Gaming Like A Sir: Where Are My Winter Games?

It is cold, wet, miserable and my toe hurts. After many a sleepless night of worry, exams are finally over and like Neo and Trinity breaking through the clouds in The Matrix Revolutions, I have a few glorious moments of sunny happiness… then god peed on me.

Now that exams are over, trollgod, as I have affectionately named the bastard, has not only made it wet, rainy and so cold that for the first time since hair started growing on my chest and I started to sound like a dude instead of an androgynous pipsqueak, I took a bath.

To my lady readers, I know you bath all the time, and that is fine. You’re all lovely, glorious, gorgeous specimens of sexiness, you smell nice and look pretty and bathing seems to be the best way of keeping yourselves that way. I’m not judging…

Coming back to trollgod, the best way for me to describe how my first day of holidays went is to put it in sarcastic question form, enjoy:

What’s that Mr Podiatrist? You only have one free appointment and it’s today before the sun rises in the middle of a storm? Cool. The only way to get to you is to walk 300m without cover in sideways rain? No problem. After you maul my foot I can’t get it wet so I have to wrap a plastic bag around it and limp back to my car like a hobo? You forgot to mention that it’s going to hurt like a bitch and I shouldn’t be driving myself anyway? Of course you did, it’s completely understandable. You’ve had a hard morning.

I should also mention my gaming PC broke and I had to clear my bank account and sell my and some good friend’s kidneys just to get it back, my internet cuts out every time someone calls my home phone, and the book I was excited for finally arrived and is shit.

This brings me to today’s wonderful gripe: where are all the games that should be easing my pain? I know that sometimes, a bored and I imagine manic-depressive god has to dump some place and this place happens to be onto my upturned, hopeful, wide-eyed, open mouthed, cherub-cheeked face; which is why I normally have a game or two to ease the pain of re-enacting the shower scene from American History X with an all-powerful divinity.

It is at times like this that I am acutely aware that the gaming industry, and the entertainment world in general for that matter, is not aimed at me. My demographic? Males age 18-24? Sure. But South African Males age 18-24? South Who?

See if I were an American boy, spelling words with Z’s instead of S’s, pretending the letter U doesn’t exist and generally going on a Jihad against the English language, game releases would line up with my free time and seasons in TV show would actually link up to my life. Can you imagine such a thing? When it was my winter break (they don’t use the word holiday for some reason probably relating to 9\11 or terrorists or McDonalds or some shit), games would release in time for the cold, wet, stay at home and carve a bum shaped indent into the couch season.

Instead, as a South African, my winter holiday is completely devoid of any good games and I’m left to huddle underneath blankets with a hot-water bottle, dreaming of a different, awesomer world. A world where people are happy, there is no bigotry or hate, games are released when I can actually enjoy the things at my leisure and that I could read an article or watch a video on Facebook without installing another F***ING app.

I can dream. At least I have that. Well, until Activision trademarks it and I have to pay a monthly subscription for free thought. When it happens, I called it.

I know that this week’s offering is disappointingly brief and whiny, and if you are angry feel free to list all the ways in which I should copulate with myself.

The girl in that picture represents me, the shield represents the alcohol and drugs which I take daily to ease the pain. I am on holiday now. This means I will be making articles as much as 24 hours in advance with increases of 2 or 3 hundred percent in content output.

It will be bigger, it will be better, and I will not quote Cliff Bleszinski because he is a tool.

I love you all. See you soon. I’m going to get warm and re-watch South Park and American Dad episodes.