I really like Shoot Club. Glad to see another update.

I'm beginning to wonder if Trevor isn't largely fictional (don't tell me, I don't want to see the man behind the curtain), but this one had some poignant moments that felt all too real. Or at least based on real life experiences of some kind.

And dammit, you guys have to play Motocross Madness (the MOTORCYCLE game) and try mototag. I swear, it's ridiculously fun in a LAN environment.

wumpus http://www.gamebasement.com

I think Trevor is the end result of years of experince both his and observed both real and imagined.


Beware the Spork!
ShiningOne

i really can't see a guy taking a girl on a first date to a lan party... thats just bad! even if the girl WAS a hardcore gamer too! still the story was hilarious... i felt sorry for Trevor... cause i make mistakes with women sometimes in conversation, with head in the clouds stuff. i kind of related to it.

good story! You should write a screenplay on gamers in some form... and maybe make it like Wargames or something(i think WArgames does the tech/gaming crowd just right, in mood. AND it was in Seattle home of Billy Boy Gates.

BTW, there was this one writer who wrote for a rpg article site that had a similar format to the Shoot Club but it was for pen n paper rpg gaming... if you can find it (forgot the name...rpg something dot com) its pretty good.

etc

First time a Shoot Club made me wince.

This Shoot Club was almost too painful to read.
Poor, misguided Trevor.

This is Supertanker's wife -- he had me read Shoot Club this week because we've had so many discussions about gaming since we began our relationship 9 years ago. The computer has been a big part of our relationship almost since the beginning. Sure, there was the "Fuck the World" stage in the beginning, where nothing else was more important than being together, but then again, at the time, the fastest machine out there was a 386, and he'd already played enough Civilization marathons to be a bit tired with it. Once we moved in together, I began to see just how important his computer was to him, and I quickly came to the realization that it would be a force to be reckoned with. First, I tried to compete with it, pleading with him to spend time with me instead of the computer, but it didn't take long for me to realize that there was no way I'd have 100% (or even 70%, for that matter) of his attention. Then, I decided if I couldn't beat it, I'd have to join it, which began our quest to find a game we could play together. After enduring Myst, SimCity, and a few others I can't quite remember, except for their baffling ability to simultaneously captivate him and bore me to tears, I gave up. I decided that I would much rather have a husband who played computer games in our living room than one who went out to bars with his buddies, or spent his hours glued to the sports channel. At least I could pick whatever I wanted to watch on TV without enduring channel surfing.

Then, we had kids, three of them, in quick succession. Aside from wanting to be sure he's interacting with the children instead of his clan during their waking hours, we are both so tired by the end of the day, it's nice for us to go to our separate corners and de-compress. This is due, in part, to the fact that I have found my own hobby, scrapbooking, which I'm pretty sure is a foreign term to most gamers, but has just as much an obsessive following, complete with myriad websites, message boards, magazines, specialized stores, diehard parties (called 'crops'), and conventions. At night, we immerse ourselves in our hobbies, occasionally stopping to share with each other -- we have an agreement that he will endure my discussion of layouts and will give full attention to my latest creation and I will listen patiently as he describes his latest Capture the Flag conquest.

Now that he's found a LAN party to attend on a weekly basis, I am more than happy to see him go. I am far beyond jealousy, because I can see the need to bond with other gamers and other guys. To me, it's his version of having drinking buddies to watch football with, and I know these interactions are just as important to him as my need to hang out with my scrappin' gang.

So my advice to all the guys out there who are trying to figure out how to get their significant others involved in gaming: Don't. There are very few women out there who can understand the games in that "guy" sort of way, and bringing them to a LAN party is excruciating for both the gamers and for her. If she doesn't have a hobby, encourage her to find one. If she does have a hobby, support it enthusiastically. As a last resort, have children, they are sure to take up a good deal of the time she's complaining that she has nothing to do! And, as with everything in life, I think the important thing is to find balance. No one is going to be happy if you are spending 100% of your free time on the computer. Believe me, as understanding as I am, Supertanker and I have had plenty of "discussions" when he becomes obsessed with a new game and doesn't come up for air for days. But generally, we've worked out an deal that includes a weekly date night, assurances that the children won't be ignored, and the agreement that while we may not be able to understand each other's obsessions, we can support them.

