Xbox Live and Real Life

The mighty Xbox...Netflix is my favorite app...

It is probably well known by now that my husband's frequent gaming usually rubs me the wrong way.  It consumes his time and skews his priorities.  When we are in the same room together and I'm trying to write or work on the computer, he can be quite distracting.

Very distracting.

Extremely.

However, the other morning as I was eating my breakfast in the kitchen while he was already online playing Grand Theft Auto V with his Xbox Live buddies - I couldn't help but laugh out loud at his side of the conversation.  As with any role playing game, there are some things you can say in the game that you can't get away with in real life.

Some, some you can:

• "The phone's a little squirrelly."  I'm still running on the iPhone 4 and at it's best it is a squirrelly little beast.
• "The mini-map is your friend."  This might be stretching it some, but since I navigate quite a bit on our long distance trips by using the Map on my iPhone - I can honestly say that the "mini" map is my friend.

But some a normal law abiding citizen could never say:

• "I accidentally killed somebody."  Uhm, this is when I would be calling 911!
• "If you still have no cops, I'm getting in."  Well, a law abiding person could get away with saying this to someone who wasn't, but I myself have never had the opportunity.
• "If that's your personal vehicle, I'll blow it up." Again, if someone said this to me I would be calling 911 and reporting a threat!
• "I got ran over and shot in the back!" Medic!  Can we get a medic over here!!  No really...
• "Yeah, I should have shot you." With friends like that - who needs enemies?
• "Did he just blow himself up?" Once again, I think we need the medic!  In real life, this would have been proceeded by "Look what I can do!" or "Here, hold my beer."
• "Yeah, he's been throwing sticky bombs at me." Friend, or foe, I don't know!

Some, are just plain weird:

• "Hang on, let me die again." Because once wasn't enough.
• "We want to hit a rock."  Yeah, that won't hurt the car one bit.
• "Be aware, I'm spawning somewhere." Uhm, okay.  Are you pretending to be a salmon?
• "Don't let them kill you." Good advice!  This is great advice actually!
• "Yeah, he's trying to hump my leg.  I  have no idea what he's trying to do."  I knew a dog like that once.

This has been amusing me for the past couple of days, just listening to the nonsense that comes out during his game.  Halo Wars is usually quieter, although those games can become quite exciting as well.  Usually there are requests for Brutes or Warthogs.  "Why don't you have power turret yet?" is a frequent question.  Quite often followed by how far into the game they are.  I think the fastest a player has been known to get power turret on their tanks has been about four minutes and thirty seconds.  So if it they're farther in the game than five minutes, Mr. Janney can get quite cranky if one of his allies doesn't have power turret on their imaginary tanks.

This doesn't even touch on their gamertags.  UnderarmSpore and EvilFish are two of the ones I am thinking of at the moment, mainly because we were just discussing them.  Of course, those aren't the literal names...EvilFish has x's in his name, and different letters capitalized.  Just like any username, if it's already taken you have to get inventive if you have your heart set on something.  Mr. Janney's tries to have Crazy in his gamertag somewhere.  He usually succeeds.

The only time he's ever had trouble playing his games was when his Uncle Chuck died, not that long ago actually.  I was more than a little worried when he told his buddies that he didn't want to play Halo Wars ever again because of how badly he had lost the previous game...and he wasn't doing too hot on GTA either.  Mr. Janney not play Halo?  Was the world ending?  He has returned to playing, although not quite as extensively as he was.

We all have our escaped methods.  I read and write, fiction is my gateway of choice into a less harsh reality.  Gaming is his.  I just wish it wasn't as noisy at it is!

2014 - To game or not to game...