For people reading this, I hope that you don’t really empathise with what I’m about to tell you. I hope that the world has changed enough that having an interest in video games makes you cool, popular and sexy. Unfortunately, that wasn’t my experience. When I was in high school I was bullied really badly. Everyday, every lesson, even outside of school I was bullied. Usually it was the same people who would bully me each time. Both guys and girls… even the teachers seemed to have it in for me for some reason. It still affects me today… unfortunately. They hated me for being different… for being me. And at the time Glee wasn’t even on the TV so I could provide a useful metaphor for my situation. They didn’t like the fact that I didn’t care for having boyfriends, I didn’t wear make-up at that time, I was into Star Trek and the Miami Dolphins and I used to love colourful clothes and not conform to the black hipster bootcut trousers and hideous jelled perm hair styles that made them all look like sheep. Unfortunately, the irony that they were all also acting like sheep was beyond them (but these days a guest spot on the Jeremy Kyle show would probably be within their grasp).
I was also the only gamer that I knew at school. None of the guys ever spoke about gaming and it also wasn’t something that any popular girl would ever do, scratch that – any girl would do. Maybe it was just where I grew up, but they seemed more interested in rings from Elizabeth Duke than the rings in Sonic and the only Mushrooms they had any interest in were the fried ones that they would have with their greasy breakfasts. That’s right, they weren’t even cool enough to like hallucinogens, at least then I could have spoken to them when they were stoned about riding on the back of cute dinosaurs with a superhero cape and they would have found me fascinating. Still, I was a hardcore girl gamer back then, when even being a hardcore guy gamer was a bit of a niche outside of collecting Panini football stickers and picking on the smart kids. In many of my school projects gaming was my inspiration. From drawing a still life consisting of a SNES, Super Scope and Gameboy, a fox hunting campaign using Fox McCloud on a poster, and also doing a presentation on the demise of the British Earthworm using Earthworm Jim as my mascot.
For me, gaming has always been there. An escape, a refuge… something that gave me entertainment, a way to vent my frustrations on the heads of Goombas and it never judged me (except on some of the Track N Field events). I was brought up with gaming. At the age of about four or five my parents bought me a Commodore 64 for Christmas (blame them, it’s all their fault) and throughout my time at school I owned Game Boys, an Amiga 1200, a Super Nintendo and towards the end of my school time an original PlayStation. (That of course has grown to me owning nearly every home console, I’m such a collector, or hoarder as some would call it). People say that video games make kids more violent, anti-social and aggressive – so why is it that the kids who were aggressive, anti-social and more than occasionally violent to me weren’t all that into video games? Put a kid in front of Super Mario World for two hours, or on a Hockey Pitch for two hours, and see which one comes out more aggressive! I shed a tear for the fate of Aeris in Final Fantasy VII – but nothing has made me cry more than the ‘healthy’ pursuits that the popular media seems to favour over video games. Me going out and spending time in the fresh air with other kids would have meant spending time being insulted and humiliated to other kids until they reduced me to tears and laughed at me. Forgive me, but that didn’t seem like a healthy pursuit.
Gaming is new, at least to the people who commission news stories, so it’s easier to set up as a bogeyman. Someone who kills someone over a game is likely to have mental issues anyway, and is looking for an excuse, rather than being influenced by a game. If someone says that they thought about killing people because of Grand Theft Auto, you could take their console away instead of institutionalising them and it wouldn’t stop them from going out there and doing something awful, they would just say that the toaster looked at them funny and that’s why they had to kill people instead. Still, it’s easy to point at games and say that they’re to blame… it’s easier to blame a thing than to look at yourself and say – I’m a bad parent. My parents let me play video games, but we always ate dinner together – we always talked… my mum used to watch me play video games so we could interact as a family. Yes, I got upset when my XBox 360 RROD’d when I just put Dead Space 2 in it, but I wouldn’t kill anyone over that. My mum and dad raised me better.
There are campaigns in the States right now called ‘It Gets Better’. They started it for gay kids who were getting bullied at school, telling them that after high school, in the wider world, things do get better. Kids in the UK are bullied because of their sexuality, or race, or for a million other reasons. I guess what I’m trying to say is that if you are in school now – and being bullied like I was. It gets better. And one of the things that people never say is that video games can help with that. As well as giving me a way to deal with the pretty crappy hand I was dealt at my school, it also gave me all my awesome friends I have today. You guys, the ones reading this sentimental heart-filled web page of words. And of course, not forgetting Susan, who will always be my best friend forever.
I wish that I had Ready Up then, I wish that there were friends that I could talk to over XBox Live or the PlayStation network. And if you are getting bullied, use them – talk to someone in whatever way you can, because if you are being bullied, it’s really not you… it’s them. Believe me. But I am glad that I had the video games. If it wasn’t for video games I would have been unable to escape the trauma I had to put up with everyday because of school (trust me, every time I get a headshot, I still think of my German teacher). If it wasn’t for Cosplay, I would have never got the confidence I have today to express the colourful person that I am inside and had to hide away for so long. If it wasn’t for being who I am and liking geeky stuff like Star Trek in the face of a dull consensus who could only talk about who was the fittest guy in Hollyoaks…. well, I wouldn’t be able to insult those ‘Hab SoSlI’ Quch!’ people in Klingon and I wouldn’t be drinking Earl Grey tea just like Jean Luc Picard.
It seems easier to say now I’m out the other side of it, but sometimes, pressure creates diamonds. If you have the strength, be true to yourself – you’ll make it through to the other side. Find people who have the same interests you do. Believe me – you’ll have a more interesting life than all the other people who bullied you as they didn’t have the strength of character to do anything different. Until then, there’s nothing wrong with getting a little help from Sonic, Mario, Cloud – or whoever – to see you through.
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