~jg3

My Wii experience

February 16th, 2007 | by jg3 |

If you know me, you probably know that I am not a gamer. That is, I don’t play a lot of video games. My brother had a Super NES when we were kids and that’s where I first played Sim City, but I wasn’t much interested in the other games .. mostly because I wasn’t very good at them. In the last seven years I’ve allowed myself to get completely addicted to Sim City 3000 and, more recently, Sim City 4 Rush Hour, for a week or so at a time but that’s really it. I have never owned a gaming system, and played one only rarely. Because Sim City is dramatically different from most video games in its concept, I feel distanced even further from the stereotype of a gamer. So last fall while people were lining up for days to get one of the new gaming systems I could only shake my head with the self-satisfaction that I was old enough and mature enough not to play video games.

So it was really suprising to me when this happened:

During the slow last week of the calendar year a guy in my office stopped me in the hall and said, “…have you seen the wii yet?” No, he wasn’t being inappropriate. He was asking me if I had gotten to play on Nintendo’s new gaming console, the Wii. I said that I had not, and he told me in a conspiratorial tone that he had one in his backpack and he had reserved a teleconferencing room (with big TV screens) for the rest of the afternoon if I cared to join him in his “meeting”. The room happened to be very close to my office, so when I heard laughter through the walls I went in to see what it was all about. About five guys, all adults, mostly engineers in khaki pants some of whom were were jumping around and swinging their arms about while staring at what appeared to be a strange cartoon on the screen. I eventually figured out that they were playing Rayman Raving Rabbids and the flailing about was just how they controlled the game. Not at all what I expected.

When it came to be my turn, I was to wave the two sections of the controller in the air in time to the music and in a fashion dictated by the action on the screen. It was bizarre and awesome and completely unlike any other video game I had seen before. I still wasn’t any good at it, but at least it was because I couldn’t be precise enough with my ryhthm, not because I couldn’t press the correct sequence of buttons or manuver a tiny joystick around in the proper sequence. It was great. It also helped that the game’s premise was fantastic and silly. Later when we played another game I was shooting plungers to defend myself from the attack of mad rabbits, against a wild west backdrop. Just crazy.

After a little while I excused myself and went back to work, but the seed was planted and I knew that if I ever were to think of getting a gaming system, this was the kind I would get. They are different now than they ever have been before. The difference is mostly in the way that you use the controller to actually do things.

A few weeks later I was walking through the mall and saw a display advertising the Wii in the window of a gaming store, the kind of place I never ever go. I went in and found the section for Wii stuff and looked up and down, seeing that they had plenty of games and several controllers and way up at the top they had two system boxes. I waited in line for about ten minutes or so, all the while studying what characteristics made me different from the other patrons of the store. When it came to be my turn I casually approached the counter with my credit card out and said in a voice that was restrained to hide my excitement, “I’d like a Wii and an extra controller, please.” And the big guy behind the counter looked at me a little more closely and he too realized that I was somehow different than the other people in the store. About that time the clerk at the next register over began to laugh and the two patrons he was helping started to laugh and I began to realize that I had just made a very funny joke to these people. Here I was, telling myself how ridiculous I was for paying full mall-retail price for consumer electronics when in fact I had no idea what ridiculous really was. The clerk tried to assume a blank face and said to me, “we don’t have any.” And in mild protest I gestured to the two boxes on the top shelf and he said, “oh yeah, those are just display boxes. They’re empty.” So I hung my head and left the store, feeling stupid and tricked and happy that the store which tricked me would not get any of my money.

So a few days later when mijoy told about finally getting herself a Wii I realized that it was possible to get one, but a concerted effort must be made. I asked her and her wiitie how it was done and they told me about wiiseeker and for a few weeks I monitored the site, hoping that eventually they would be in stock and I could just walk into a store and buy one. On Superbowl Sunday I went over to mijoy’s house to watch commercials (I care about football almost as much as I do video games) and we played the Wii before the game, during halftime, and after the game. She showed me a bunch of the neat features like the Internet browser, and I was definitely hooked.

The following Saturday I was going out to run some errands and I checked wiiseeker before I left, but the only news was that some places might get them in the next day. I called the circuit city near my house and talked to a clerk who told me that they were getting twenty four of them in that night and if I wanted one I should get there early — before the store opened. As we were in a cold snap, I guessed that at the time I would need to get there to ensure a place at the front of the line it would be about ten degrees outside. Maybe I could stand it if I wore my snowboarding gear.

I guess I was bored, or maybe up for the challenge, or maybe I was just tired of wanting it and not having the opportunity to get it because when my alarm went off at 6:00 on Sunday I knew that I would decide to go. I had been out a little late the night before, and I probably wasn’t entirely clearheaded. It really isn’t my custom to be awake that early, but once I stood up I was a body in motion. At exactly six thirty I pulled around the corner into the Circuit City parking lot and found two cars idling in the closest spots. They were parked so the drivers could both roll down their windows and chat. But I, being the third person, couldn’t participate so I just laid my seat back a little and flipped through the radio stations. Did you know that there’s a talk radio program that runs down all the previous week’s greatest talk radio moments? At about 7:30 the seventh car pulled up and that filled up the vertical parking spots in front of the door. Someone got out and we all got out to chat. Most of the people agreed to stay in the same order but wait in their cars. Steve and Jimmy (the two guys in line in front of me) and I just hung out and started chatting. Jimmy had waited there all night and Steve had been there for an hour before me. Jimmy is definitely a gamer and knows all the details to compare the different systems while Steve is the father of a boy who turned 12 the day before and was already disappointed that he hadn’t gotten a Wii at Christmas. We discussed all of our different reasons for being there and our stories of previous failed attempts to purchase the system, then we started speculating on the potential plusses and minuses to Nintendo of having a product be so scarce that we were lining up in the cold to get it now months after it was originally released. Soon the sun came up and Jimmy, the first in line, wanted to walk accross the parking lot to use the bathroom at the Dunkin’ Donuts. I told him, half jokingly, that I would hold his spot for him if he brought me back a coffee. Jimmy, being drunk on no sleep and the excitement that most of the people in line shared as we were about to get a new toy, came back with some ten cups of coffee and all the sweetener and cream that we might want. Outrageous! There had been news reports of people shooting one another for playstations. Here we were laughing together and sharing coffee. Why?

I asked the people in line how many of them were buying the consoles for themselves, of those I asked who were gamers. Over half of the sixteen people then in line were buying the devices for themselves or for someone else but they were confident that they would use it the most. Only four (including Jimmy) of those admitted to being regular video game players (eg, owned more than one other console system or at least one console system and several PC games). Several girls in the line skewed this survey. They recognized that the system was very different from the other console systems and while the Wii would ostensibly be for their boyfriend or husband, they were very excited to have this new and different gaming sytem. So it is new, and it is different. Is it revolutionary? It might be. I’m sure that the new will wear off once I’ve saved the princess, and after I kill off all the rabid rabbits, but I’m excited to see what other uses this Internet connected, main-televison-displayed, grandma-easy-to-use, consumer-priced device might wind up with.

Filed under: Wii

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