to feed batteries to the interface.
Please understand I don’t bring this up specifically to complain about technology. I am a little bit but that’s not the main thought here*.
I’d prefer to save the discussion about supposed groups of people and why they entertain themselves in particular ways. I might actually do that latter. For now I want to focus on the actual experience of playing the game.
This is often overlooked but you start with enjoying the game. As with anything that involves anything, which is pretty much everything, you have to get involved with a sub-sect. I say everything because any interaction among people can always break down. You can take it down to the individual but a lot of people need someone making those decisions for them.
So, you have to at least tolerate the people. Even in the Mega Chains you can’t help but bump into them.
Once you’re involved and it involves something you don’t already have, you feed money to it. Very rarely is a hobby worth stealing for. At least I hope so. The money goes into the equipment to operate the pleasure-giver (that does sound dirty - but it stays.) As with any decent pleasure-giver though, you don’t just feed it one time.
Maintenance isn’t just for cars and A/C units. Maintenance means any action taken to continue that involvement with whatever you happen to be involved with.
Any action.
To get the food to make the purchase to get the pleasure you usually have to trade something. Especially if there’s upkeep involved. That can mean knowledge and that can mean skill, but everybody trades time. Everybody involves themselves in a means to a payoff.
A lot of us have different payoffs. There seem to be ways and means for as many as there are different people. Some are easy, some are hard but we do what we have to. What we feel is going to pay us off the most and in our particular bend. We play the game to win.
I guess I wasn’t really talking about video games after all.
Means more than one thing: How much are you willing to do for entertainment and recreation?
*Not an advocate of giving up all your stuff.