6:42 p.m.
BIG
GAME COUNTRY
Bigger than Hollywood, bigger than music, the video gaming industry is the behemoth of entertainment, and UT could be smack-dab in the middle of it by Tim Taliaferro
6:42 p.m. It’s a Monday night in Austin and I’m standing in line outside Stubb’s music venue waiting for the doors to open. The 22 people ahead of me are college students. They talk of roommates and research papers and free food. Some have come in packs or pairs, but most lean against the building’s stone exterior alone, hands in their pockets, eyes gazing at the laces of their Converse or the straps of their flip flops, or, occasionally, the front of the line. The black letters on the marquee read “CLASH OF THE HEROES.” Might sound like a battle of bands or maybe some rad, postmodern name of an actual band, but it’s neither. What I know from reading a flyer I found on the Texas Gaming Association’s Web site this morning is that the clash is indeed a competition, and the heroes are those in the queue with me. They are not musicians, though. They’re gamers. The $10.3 billion U.S. electronic gaming industry can count a healthy customer base among UT students. For years now, a common social event on campus has been what’s known as a “LAN party,” where a whole group of people play one game at the same time over a local area network (which on campus happens to be blisteringly fast). Thinking it could capitalize on the phenomenon, the Division of Housing and Food Service in 2005 converted the basement computer lab of Jester West into a gaming area and renamed it “The LAN Cave.” But because so many students already had game consoles or computers in their rooms and could play them there for free, the LAN Cave was virtually never used and so was converted back into a lab in 2006. That same year, the Global Gaming League ranked UT the No. 1 school on the planet for online gaming. Ever since the late 1970s, when they first began appearing next to pinball machines in the dark back rooms of family friendly restaurants, video games have become steadily more sophisticated and ubiquitous, in the same way that personal computers have, until today there are game consoles, computer games, portable game players, games on cell phones, and even Massively Multiplayer Online Games, where hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world play simultaneously over the Internet in elaborate online worlds. Gaming — an industry bigger than Hollywood, bigger than music — is now as much a part of the everyday lives of UT students as text messages and caffeine.
6:57 p.m. The event’s lead organizer, a spiky-haired blonde sporting brown Doc Martins and clutching a Red Bull, pulls up in front of Stubb’s, gets out of his car, and, addressing the crowd generally but no one in particular, asks, “How many of you are there?” and gets no response. A moment more of awkward waiting. Then it dawns on him that virtually nobody other than he and his co-organizers at TGA would know or care that there are now 67 of us in line. He turns back to his car, pulls from the back seat some what looks like posters and walks past the front of the line. Stubb’s might seem like a peculiar place to host a video game tournament, especially one that’s to be attended over-
whelmingly by minors, until you consider that they’ll be playing the cultural juggernaut that is “Guitar Hero II.” The point of the game is for the user to attempt to emulate as closely as possible the phalangic dexterity and hand-ear coordination of master guitarists. The game, complete with plastic guitar-shaped controller, aims to simulate the pulsepumping thrill of fingering an epic guitar riff. At its most elemental, GH2 is meant to make the user feel like a rock star. And where better to feel like a rock star than at the storied Stubb’s Bar-B-Que.
7:02 p.m. The guy who will eventually win the Best Show Award comes walking up the sidewalk from the south. He’s wearing a red headband à la Hendrix, a grungy black tee, and tightish purple pants. Clinging to his outstretched arms are three girls with matching red shirts that read: “We ♥ Our Guitar Heroes.” A couple of his friends trail behind. They walk past the whole line on their way to the back. Several heroes look up from their Cons. Eight minutes later the doors open, and the line begins to move. There’s a $10 cover charge/entry fee per contestant, but groupies get in free. IDs are checked.
The Global Gaming League ranked UT the No. 1 school on the planet for online gaming. Once inside, we descend into the basement, where the eight, male officers of TGA, wearing white shirts that read “game on,” man six Xbox360 playing stations spaced out around the room. Each game console is plugged into a flatscreen monitor set atop a cocktail table sporting the Red Bull logo. Red Bull has also supplied several bins stocked full of the silver-canned energy drink and fronted the venue fee. At the stations, two gamers at a time sling guitar straps over their shoulders and get set to play. To begin, each chooses a digital avatar or character who best resembles the image each has of his or her rock star self. The bank of avatars includes male and female incarnations of various rocker stereotypes: leather pants, tattoos, mohawks, face paint, bandannas, chains. Once both have selected an avatar and a guitar, they must choose a city where they’d like to have their concert. Austin’s on the list and, naturally, is selected without exception. The central appeal of video games is that they enable fantasies. Drive a race car, infiltrate an enemy compound, wage war on aliens, shoot par at Augusta National, or be a rock star, all without ever crawling into a racecar, breaking a sweat, working out that slice in your swing, or worrying September/October 2007 The Alcalde 59