This column is about why my roommate Billy is a huge nerd.
Yet, I’m beginning to wonder whether in the future he may
be one of sports’ great superstars.
Last week, I walked into my room to the usual sight of Billy
hunched in front of our TV with his mobile PlayStation 2 controller
clenched in both hands.
I sat down at my computer and glanced at the TV to check the
score.
Only, there was no score. In fact, there were no teams playing.
There was just a quarterback throwing balls at targets.
“What the hell are you doing?” I asked.
“Training camp,” he responded, in all seriousness I
might add.
Take a moment to let that sink in.
Here is a healthy 21-year-old biology student at a prestigious
university not spending his free time cracking the human genome or
discovering new species. Rather, he devotes his free time to
improving the accuracy of a fictitious quarterback so that he may
perform marginally better in a fictitious game to win the glory of
a fictitious championship.
Now you understand what I said earlier.
Playing actual games is fine and dandy.
Virtual practice though?
There is something eerie about how art is increasingly imitating
sports down to the mind-numbing details.
Sports games are becoming more and more like reality ““ you
can design your own stadiums, negotiate player salaries, and even
help players choose their posses (coming to you in NBA Live
2007!).
And games will only get progressively more realistic.
Eventually, this may lead to something that can level the
playing field for all of us whose athleticism hit the genetic wall
sometime before signing an eight-figure contract:
The emergence of professional sports video game players.
As sports video games become more and more nuanced, hard work
and talent will separate gifted virtual athletes from the rest.
There will be virtual leagues, teams, coaches and
championships.
Fat, bald, 50-year-old former computer software technicians will
be on the covers of magazines, guys like Billy will be the first
pick in the virtual football draft, and there is bound to be an
illegal thumb transplant scandal.
But would this be a good thing? Do these people deserve any
acclaim?
Billy also plays a computer game called The Sims 2, a simulation
of life for those out there whose own lives are too hopeless to
waste time improving.
The simulated lives are supposed to mirror people’s lives
down to minute, tedious details, allowing players to have their
characters work out or find a job, which can be quite ironic
especially when jobless roommates play this game in their magician
pajamas until four in the afternoon.
A future filled with these glorified virtual athletes would be a
kind of reverse Darwinism, a survival of the nerdiest.
That’s why I consider this column to be a preemptive
strike.
I call on everyone in the UCLA community who has a Billy as a
roommate to stop the trend before it’s too late.
Petitions need to be started demanding that sports video games
return to the classic days of TecmoBowl and NHLPA 92.
These people are begging to have their minds liberated and to
experience actual human interaction.
You may ask, is this really a worthwhile cause?
Consider the alternative:
A Sports Illustrated cover shot of Billy in his magician pajamas
with the title “2015 Sportsman of the Year.”
Trust me, not a sight you want to see.
E-mail Peters at bpeters@media.ucla.edu.