GRACS Game Night

Did I ever mention that I've been elected an officer of GRACS this semester? No, I don't believe I did. Well, I have -- and it's a fact I'm inordinately proud of. I've been going about the place broadcasting the fact that I'm a GRACS officer (a fact that makes me extremely proud, and makes it hard to avoid strutting). I take my duties very seriously -- representing the grad student population of the University of Texas at Austin Department of Computer Sciences, to give it its full name. GRACS stands for the Graduate Representative Association of Computer Sciences, and I'm a member.
GRACS is the body that represents us poor graduate students, and makes sure that people remember that we're alive, we're human, and we exist for purposes other than researching for professors. GRACS currently consists of six members -- Sudipta Chatterjee, Thomas Finsterbusch, Joel Hestness, Christian Miller, Donald Nguyen -- and me of course. Awesome people, all of them. But more about them later. This post is to describe the game night.
I believe the game night was Christian's idea. He basically put together a huge array of gaming machines and consoles, and a mind-boggling array of games, and told grad students to go out and have fun. My part of it was to arrange for the pizzas to feed the hungry army that I was sure would invade the food. Who would turn up to actually play was the real question. We were unsure about whether the event would interest grad students -- a special species characterized by their non-existent social life. So it was with some trepidation that we waited for 6:30pm on Wednesday, 27 February 2008.
At first, we were pleasantly surprised to find quite an impressive number of people accumulated in the room -- but that was rapidly abolished on learning the fact that almost 75% of them were there for the food. When the food arrived, there was a stampede. When the dust cleared, only about 15 or 20 people were left, and all that was left of the food was a pile of empty pizza boxes from Pizza Hut, and some crumbs lying on the floor. Poor Christian didn't even get any pizza.
I tried to clear up the boxes, but after pushing aside the pile of boxes listlessly to one side of the grad lounge, I felt too bored to do any more, and besides, I was curious about how game night was progressing. So I made my way to ACES 2.402, where the event was happening.
When I walked in, the room was in darkness, the only illumination coming from the large projection screens on the walls. Games were in progress, and there were people playing them. Loud rock music blared out, from Guitar Hero. There were random battle cries flying in the air from the various games in progress. I made my way to the back of the room, and perched myself on the top of the table (it's useful at times being tiny -- I can pretty much fit myself anywhere I want!) -- and watched the Wii being set up. At that, my eyes lit up. I hate to admit this, but I'm not a gaming freak. In fact, I don't even know the difference between a Gameboy, a PS2/3 and an Xbox, physically. I don't know what games people play on them either, except for Super Mario or some such derivative. I know pitifully little about the world of games, which always manages to stun people, because I'm an artist and they automatically assume that I'd be good at gaming as well (If you haven't gotten the association between the two, welcome to the club). It doesn't help matters that I'd taken the graduate level Graphics course last semester -- from the way some people announce the fact, you'd think I was the numero uno student in the class! Not so. I suffered badly in the course -- something that's been chronicled with plenty of heartbreak on this blog. But I digress. I was saying that I don't know much about games. Security, yes. Web development, yes. Networking, yes. But gaming -- no. Which was why I wasn't sure what I'd do in the room -- until the Wii came up.
Wii is something I can play -- and pretty decently too, at that. I'd been coached by my teammates while I was an intern at Dell, and considered myself pretty decent at Wii Sports (though I've only played tennis, bowling and boxing). The Wii is intuitive (man, gotta give it to the Japanese!) and I love playing. I looked on as Donald and Thomas played on it. When the game ended, Donald offered me his controller. With enormous eyes, I jumped into the game.
I put all my energy into the game. I must admit, I'm a very violent Wii player. I don't content myself with only moving my hand -- if I don't throw my entire body into the game, I feel as though I'd lose. I swung my controller like a pro tennis player, and threw myself wholeheartedly into the game. I think I banged my wildly flailing arm onto Thomas a couple of times. By the time the game ended -- and I lost, by the way -- my arm was already sore.
But that was just the beginning! I watched as my friends also threw themselves into the game. Some of my friends were there -- Ruchica Behl, Harshdeep Singh, Aditya Saurabh and Hari Jayaraman. Hari played the Wii the entire time were there -- I was surprised he had the stamina! Then again, except for me, no one exerts themselves as though they were playing pro tennis. After some rounds of the Wii, Ruchica, Harsh and I decided to try Mario Kart. We spent a hilarious 15 minutes trying to figure out how it worked, and then finally got it going. After I got annoyed banging into walls, I turned my console over to Aditya -- who was ragged to death by Harsh about his lack of knowledge about the game. It didn't help that Aditya kept making critical comments about the game.
"I discovered a bug," he announced, and proceeded to demonstrate it. "Look, when the car hits the wall, it goes through it instead of crashing against it!" and he banged his car repeatedly against the wall until it did go through.
"Saale, tu yahaan testing karne aaya hai ki game khelne? (Are you here for testing or for playing the game?)" demanded Harsh, his eyes glued to the projector screen.
I laughed and laughed. They kept jibing each other good-naturedly throughout the game, and I laughed till I almost lost my balance off my precarious perch. Ruchica, all this while, kept her cool, and managed to win the games simply by coasting through the maze.
In between listening to the two bicker, I looked around the room as well. People were playing all kinds of games. Christian was busy with some anime-looking game, and Donald and another Graphics student, Peter Djeu, were playing another anime-looking game. I think I'd die of humiliation if those guys ever found out I called the games "that anime-looking game"; but I really don't know one of them from the other. On another end of the room, Thomas and Joel were also playing some game. Guitar Hero was still in full flow, and at some point, I heard someone switch to a Muse song. The mood in the room was very exciting, very upbeat.
We played all the way till 10pm. We had thought that we might need to pack up by 8:30, if no one showed up -- but game night was an official success! I don't think the people wanted to leave at 10. I was exhausted, for it had been a long day, and my right arm was sore from playing Wii Tennis as though my life depended on it. Finally, at 10pm, we all ended game night, and returned back to our dreary lives.
I returned to my "office" -- it's actually Ruchica's office, but I've claimed it as my own :) and plonked myself on the chair I've claimed as well (I've claimed an unusually large number of things in that room), and felt my life force seeping out of me. Well, not really -- but I was seriously exhausted. When I returned home that night, I couldn't lift my right arm to wash my face, and the next day, I seriously thought about getting a sling, my right arm was so stiff with pain. But it was worth every moment of Game Night!! Game Night was an official success, and I sure hope we have more of them!