EXPLORING THE WORLD OF VIDEO GAMES

The tales they tell are similar. Each speaks of an innocuous introduction, prolonged contact, and, in many cases surrender to addiction. Instead of frequent hallucinogenic highs, these people experience blips and flips--at the front of a video screen or pinball machine. Their downfall is not drugs or alcohol. It's the seductive, wily world of video games.

"I like one after lunch and one after dinner. I'm very careful to keep myself to a strict limit," says Andrew J. Hally '90. "I use them as a way of escaping, especially when I'm in a really bad rut."

"It's really a compulsion. Sometimes I don't even enjoy them--it's just a habit I have," says Jai Y. Scott '89, a devotee of video games.

The number of hard-core video devotees has dwindled since the late 1970s, when people were enthralled with video games and arcades around the country were packed with enthusiasts. Although the novelty of video games has worn off for most people, for some students they remain a part of Harvard life and for institutions like Elsie's, Tommy's, and the Union they provide a lucrative source of income.

Video Tripping

The games may actually resemble drug trip experiences, having evolved considerably from the original game "Pong," which was basically pinball transported to a screen. Frequent players develop their favorites which they attempt to perfect. "My favorite game is Life Force at Quincy House," says Scott. "You go through an android's body, into the stomach, hungs, kidneys, and you kill antibodies. I've never made it to the end, but I hear you finish at the brain, and there's this mutant cell..." His voice trailed off as the game began and he concentrated on manuevering his man through the 3-D screen, dodging threatening cilia, gas bubbles, and muscle tissue.

"I like IKARI Warriors in the Freshman Union," says Hally. "It's just like Rambo, plus people watch and I can put my name up." John M. Campanelli '89, who plays Lode Runner frequently, describes his favorite video sequence where "a little man runs away from other little men and has to pick up a certain amount of money bags to move to the next level. It's the consumate capitalist game."

"I would always play Beserk," says Kate A. Tewes '85, who in her undergraduate years played in the Union or at Elsie's for up to 15 hours a week. "It's a god-like game, where a paranoid man is trying to go through rooms and is killing people. Then an 'Auto' comes on the screen, and he's just this smiley face whose only goal in life is to destroy you. It's a really paranoid and alienating game, and I thought it was funny. It appealed to my sense of cynicism. And I've always despised smiley faces," she says.

The Downers

However, most current Harvard video fanatics take a hard-line attitude towards the games, saying that they are nothing more than an often-dissatisfying way of avoiding work, not an entrancing alternate reality.

Sheila C. Barron '89, who frequently plays Transylvania with its tour of a sylvan world, says "The game is only a diversion, and kind of disappointing because it's less imaginative than you like. There's a haunting monotony to it; I keep playing just because I get so frustrated I can't stop."

Tewes agrees that video games can be "pretty addictive," She adds, "And much preferable to studying, especially during reading period and exams. I had to quit playing games because I was always broke." Ed K. Grady '90, a Gladiator fan, says, "It's amazingly addictive because you know that you can always do better. All you have to do is stick in another quarter."

Katherine E. Miller '89, manager of Harvard Union Services Agency (HUSA) ran high-score contests at the Union for Asteroids and pinball last spring which drew many people competing for the first-place prize of Celtics tickets. But even without incentive, the Union gameroom almost always contains at least a faithful few. Miller says that sometimes people just can't seem to stay away.

"About two weeks ago I got an exterminator to fumigate the gameroom, and because the gas fumes he used were toxic, I had to shut the gameroom from 12 noon to 6 p.m. I put up big signs warning people to stay out, but when I went down there at two in the afternoon, about five people were in the room playing away. The exterminator hadn't locked the gameroom door and they had come in and couldn't have cared less about poisonous gas. Well, we all have our priorities," Miller says.

But those compulsives are neither long-haired hippies nor pencil-thin nerds, as stereotypes might have. Every evening at Tommy's upperclassmen in tuxes share the machines with construction workers and skateboard punks. "The people who play the games come from a really wide socio-economic and age background." says Nathaniel A. Wice '89. "But they're pretty much male."

Others also noted that video game devotees were more frequently men than women. "I found out junior year that all the guys who played video games knew who my roommate and I were, because we were the only girls ever in the Union gameroom," Tewes says. "I remember we quit playing Ms. PacMan even though we were awesome because it was a 'girl game.' It became a real matter of pride."

Brain Death

Video game fanatics provide different reasons for playing the game. Many say simply that they play because it's fun. "They are totally void things. I don't have to think," says an Adams House resident.

Other students are less tense, but just as determined. "If I do badly, at least on a computer game, I can hit the reset button if I'm doing badly," says Kyle O. Prioleau '89 of Eliot House. However he refuses to face the psychological implications of his actions: "I think I have a power complex--yeah, right."

Others started playing video games when they were quite young and haven't stopped yet. "Across the street from my elementary school was an arcade owned by a drug-dealing high-school dropout who was dedicated to education," says Wice. "She'd give us free games for every A on our report card, so I started playing pinball in the fourth grade. She used to sell a lot of pot, too, but I didn't know what at was at the time."

Some people's attachment is sentimental, not, of course, to imply Freudian. "When I was a freshman in high school in Detroit, I had to have a place that I could tell my parents I was going," says Jeff M. King '88. "So my girlfriend and I would constantly go to the Electric Light Room, a preppy arcade that sold milkshakes, or to the Beehive, a burn-out, sleazy arcade that was seriously across the railroad tracks, and we'd always play Caterpillar. Of course sometimes we'd just go to the park and make out. But now whenever I play Caterpillar I remember her."