My alarm sounds. I glance at the time: 7:30 AM. Before it can keep beeping, I reach over and shut it off. In my brother’s room, his alarm steadily subdivides from quarter notes, to eighth notes, to triplets… until he shuts it off too. We’re both awake. I smile. It’s Tales of Symphonia time.

My brother, Patrick, and me, sitting quietly while playing multiplayer games. Or me sitting quietly and watching him play, utterly engrossed in his strategy. That is how I remember numerous Saturday and Sunday mornings.
I’m guessing the desire to play video games at all came from him, who I admired and emulated. Of course he played the usual 007: Nightfire and Call of Duty, for which I usually would join him, but getting shot, tanked, and sniped could only be amusing for a limited amount of time. I preferred playing video games with plotlines. Stereotypically, this led me to the genre of the Japanese role-playing game, or JRPG. These kinds of games dominated my middle school experience, from the Tales series to Legend of Zelda to Fire Emblem. They all followed the same outline: some dire force wanted to take over the world and alter it to his (always his – usually the omnipotent female character was a goddess who aided the main heroes. I never noticed that before, now that I think about it) liking, and a group of youthful, attractive, sword-brandishing, spell-wielding teenagers had to step in to save the day.
Pat was always player one. I was always player two. Especially in the case of the Tales series, player two had a reduced role, and could only control a character during battles, while player one controlled the character that moved around the map, determined when battles would occur, and generally made all of the crucial decisions in the game. I preferred things to be this way: my brother leading and me comfortably following. Even in real life, he was the trailblazer. At a year older than me, he forayed headfirst into the realms of picking up an instrument, leaping from elementary to middle school, middle to high school, taking AP courses. He also played the multiplayer video games before me, so he knew more about the controls and how to solve the dungeon puzzles.

I’m pretty sure only romantic saps like me can find meaning in video games. Maybe it was because my parents heavily restricted the amount of time I got to play them. They would hide the consoles (a Gamecube first, and then an Xbox) or the controllers and only take them out when my brother and I asked them nicely on Friday nights. The next morning, we would wake up early, sometimes even at 7 AM, just to sneak time to play video games. This routine has made me always associate video games with the weekend – they were my way of relaxing and having fun.
And they were my way of taking a brief reprieve from reality. I had complete control of what my characters did, and I never needed to fear death, because I could always restart. Well, this wasn’t quite the case for Fire Emblem, a strategy game that eliminated any character whose health dropped to 0, but that pressured environment to keep everyone alive made the game more fun for me. I still had resets, it was just slightly more of a hassle to have to redo the level. Suddenly, I was responsible for saving the world in which these characters lived. I vicariously experienced the dangers they faced, the importance of their existence.
What a crucial job they had, too. Saving the world was no easy task. Betrayals and plot twists left my brother and me reeling during our first playthrough (unless one of us read a spoiler online while looking up how to get out of a dungeon). How could the mysterious man who betrayed the whole party in Tales of Symphonia also be the main protagonist’s father? How did the shallow “old man” (he was thirty-five, old by JRPG standards) in Tales of Vesperia actually turn out to be one of the most tragic characters of all? Selecting “new game” at the opening menu entailed numerous surprises.
By the second playthrough, though, all of these twists became just another element of the storyline. My brother and I knew they were coming, and instead focused on the next aspect of the games: sidequests. To fully complete and uncover as much as possible about the characters, we had to return to past locations, go on wild goose chases, fight certain monsters, be careful not to sleep at an inn too many times… and as a reward, we grew closer and closer to accomplishing a “complete playthrough,” to fulfilling everything the game had to offer.
We never got there. Some sidequests we skipped because we were too lazy to put the effort into completing them, but the biggest reason was that we got too busy with high school work. Waking up at seven was hard enough five days a week, doing it all seven days would be impossible. Pat was especially tired of playing Tales of Symphonia and Tales of Vesperia over and over, and didn’t want to take up the helm when I asked him if he wanted to play.

The summer before Pat left for Princeton, when I should have been working on my own college applications, I pulled Tales of Vesperia out again, pressed “continue” at the opening menu, and picked up right where I left off. Pat would still refuse to play with me, instead choosing to study for his anticipated classes. So, I indulged in the game. Although I was never necessarily “good” at it – I took too much damage and didn’t pull off extensive combos –through this solo play, I learned exactly where to go, memorized how to solve all of the dungeon puzzles, what would happen next, and the steps to complete sidequests.
I reveled in the world of the characters. In the prime of their youth, they understood their purpose, accepted and knew that they were destined to improve the lives of everyone. And they were still the exactly the same as when I last controlled them. The main character was twenty-one, and the others were fifteen, eighteen, seventeen, thirty-five, and twelve. I first played the game when I was much younger than all of them. Back then, I didn’t know what impact I’d have on the world, but I expected to go on a grand adventure by the time I reached their age.
“Have you started on your college apps?” Pat would ask me when he saw me playing.
“Uh, a little,” I’d answer.
“Better get cracking.” And he’d go back to his room to use his new laptop.
At seventeen, I was older than some characters and approaching the age of the others. I thought I was supposed to save the world by now, too – any longer and I’d be condemned to a life of sitting in front of a computer in an isolated cubicle. Already, I was only applying to colleges, memorizing facts about photosynthesis, and practicing French horn. I had no idea where I was going to go. My schedule involved coming home, and plopping in front of the computer every day, checking Facebook, and then worrying about my grades and the fact that I was sitting in front of my computer instead of doing homework. I was worried about where I’d get in – I had just been deferred from my top choice school and had ten college applications to write over December break.



Somehow, I am at my top choice school after all. My consoles are at home, but computer games still entertain me. I find myself valuing the time I get to play League of Legends with my friends and brother; it connects us across several states and colleges. Although I usually play the role of support, a role that “supports” the main breadwinner, the “carry,” and is the least overtly active role, it requires the most skill, leaving my friends demanding over Skype why I didn’t fulfill my duty of protecting the carry. I don’t mind, though. I realize that what saddens me most about playing video games now is not that they have lost their meaning, but that they have lost their meaninglessness.

I don’t know how I go there or what will happen next. I do know that with an education, I can’t fly off into the distance on Rheairds at the click of a button and go save the world. That’s just ridiculous. I can’t gain superhuman powers and fight monsters. I don’t have resets and memory cards to save my data. I can’t know if I am a protagonist – there might not be one, or I might even be an antagonist. I don’t know the plot; I can’t replay it and make it better. But there is excitement and anticipation in not knowing this. My path has not been determined yet, and this is the only playthrough.