I'll Stop The World And Melt With You, You've Seen The Difference And It's Getting Better All The Time

--"I Melt With You", Modern English

Blizzard recently made the announcement that they're putting out Diablo III, extending their award-winning Diablo series by another installment. From all the previews and buzz surrounding the project it looks to be another exquisite product from one of my favorite software companies. Of any video game of any time, Diablo was the one I loved the best and the one that I feel a person pride in being one of its many players.

And yet I feel a little torn between being happy and sad about the announcement. On one hand, it provided me countless hours of fun and even led to some friendships that I would have never had before. But, on the other hand, it probably led to the demise of my last serious relationship as DeAnn can attest to.

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I've always been a compulsive type of personality. I've always fixated on certain things and pushed everything else aside. Whether it be Jenny Lewis, or Magic, or Avonlea, it seems like I always need something specific to occupy my time. Brandy thinks I use it as a substitute for religion in that I need something larger than myself to believe in and it might be true. Usually what I choose to fixate on is so much more gigantic than me, something that's globally large, and whose vastness I can never fully explore. That's what Diablo II was to me; it was an entire world that seemed boundless. Night after night I would obsess about trying to get through as much of it as possible, try to build my character as complete as possible, try to become as totally immersed in that culture because it made me happy. At the time, at that stage in my life, a fucking game was the best thing about my day-to-day existence.

Of course, this came at the expense of DeAnn, my live-in girlfriend. It wasn't that she didn't make me happy because there were days she made me unbelievably happy. It was just that, like any relationship, my happiness with her wasn't constant. It was on a let's-see-what-happens-today basis. True, the pleasures I had with her had a higher ceiling they could reach, but it's also true that the lows that I experienced with her were probably some of the lowest times I've ever felt as well. It was this inconstancy that cause me to seek out something more teneable, more predictable, more firm. That's why I played Diablo so much, because day after day, I had fun with it which is more than could be said about DeAnn.

Yet the more I reflect on it, the more I realize were my priorities were all screwed up. Maybe it was this whole vicious cycle whereby I wasn't interested in spending more time with her because she always seemed to drag me down, but the reason she was so down was because I was spending so little time with her. Who knows? Perhaps they fed off each other and did not possess a cause-and-effect quality to their dynamic. All I know is, by the end, of our living together I was being constantly bombarded by the question which I wanted to do more, spend time with her or spend time at the computer. Most days it wasn't an easy answer.

But now I've all but stopped wasting time on video games. I've got my priorities a little bit more straightened out. I think I've come to the decision that my life's not going to resolve around pretending I'm somewhere else. Because pretending I'm somewhere has only led to me pretending by myself. I'm not saying that DeAnn were destined to be together forever, but I know I could have made the time that we did have together a little more easier had I truly put her before the game. I could have saved some really stupid fights had I seen through her words that she really loved me and wanted to be with me rather than being a petulant child and thinking she was trying to spoil my fun.

The truth is games can be bought and played everyday.

Having someone who wants to spend time with you and wants you to spend time with her doesn't come around as often as one might believe.

Diablo and all its spawn might alleviate some of the tedium of a stressful day and might even put a smile on your face. But at the end of the day all the guys and gals you might be playing with shut off their computers too, then you're alone again to face the rest of the life by yourself.


dropped in the state of imaginary grace

That, by far, is a far scarier thought than any beasties that cross your path in some computer game.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers