I Love You Man! Reflections on Twenty-Four Years of Male Friendship and Gaming

I Love You Man! Reflections on Twenty-Four Years of Male Friendship and Gaming

Jason Mical & Roger Whitson, Editors

“I love you, man!” What a strange phrase. On the one hand, “I love you” is intimate. But “man” immediately rounds off the edges, making it more palatable, just in case anyone gets the wrong idea. As bell hooks argues in The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love, patriarchy confers upon men enormous power and privilege, but in exchange, it forces them to deny their feelings. Instead of embracing such feelings, men cover over deeper intimacies with rituals of competition, hazing, and teasing.

Roger

Such rituals certainly exist in the group dynamics of men who engage in video games. Jason and I got to know each other through the games we played in our college dorms. These included late 90s mainstays on the PlayStation and Sega Dreamcast like Soul Calibur, Marvel vs. Capcom, and Street Fighter Alpha. We’d pass the controllers around and the winner would play until they lost. One person in our friend group was much more skilled at fighting games than the rest of us. He’d create metagames for himself to make it more challenging for himself, like not using any special moves. We were all already annoyed that he was so much better than us, and his self-imposed metagames only intensified our frustration. Sometimes people would scream “you’re such an asshole!” or “that’s completely unfair!” which we’d subsequently use to tease and mock the person who lost their cool.

I’m reminded of how these scenes of aggression and competition helped me decompress from the stresses of college life. But they also reinforced some of the tragedies of masculine friendship. I’m reminded of a scene early on in our friendship when Jason was visiting a low-income high school classroom as part of an internship he was completing for an Education class. He was clearly distraught at experiencing the plight of poor students. I comforted him, but I also remember feeling strangely uncomfortable at his display of emotion. It was so much easier in those old days to tease and haze than it was to comfort my friend on an emotional level.

 
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Jason:

When I started college, I bought a brand-new computer (a Pentium 1!) and hooked it up to my bookshelf stereo, ready to rock my dorm. One of the first games I loaded was X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, which I cranked up so the familiar Star Wars theme and the ROOOAAAARRR of a TIE’s engines would ping out into the dorm like nerd Sonar. It took about ten minutes for Roger and a couple of other folks to stick their heads in to see what I was playing, and our friendship took off from there.

In retrospect, that core group of male friends often gravitated towards games where we could simulate aggression and dominance. The previously mentioned fighting games were big hits later in school, but early on we played the hell out of Goldeneye on our friend’s tiny 13” TV, the four of us huddled so close that physical space became far more intimate. Roger and I developed a healthy respect for each other’s playstyles, even when we engaged in more gonzo Goldeneye modes like “slappers only,” in which players can attack only by slapping one another.

I suspect that the bonds we created even with violent, aggressive games like Goldeneye actually strengthened our friendship even more, and the chance, as Roger suggested, to decompress from the stresses of college life in a shared “narrative” experience brought us much closer together. The thing that seems odd twenty-some years later is that we never really played many games together that had a more narrative focus. I loved adventure games, which pride themselves on story, and our college years saw the release of narrative classics like System Shock 2 and Final Fantasy VII. Even so, our experience with those games was private; it was only through the interactive, often aggressive games that we found ways to bond.

 

Roger:
The boundary line between narrative and multiplayer competition games definitely determined how we would interact with them. We were both English majors and we shared an intellectual love of narrative and philosophical ideas, but that shared affection only rarely translated into the games we shared as a group. Grand Theft Auto 2 and 3 only intensified the feedback loop we experienced between male friendship and aggression. There was a particular thrill from the open world and the transgressive experiences offered in the game. I remember countless hours spent watching my friends steal a tank, rotating the turret backward and shooting as many people as possible. We considered these fantasies harmless, bolstered perhaps by arguments against holding first-person shooters responsible for school shootings or other violent acts.

Yet as the Grand Theft Auto series grew in popularity, it became even more infamous for the way it dealt with sexual violence. I remember debating my friends about a scene in which the player character is able to cruise for prostitutes, have sex with them, pay them, then kill them to get their money back. Those discussions forced me to consider how the pleasures of masculine aggression have, or should have, moral limits. I felt guilty for my actions, even as I also took distinct pleasure in the transgression. I considered myself a feminist, took courses in women’s studies, and did my best to support my female friends when they encountered sexism. But I also failed to see the contradiction between my feminism and the transgressive pleasure I took in the sexual violence of Grand Theft Auto.

 
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Jason:

I saw the same sense of escapism shift to something uncomfortable and more problematic. Fallout 2 came out towards the end of our college experience and allowed the player to kill children, sometimes in especially gruesome ways. You could, of course, complete the game without participating in this act, but the option was there. I remember thinking at the time why would I possibly want to do that? And what kind of person would want to do that, even in an “escapist” RPG?”

But even as our personal tolerance migrated away from violence and killing, the bonds we forged over those shared experiences persist to this day. I still stay in touch with people from that core group of friends. Heck, I married one of them. The bonds of love created in those shared experiences are some of the strongest I’ve ever known. Roger and I especially share the deep friendship of love; we’ve played games together recently, share video game news all the time, and are collaborators on this site.


Roger

I’ve failed many times as a feminist and friend. But Jason’s always been there with me, sometimes sacrificing himself just so I wouldn’t be left alone. He’s never abandoned me — even when I deserved it, even when my arrogance or small mindedness directly harmed him. He’s also quite affectionate, to the point sometimes that my own struggles with masculinity respond with awkwardness. But I hope he knows how much I love him and consider him part of my family. <3 

 

Jason

In a moment when masculinity is coming to terms with its longstanding toxicity and violence and undergoing a difficult but much-needed redefinition, having a bond like the one Roger and I share gives me hope. There is a better way, it can be done, and the rewards of lifelong love are magnificent. Here’s to you, sir. I love you man. <3

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