Life > January 31, 2008

By Alex Osteen | Opinion editor

The mission was to save the world. Well, on Jan. 25, about 30 or 40 guys took four hours out of their busy university schedules to do just that, one virtual victory at a time.

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“Get Game@ZSR,” organized by Manager of Technology Giz Womack and his team of tech gurus, provided a night of what can only be described as pure delight for gamers across campus with its Open Game Night. The cherry to top off this blissful video-game sundae was a two person team, round-robin, double elimination Halo 3 tournament. In fact, thanks to top notch communicating and negotiating with the outside world (by Giz), the tournament will serve as a sort of regional qualifier because the winners of our tournament will move on to play against UNC Greensboro students and gamers at some point in the future.

“I’ve just got the shakes man,” said one tournament goer before sitting down to play in response to being asked why he had shown up. Apparently some people just have to have their fix.

I’m not one bit embarrassed to expose my internal geekiness by admitting that I’ve been to enough of these game nights that Giz now calls me a “veteran.” If only my Halo 3 skills lived up to that title.

Anyway, like they’ve done at past game nights, they set up eight projectors in the main atrium of the library and as people started showing up, toting their own game systems, the fun began. The forefront of modern gaming technology was well represented with three Xbox 360s, two Wiis and all of the Rock Band equipment. Sorry Sony, no PS3s. The Halo tournament got off to a slow start because of, ironically enough, various technical problems. However, I don’t necessarily blame the tech volunteers.

First of all, since they rely upon people to bring their own game systems, everybody has to wait for them to get there. “With the flu going around like it is, who the hell knows (how things will turn out)?” said Womack. Some people who had agreed to bring their systems actually didn’t show up, so library director Lynn Sutton called her husband to bring theirs from home.

Then, once people got set up, we experienced a power surge and everything shut down.

Finally, there was some last minute discussion about the picky rules of the tournament. As we waited for everything to get straightened out, boxes upon boxes of pizza showed up, along with a couple of coolers of soda and bottled water. A stereo someone had set up blasted out pop rock. There were bowls full of candy on every table. Food, drinks, candy and loud music in the library! It was like a middle schooler’s dream come true. In fact, some of the staff volunteering actually brought their kids.

The Wii seemed to attract the younger kids of the group as well as the young at heart. Giz told me that sometimes he even makes them let him play Wii Tennis.

Some retro players popped in some old GameCube games like Super Smash Brothers, another popular choice with the kids.

The more musically inclined and hand-eye coordinated hit up the Rock Band. For those of you who don’t know, Rock Band is karaoke, Guitar Hero and drumset all in one. Singing may or may not have been a little questionable key range wise, but no one seemed to really notice or care.

Needless to say, competition on that end of the room was a lot more relaxed — maybe because of its demographics, but probably because there wasn’t a trophy at stake.

On the other side of the room, once the Halo tournament got going, things were a little rougher. Concentration and intense focus defined the players who definitely took things a lot more seriously, including me. Though for me, it was to not much avail.

I teamed up with the coolest 11-year-old that I know, Jimmy, who was looking for a partner.

He was a lot better than me (I’m 20!) and probably instantly regretted picking such a loser.

I’m sure I don’t have to explain how quickly I made us lose, but he was at least a good sport about it. After defeat in Halo I tried my hand at a couple Wii games: Wii Bowling was a welcome change in the direction towards peace and friendship. I won too.

Maybe the ultimate intrigue was the chance to be publicly nerdy, maybe it was the chance to show off mad Halo skills or maybe it was just the free pizza.