www.mtv.com/news/articles/1514150/20051118/inadjlasddex.jhtml
MTV News: BlizzCon Blitz See Korn's Jonathan Davis, high-level player Warlock and a half-horse des cend on Anaheim, California, for the first 'World of Warcraft' conventio n, on Overdrive.
Megan Hockman and Clinton Smith Photo: MTV News When Jake Walker upsets his girlfriend, Jaci Boydston, he might buy her f lowers. When Jaci feels she owes an apology to Jake, she agrees to play a round o f the Nintendo fighting game "Super Smash Brothers."
attend Kansas State University, are a modern couple dealing with a modern issue. For decades gamers and non-gamers in love have struggled to f ind harmony. Like most college campuses, i t is a place where the release of "Halo 2" last year was the best of tim es and the worst of times. And while there is such a thing as couples in which both people are into games and while there are sometimes boyfri ends who are the non-gamers the most frequent complaint involves game- crazy guys leaving their girlfriends out in the Xbox-free cold. "I've started to dislike games a lot more since the start of the relation ship," said Megan Hockman, during an interview with MTV News in the dorm room of her boyfriend, Clinton Smith. Senior Erin Moore says her boyfriend, Jari, binges on Xbox right across t he hall from her apartment, where his gaming friends live. "He doesn't c ome home until 4 in the morning because he's been playing Xbox all night ," she said. "I went over and stole the game contro llers and hid them around the house, and I hid them separately so if the y found one they still couldn't play." Beleaguered girlfriends like Megan and Erin have found solace in Girlfrie nds Against Video Games, a new campus club. com but it's become a sounding board for dozens of loca l students suffering gaming-induced relationship heartache.
Why are some gamers leaving their girlfriends for Mario, encouragedto play in class and getting a crash course in race relations? The group was started by junior Jenn Calovich, a girlfriend with her own gaming-obsessed boyfriend. She said she's taken most of the obsession in stride and even bought boyfriend Jeff Kung a subscription to Xbox Live for Valentine's Day. For his part Jeff said he'll stop playing a game wh en Jenn pays him a visit, though he'll occasionally "put it on pause and sometimes hope that she might leave early." Students have poured out their complaints on the Facebook group's message board. "They'll grow apart and tension will get high and they'll just break up," Jenn said. What started out in jest and inspired the less serious Boyfriends Again st Girlfriends Against Video Games counter-group has been a relief for some members. "I think the biggest issue I have is how much money he spends on it," she said. "He h as a campus job, and campus jobs don't pay very much at all. Then he get s his paycheck and spends it all on video games." "Recently I starte d giving plasma to help pay for video games," he admitted. Megan has tried to get Clinton to pull back on his gaming, but her most s erious attempt backfired.
"I just remember sitting there being absolutely furious that she said tha t," Clinton said. "That's what I love to do, and I don't see any reason to grow out of it." That type of intervention also failed with Geoff Matousek, 19. Last year, after seeing that his gaming was hurting their relationship and causing him to skip classes, his girlfriend asked him to play less. "I probably hadn't played more than once or twice in that week, " he said. When th e next week started, I played continuously, like every day. "It's a place for me to release my a nger and talk to people online," he said. At the end of the school year, his girlfriend broke up with him. Only now does he think h e's got his playtime under control. Last May then-junior Jaci wrote a lighthearted column for the school news paper warning her fellow Kansas State students about gamer boyfriends. " By far the hardest thing to get used to was the hours upon hours spent u sing a chunk of plastic and some cords to make a little guy on TV fight with other little guys on TV," she wrote. She offered warnings but wasn't able to identify many solutions. At the f irst in-person meet-up for Girlfriends Against Video Games in October, m embers offered suggestions of how best they can cope. "Lay down the law, " said Erin, who said she's found success tearing Jari away from games b y wooing him with the idea of going to a movie. Others suggested trying harder to play games with their boyfriends, if just for a little while. Jenn said non-gaming significant others need to make sure that meeting th e gamers they love halfway really means meeting them halfway. "There com es a point when being the cool girlfriend means your give and take is mo re like you're giving instead of taking." Then there are the suggestions the gamers themselves offer.
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