How Long Have You Been Playing This?

I came across a rather disturbing letter in my fan mail this week from a loyal reader asking for help. It seems, no matter how hard he tries, his game time has been dropping to dangerously unacceptable levels.

Like so many others, this epic warrior’s mind has been incarcerated by the trappings of a growing corporate world. A world where heroes quest to make their car payments and the masses fall in line behind great political showman called “lobbyists” who wield their power through mindless henchman from the great banker’s guild of “Congress.”

But, as this legion of doom unfurls the powers of chaos against our comrades, we must not lose hope. These villains have poisoned us with false promises and the lure of beautiful women who seem interesting, but do little more than smoke our stash, deny us sex, and tell us to move out of our parents’ house. These attacks are ever so subtle, and yet all too familiar.

We have all, at one time or another, found ourselves pulled away from an enslaved kingdom, desperately in need of attention, to answer that same question. A question which, though always stupid, never seems to get old. It always happens deep in the lair of some boss you’ve spent your entire weekend chasing. Half sober and unshaven, you sit poised on the edge of your 80% rayon throne of destiny… You pause outside the enemy’s door to crack your knuckles, switch weapons, and embrace your warrior’s fate. Then, as if from nowhere, your wife/dad/landlord sashays in front of the television and waxes philosophical with a condescending “How long have you been playing this?”

“What?” we cry in raging disbelief. ”How long have I been playing this?!!! The forces of evil are still out there and my 2-liter pee bottle is only half full so OBVIOUSLY I haven’t been playing this nearly long enough.”

Friends, I’m here to give notice that it is time to stop apologizing for our extra-curricular adventuring. Too long have we forsaken galactic conquest and untold riches for such fleeting trifles as human contact. Too long have we delayed our vengeance on the ancient, samurai monkey-demon who murdered our families in the hopes that Deborah from Produce will show us her boobs tonight.

I ask you, fans, what’s so appealing about this “real world,” anyway? To help emphasize my coming point, I quote the immortal words of former President Bill Clinton: “Put THIS in your mouth and smoke it!”

In reality, a wealthy ruler trades you the basic needs of life (a house and heat) for thirty years of indentured servitude while maintaining the right to kick you to the curb should anything go wrong over a third of your life. They call this a “mortgage.” If someone offered such a “fantastic business opportunity” to my game character, he’d shove his orb of everlasting hemorrhoids straight up their asses.

In reality, the king takes a third of our wages and uses it to arm vigilantes who shake us down for cash, confiscate “illegal” drugs and resell them, and maintain ethnic purity by keeping anyone who’s not white from wandering into the nicer parts of town. They call these “enforcers of justice” police. If my dark-skinned game character got pulled over for riding too nice a horse he would either: (A) convene a hearing of biased city officials who would send the offending officers on a paid vacation where they would then spend several months arguing whether the infringement of civil liberties was worse than the legal precedent of a cop being held accountable for his actions, or, (B) he would just kill everyone getting rich from oppression, depending on which path offered better weapons.

In reality, we pay a great deal of protection money to powerful organizations to avoid the consequences of not paying them. In the neighborhood we call these people “gangsters” or “wiseguys.” On the national level, they’re called insurance companies. If someone tried to run this scam on my game character, he’d use his axe of +3 ass-kicking to make them an offer they can’t refuse.

The truth is, reality sucks! We live in a world of WWF-watching American Idol fans who are super excited about Gary Busey appearing on The Apprentice. These people honestly don’t understand why we’re bored during the McDonald’s training videos, or why we’ve stopped listening to the talking heads spewing their bullshit from our nation’s capitol on Sunday morning. They certainly don’t understand the sudden leap in our hearts as we catch a glimpse of that exciting new trailer. But, though it may not make sense to them, for you and I, it’s a reprieve. For just when we think we can’t take another minute, that soul tickling new game comes along and empties a shotgun into our dream-shattering routines, reaching out its hand and saying, “Come with me if you wanna live!”

For that brief, beautiful moment, in a world of glass ceilings and gay bashings… we all get to be heroes.