Star Wars: A Short Story

Thousands of hands turned to claws from too many hours wrapped around a controller. Hundreds of phones blinking message and notification alerts, set aside or on silent. The whine of blasters, groans of zombies, thrum of bass guitars, roar of car engines, slide of swords clashing—play through a hundred bedrooms. Curses mumbled by rough voices, burning eyes blinked slowly, fingers pried loose from the grip of the living dead and flexed painfully. Too many burritos, chips and bowls of cereal set in unhappy stomachs. Cubicle desks, classroom seats and restaurant booths sit empty. Bosses worry over health concerns, professors mark attendance and friends roll their eyes.
Visible most in their absence gamers across the world disappear into dens
While it’s no definitive “video game release season” like duck hunting or football, this fall comes with plenty of heavy hitters.
Fallout 4, which has had millions of people waiting for almost ten years, hit on Nov. 10. The latest installment of Call of Duty hit on Nov. 6. A reimagined version of Star Wars: Battlefront hit on Nov. 17.
The surge of releases make gamers everywhere hit desks and beds and beanbags, and some don’t get up for any old obligation like class or work.
The fact that some gamers take time off or flat out skip out on their obligations for new games isn’t a secret. Popular game expo E3 held a poll on their twitter, @E3, on Fallout 4’s release date and found that 53% of the almost 7,000 people that answered were staying home to play
She said that, while it can be tempting to skip for a new game, it creates a stigma about all gamers to those outside the community.
Whether the trend has a positive or negative impact on gamers, individually or as a group, it’s undeniable that skipping for games has become a trend this fall.
The inclination to skip for a new game dwindles quickly after its release. Within days of release many gamers have already sunk dozens of hours into their purchase. When the game is no longer “new” there’s no excitement high driving gamers to skip.
However, even as Fallout and Call of Duty hype dies, the coming end of college semesters and the approach of the holiday season with its many breaks, as well as the release of the first Battlefront game in 10 years, means the skipping will doubtlessly continue.
But, when it happens for so short a time, why is there such a stigma against gamers? Skipping is skipping, people who miss Spanish in favor of a football game are just as in the wrong, perhaps even more so, since they haven’t waited for that match for a