CATS AND GADGETS

At work every few months we get together to share projects that we’ve been working on for all the departments to see each other’s work, as well as for the agency to see finished products of campaigns we have produced. Individuals also present interesting ads (of any medium – TV, press, internet, outdoor, etc) or campaigns to discuss and a select few are chosen to present on something a little more personal – their “hidden creative talent” or more loosely, their hobby or interest which takes up their spare time. I was lucky enough to be chosen this time to present on my hobby.

So I spoke about gaming of course. A few people around the place know about my passion, as I have various game promo postcards and (small) posters stuck up on my wall, and a Lara Croft wallpaper on my computer. When asked what I got for my birthday, the girls around me had no idea what I was talking about when I described my awesome headphones (“why would you have headphones designed for playing games?”), and I often reply, “I played games all weekend” when asked what I spent my weekend doing. But I think the majority of people were surprised with my presentation. Particularly the nature of the games I play, given I’m a rather shy and small 5’1” innocent looking young lady with good manners and I was showing screen shots of a sniper scopes in COD4 complete with blood splatter.

It was a rather entertaining presentation. I had Azreal take photos of me dressed up in outfits to highlight the adaptability of gaming platforms, so I was a tennis player on the Wii, an elite cop in Time Crisis (PS one) and a rock star in Guitar Hero 2 (PS2). I made light of our romantic evenings at home with a shot of Azreal and me sitting side by side at our computers, playing COD4 and some close-ups of us with our headsets and some in-game conversation. I also spoke about LAN tournaments and professional gamers (people love hearing about that stuff).

The crowd lapped it up – what a success! Of course now I have people emailing me those crappy games built in excel with really basic controls, asking me what I think of them.

Brisbane is finally getting a gaming convention. I’m so excited. We get Supanova (http://www.supanova.com.au/) every year which I admit I wouldn’t mind going to, but it’s more about comic book geeks and kids dressing up and doing their cosplay comps. To be honest I’m scared of the kind of people who go to it. Though I’d love to see the celebrities that go, and listen to the speeches.

But we’re getting Gencon (www.genconoz.com), four days of anime screenings, seminars, displays from game developers, previews of new games, game tournaments, tabletop game displays (and tournaments), game and anime merchandise, cosplay (of course) and of course celebrities! It’s the first time it has been in Australia and of course Sydney and Melbourne people are complaining about it going to a one-horse town like Brisbane. But they get lots of conventions. I’d even take time off work to go to it if my boss wasn’t already having that time off. Damn it. But I’ll see what I can do. Maybe I can have a half day.

Two of the FragDolls posted a picture of them with Peter Petrelli (Milo Ventimiglia) at a Comicon. No fair!

To celebrate my birthday I had a few friends over on Saturday afternoon/evening to play a few Wii and PS2 games. Of our “normal” friends (ie. friends that we’d made before we got into gaming) we’re definitely the most into games but as you can imagine the guys out of the group had the most fun because they also played games on a regular basis or picked the games up more easily. The girls had a little more trouble but all in all it was still a pretty good night. It was a small group – my friend from uni and her husband who we have had over before for games nights, Azreal’s brother (who we bought the Wii off) and my friend from work who’s never even used a Wii before.

We played Wii tennis, boxing, bowling and baseball as well as Buzz hollywood and Guitar Hero II on the PS2. Of course there was drinking involved and we walked up the road to Nando’s to create a commotion and feel embarrassed as Azreal and I go there quite regularly so the owners of the store know who we are. And we had ice cream cake, which I’ve wanted since I was a kid but was never allowed to have. Nice dessert to have on a cold and rainy night!

It was lots of fun but I couldn’t help but feel that I had to go easy on the others (Azreal excluded – we went head to head on both Wii boxing and Guitar Hero and both went hard…that was fun!). It would be nice to have a group of gamer friends that we could really spur each other on. Now I kind of know how Azreal feels when he plays – like he’s being held back by playing with people who are noobs.

I was just glad that I got to have a relatively cheap night without having to pretend to have fun (how I usually feel when I do the civilised dinner and drinks for my birthday) and could just be myself – a geek – do the things I want with the people I want to be with. The sign of becoming mature, yes?