I Play Video Games, Jackass

I have been sitting on this story for a looooooong time. But, a particular badass tweet by Rae Johnston yesterday has spurred me to share my tale.

Middle of last year, the husband decided that he was really excited and interested in playing Dishonored. So much so, that it had earned exalted placement in the list of games that gets pre-ordered. The interesting thing about the Dishonored pre-order, though, was the perks were different based on where you pre-ordered: Best Buy vs Amazon vs GameStop. Each offered different in-game rewards as well as a physical trinket or doo-dad.

I was interested in the game, but Trey was EXCITED about it. He had all the knowledge and had done the reading up on the gameplay and all the other things excited nerds do in anticipation of a new shiny. He picked the pre-orders that seemed most intriguing, which meant GameStop was the winner. I don’t recall the in-game perks, but the physical doo-dad was a deck of tarot cards. I am not too proud to say that if he’d picked a different retailer, I would have lobbied for the tarot deck people. I wanted the tarot cards 😛

October 9th rolled around and I headed over to GameStop to pick up our pre-ordered copy of Dishonored + doo-dads. The clerk retrieved the game and set it out, starting to ring it up. I looked at it funny and asked if the tarot cards were in the game box knowing full well they could not possibly be. I thought it was a decent indication that maybe I knew what I was purchasing.

He grabbed the cards from the box of them they had, put everything together, and rang me up. He handed me the receipt and helpfully pointed at the DLC code to retrieve pre-order goodies and said to me, “Okay, he’s going to need this code to…”

I don’t remember the rest of what he said because I probably didn’t hear him. I couldn’t hear anything over the sound of how pissed off I was.

I cut my eyes at him, cocked my hip to one side and clucked my tongue, “How do you know the game isn’t for me? You be careful with that kind of shit.” gave him another disapproving side-eye over my shoulder and sashayed the hell out of there.

I don’t care if he thought the game was for my husband, boyfriend, brother, or (god forbid I don’t look that old yet) son. That he thought, at all, for one minute, the video game was intended for anyone other than the person completing the transaction, standing in front of him because that person was not a MAN is why he is wrong. I’m also pretty sure I was wearing a video game and/or comic book t-shirt at the time.

I vowed that I am going to play the SHIT out of that damn game. I’ll let you know how that goes once I’ve finished playing Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm, my 2nd playthrough of Bioshock Infinite, and Borderlands 2. AFTER I wrestle the Xbox 360 from the husband. (We don’t need two Xboxes, but sometimes, we really do)

Edited to add: Trey picked the perks, I placed the pre-order, so not only was I the one picking it up, MY NAME was on the order itself.