A Season for all Dorks; or, Eugene, Go Buy Call of Duty 4

A lot of deep thinking gets done on my doorstep. There , Eugene bums me a Turkish Gold, takes a first drag, and say something like:

“So, Call of Duty 4 is fucking awesome.”

And I say something like:

“Mass Effect comes out this month, too.”

Gene shakes his head, mutters “Goddamnit” at the ground. Then, “I’m running out of money.”

I tactfully suggest whoring out Aubrey, our housemate. She shouts something from inside. We scratch the idea. I tactfully suggest Gene whoring out himself, or whoring out myself, or maybe a dual whoring–tagteam as fetish appeal, complete with Mexican wrestling masks. Someone would pay. Someone would help us keep up with Quarter 4’s ridiculous videogame release schedule, which has so drained dear Gene’s coffers.

A brief summary of this Quarter’s “Must-Have” titles: Halo 3. Assassin’s Creed. Mass Effect. Call of Duty 4. The Orange Box. Bioshock. Were one to be kind to oneself–and prudent, not buying games of marginal interest like Timeshift or Virtua Fighter 5–one would be dropping a cool $359.94. Not to mention, dozens of hours with a controller in hand, staring at a screen while the world leaves concerned post-it notes on the door.

This isn’t counting PC or Wii giants like Crysis, Super Mario Galaxy or Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. Truly, it’s been a red-letter season for the industry, the likes of which hasn’t been seen since 2004, when Halo 2 and Half Life 2 both dropped before Thanksgiving. Halo, in fact, has secured itself in the popular imagination, getting ink on every paper from X-Box Official Magazine to The New York Times. Halo 3 netted $300 million in first week sales–smashing box-office records–and was blamed by the film industry for a corresponding slump in ticket sales. Everyone in the industry, from lead designers to coders, is putting a new car in their garage.

The question demands more scholarship and thought than is presently available in this venue, but I can’t help but ask: to what extent are video games supplanting cinema in the American imagination? Daring academics are already beginning to incorporate games like Half Life 2 into larger questions of narrative and story-telling. Is it possible that as interactivity becomes more, well, interactive, storylines branching further, the player’s choices becoming more complex, other, more static forms of storytelling will seem outmoded?

The knee-jerk Orwellian in me recoils, of course. But it’s a thought.

Either way, Eugene did buy Call of Duty 4, and the game has rendered such priceless moments as:

“Holy shit, you just blew his fucking arm off.”

“Spun him right around.”

And:

“Wait he doesn’t know you’re there. Use the knife.”

And:

“Fuck my balls!” (Eugene.) “Where the hell did that come from?”

“From your flank, dumbshit. Use the grenades that god gave you.”

“God has nothing to do with this.”

“You’re in Chernobyl. Think. God hates communism, and you are God’s vengeance. Use. Grenades.”

Such things my generation sees through the pixelated crosshairs of a sniper scope. Now let’s hold hands and pray for our brave new world, where we don’t tell war stories–we fight them.