How Did This Get Played, Video Games and Feelin' Old

When I became a full-time freelancer in 2015 I was fortunate in that I had a lot of offers and a lot of opportunities. For example, Boss Fight Books asked me if I would be interested in writing a short book about video games for them in the vein of the 33 1/3 series of books about classic albums.

It was a tempting offer even as I had not played video games regularly for over twenty years when I received it. I was never a huge gamer. I just played video games because I lived in a group home where everybody played video games. 

I ultimately said yes to the offer to write book about video games on the condition that I could use this opportunity to write not about a video game but rather about a movie based on a video game. By writing about Uwe Boll and Postal I could stay in my comfort zone writing about things that are not quite as terrible as society makes them out to be AND still deliver on the whole “video game” part of the equation by having my friend Brock Wilbur write about Postal as a video game and its eccentric creator Vince Desi. 

Brock did a fantastic job with his half of the book. He didn’t just write about a particularly reviled and misanthropic video game: he conjured up a whole world of shock and sin and calculation and sadness. 

Co-writing a book about video games didn’t make me want play video games again because Brock made Postal seem less like a conventional video game than a torment of the damned, a form of punishment rather than entertainment. 

But I recently started listening to a video game themed podcast called How Did This Get Played after Shaun Diston and Scott Aukerman went on it to discuss a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles-themed game in connection with their big project watching and discussing all of the Teenage Mutant Ninja movies, We Have To Stop Talking TMNT on CBB. 

I loved that episode so I listened to another. And another. And another. And still another. I experienced that wonderful sense of discovery you get when you find a podcast that you really love, that you want to be a part of your life forever. 

Binging the back catalog of How Did This Get Played inspired two strong feelings within me. First and foremost, listening to the passionate intensity of the How Did This Get Played hosts made me want to get back into playing video games in a big way. But my other big takeaway was that I would be completely lost and overwhelmed if I tried to play video games in 2020, even video games from my youth. 

It’s too late for me now when it comes to video games. Once upon a time they were a big part of my life but that was a quarter century ago. That is a fucking eternity. 

When I was the head writer for the A.V Club, writing extensively about the newest in television, film, music, comedy and podcasting, it was my job to stay current, to familiarize myself with the big TV shows, movies, albums and podcasts. 

That was a long time ago. I haven’t been a staff writer for The A.V Club for seven years. Hip Hop similarly used to be a massive part of my job and my identity but I haven’t followed new Hip Hop on anything more than a very casual level since Drake became a big star, and at this point he’s one of the most best-selling artists of all time. 

The same is true with movies. I see some of the big new movies, as long as I am professionally required to do so, like Cats and, uh, well, I’m sure I saw a new movie that wasn’t Cats within the last year or so but I cannot for the life of me remember what it might be. 

That’s what happens when you get older and have a family: the energy you once reserved for finding new bands and cool movies and obscure podcasts and trippy video games gets expended cooking meals for your children and reading bedtime stories and walking the dog. 

I hope that when my boys get older they’ll get into video games so I’ll have an excuse to plunge back into that world.

If that happens I’ll probably suck hard at video games, and suck hard for a very long time but if I work very, very hard and put in a lot of hours there’s a possibility that I could become somewhat decent again and honestly, that REALLY does not seem worth the trouble.  

Help ensure a future for the Happy Place during an uncertain era AND get sweet merch by pledging to the site’s Patreon account at https://www.patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace

Also, BUY the RIDICULOUSLY SELF-INDULGENT, ILL-ADVISED VANITY EDITION of  THE WEIRD ACCORDION TO AL, the Happy Place’s first book. This 500 page extended edition features an introduction from Al himself (who I co-wrote 2012’s Weird Al: The Book with), who also copy-edited and fact-checked, as well as over 80 illustrations from Felipe Sobreiro on entries covering every facet of Al’s career, including his complete discography, The Compleat Al, UHF, the 2018 tour that gives the book its subtitle and EVERY episode of The Weird Al Show and Al’s season as the band-leader on Comedy Bang! Bang! 

Only 23 dollars signed, tax and shipping included, at the https://www.nathanrabin.com/shop or for more, unsigned, from Amazon here