Hey, great post Pepper! I'll get my wife to read this.

But that scrapbooking thing.. man, that's freaky. That can't be normal. ;)

My respect for supertanker just went up a few more notches. Getting your wife to post on the Quarter To Three boards? Wow, how cool is that?

wumpus http://www.gamebasement.com

That's very cool. I should get my wife to post around here sometime. I'm trying to get her to read this edition of Shoot Club. She's appreciate it.

I feel like such a child - 19, and I still don't have a wife. I mean, what am I waiting for?!?
;)

Good article, Tom - didn't see any Fight Club references, though... maybe I just wasn't paying enough attention.

I'm got an idea... maybe he could print out screenshots of his frags and you could scrapbook them? Bind it in faux human flesh or something?

Other than games, a good topic to avoid on a first date is your extraterrestrial abduction experience. It just doesn't really work well as a "getting to know you" sort of thing. :-)

You know, once upon a time I lived it a dorm for a semester, and there was a guy down the hall that this shoot club reminded me of. He invited his "date" to a D&D night, under the guise of it being some kind of gaming party. She showed up dressed to party, and he had his hair all slicked back, was wearing a tie, and a really ill-fitting sports coat. Sorry, I can't rember what it was made of, ut I don't -think- it was corduroy...

God, what a mess that turned out to be. Seven ucomfortable guys, sucking on beer or Mountain Dew, caught red-handed doing the dorkiest thing in the universe (the fairy joke potential ALONE in the early 80's would have been devastating to our dating prospects for the rest of the semester), all by a pretty cute, but really pissed-off girl. Yikes.

---

Quote:

I feel like such a child - 19, and I still don't have a wife. I mean, what am I waiting for?!?

---

---

Quote:

"I already have plans to see Someone Like You with Molly. If I don't go tonight, you and I are going to have to see it this weekend instead of going to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon again."

---

Yeah, Tom -- how was Someone Like You?

Too lazy to quote, just read back up a few notes.

That's damned strange. My wife took up scrap book creating too. We bargain for time alone to work on our hobbies.

Me: I'll feed and bathe the boy, if you give me 2 hours with Kohan.

Wife: Ok, but tomorrow I get to work on my scrap book.

All wives "scrapbook." My wife keeps talking about it, and dabbles here and there, but she really doesn't have a "hobby," per se. I've been trying to help her find one, so that she would have one, and so that she could do ________ (fill in blank with said hobby) while I can play, and we're both happy.

My best friend's wife, on the other hand, loves scrapbooking. So does my mother-in-law.

I guess, from a girl's point of view, that's about as equal to us gaming as it gets. Many women do it, and guys just don't understand. But, that's how most of them feel about our games, so I guess it's a fair trade.

"Yeah, Tom -- how was Someone Like You? "

heh, we may jest, but I must concede I was impressed with Ashley Judd when I saw her interviews with Jay Leno and Bob Costas. There appears to be an impressive brain in that pretty head.

Tom (Chick): Great Shoot Club man! Oh btw, I finally finished watching Fight Club last week and then reread the Shoot Club archives, and I managed to catch a few more direct references, but mostly I gained a better appreciation for the style that Shoot Club is written in. That, and more insight into Trevor considering who Tyler turned out to be...

Pepper: That was an awesome post! I'm gonna have to get my wife to read that Shoot Club and then your post...

I'm lucky in that my wife is a bit of a computer geek like me, but she's more into fiddling with things like Linux and an old Apple IIc, rather than being a gamer in the sense we're using here. She plays computer games, but more the puzzle type (somehow she's been Tetris-free for a while now) and strategy/city building games (Alpha Centauri/Pharoah), while I'm into RTSs, flight sims, and FPSs, so we don't really share the hobby.

Look, I had to suffer through Someone Like You and I just don't think that joking about having to see it is funny. I was traumatized. That kind of pain is not funny.

Not at all.

Amanpour