I was reading some old magazines the other day when I ran across a column in a now-defunct publication by a gentlemen named Ken Levine. He's quite the guru in the computer software world now, living out his dream one presumes. But it wasn't always that way. Click through to read excerpts from his column from 2004 and why his words still matter.
The following is from an article titled "Trouble In River City" from Computer Games Magazine, January, 2004:
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Professor Hill: Now one fine night they leave the pool hall
headin' for the dance at the Armory
Libertine men and scarlet women and ragtime
Shameless music that'll grab your son, your daughter
into the arms of a jungle animal instinct--mass'steria!
Friends, the idle brain is the devil's playground, trouble!
From "The Music Man" by Meredith Wilson
"What you reading, kid?"
"What," I said, looking up from my desk. Robert Petrosini stood over me. Robert Petrosini punched me in the arm every morning of the entire seventh grade.
"I said, what's that you're reading?"
Frightened, I tiled the book up to him so he could see it...
"Comic books?" Petrosini spat.
I said nothing.
"Figures a loser like you would like that nerdy crap."
I had one friend, sort of, a kid named Ted who lived across the street. Ted and I didn't really like each other but we had one thing in common: no one liked us and we were bored. He taught me how to shoplift, and how to break into neighbors houses and swipe Playboys. He started filching beers from his dad and packs of Merits from his mom. We'd light them up in the woods, spitting more than we smoked. Kids thought we were weird. Ted started selling weed in high school; last I heard he was living in his parents' basement, doing some landscaping work...
When I came across a box at my local hobby shop with a big red dragon on the cover, I picked it up immediately. I started playing Dungeons & Dragons, impossibly, by myself. It didn't work so well, but it beat stealing magazines...
Hobbies like mine were considered somewhat shameful and kept secret. Kids in my school didn't play videogames. They didn't read comic books. And they sure didn't play Dungeons & Dragons.
On the school bus home one day in my freshman year of high school I overheard a kid talking [about the game]. I worked up the courage to talk to him and his friend. Turns out they played D&D. Turns out they didn't have a lot of friends either, but the ones they had were getting together on Saturday... I was invited.
I quickly became friends with the D&D crowd. One of them remains my best friend today. We didn't smoke, we didn't steal, and we didn't drive drunk. Instead we ate Doritos... Some of the guys had computers and we started playing [with them]. Soon, gaming became less of the reason to get together than the excuse, and suddenly I had a community.
Today I spend all of my time with guys like this. They're my friends, co-workers, and colleagues. And a lot of them have the same story...
I bet some of these kids [today] look a lot like me at that age. Maybe some of them sit alone at lunch and are the last to be picked during gym. When I hear "experts" decry the various things that endanger children they always seem to forget about loneliness and isolation. There may be perils in gaming, in Dungeons & Dragons, on the internet, or even in pool halls. I don't know if there's danger. But I do know there is community, and I could have used a little of that when I was twelve.
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In just a few paragraphs Mr. Levine described exactly what we're doing with our small group game meetings in our youth group. We have all kinds of kids in church and in this town. Some are popular, others are loners. Some play football, others are in band, some have nothing to do at all. The sad reality is even the most successful kids (to outward appearances) can walk around feeling lonely, cut-off, unfulfilled, looking for some place to belong that isn't based on how fast they can run with a ball, whether their team wins, what their grades are, how attractive they are on a scale of 1 to 10.
Sometimes those lonely kids find things to do on their own that are counterproductive, like Ted in the opening of this story. But truthfully, if you give them a better option they'll usually take it. Very few kids actually like hiding out in the woods and hacking up cigarette smoke. They're either doing it to feel like they belong or doing it to feel powerful, like they're hurting the system that isolated them. Give a kids an honest welcome and they'll usually take it.
That's what we've created with our little gaming groups: a community where lots of different people belong. We have athletes, computer experts, musicians, writers...even some girls. (Gasp!) There's no pressure to join, no hurdles to jump before you belong. You like to have fun? You OK with people being nice to each other? You like to eat and drink a little? Then come! This community is yours. We all win some, we all lose some, but neither makes you more or less a member of the group. There are no grades, there are no touchdowns, just a bunch of people being together and enjoying it.
Somehow when you're doing this there's a lot less incentive to do those other things. By most measures the kids who do this are squeaky clean and remain so as long as they're with us. We're not talking perfect, of course, but there's a lot less bullying, back-biting, drinking, judging, or negativity than you'll find in a normal sample group of folks this age. Why in the world would we do that stuff when there's fun to be had?
We tend to stay together, to support each other. If something's going wrong it comes out pretty quickly. We learn that we need each other because, as Ken Levine found out, you can't really play games by yourself. Nor can you play them if you don't care about rules, don't respect the other players, or are only out for yourself. Nobody is more or less popular really. Looks, money, clothes, backgrounds, none of that matters. The dice treat you all the same. Through playing together you learn to treat each other the same.
A welcoming community, free and open, that doesn't count wins and losses but still plays, where people behave decently and treat each other with respect, where people realize they are interconnected, where judgment and prejudice fall by the wayside, where everybody is working towards a common goal in their own way...can you think of a description more reflective of what God wants for his children? Like Mr. Levine, I so badly needed something like this when I was twelve. It took me a decade or more to un-learn the awful lessons about life and community I was taught as a teenager. And there are plenty of kids out there undergoing the same thing. All of them are in one way or another.
That's why we do what we do. That's why I smile a little inside every time kids walk through our doors. I know the things they could be doing instead. I know how some of them must be feeling, the things they're wrestling with outside of these walls. We can't solve all their problems but loneliness, isolation, feeling there's nowhere you belong? Yeah, we can do something about that. And we do, several times a week.
I'm proud to be a part of something like that in God's name. I hope you are too.
--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)
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