Joy

People play games and this brings them joy. Mostly It will be true when many hundreds of thousands, and eventually millions, open Super Smash Brothers Brawl next week and proceed to have childhood icons beat each other up.

Joy is a funny thing, and it’s so important that people see it and recognize it.

Today two things happened that remind me of joy.

The first is that Gary Gygax died. Gygax created Dungeons and Dragons, which had a profound impact on gaming of the past and today. Final Fantasy wouldn’t have been what it is without Gary Gygax. Japanese gaming was influenced by a Westerner’s tabletop game. How crazy is that? How impossible is that notion today?

From what I’ve seen of the man, he was happy. He enjoyed his game, he enjoyed tweaking it and he was a social, happy man in a Hawaiian shirt. And he dreamed of fighting dragons, orcs, and saving the world with your friends decades before World of Warcraft. As a gamer, you can’t help but tip your hat at a man who so defines what it means to dream bigger than the chair you’re sitting in. Remember that. Remember how dragons are made, not simply fought.

And what hits me closer to home is the retirement of Brett Favre. I consider him the perfect athlete. I have seen many people play numerous kinds of games over the years, but I’ve never seen anyone play as jubilantly as Brett Favre. My hometown team the Chicago Bears went through 21 quarterbacks in the time the Green Bay Packers had one. One! He did it, despite pain, despite the grind of a media-centric league.

Earlier this year I caught a bit of a game. He threw a touchdown, his team had left the field. He went up to a referee to high five him. The referee looked confused, but gave him a high five.

I grew up watching Michael Jordan dominate. And I liked it and considered him a hero. Looking back, he was a gambling chauvinist with a dark edge, arrogant to his core. I have been the fan of a team on the receiving end of a 17 year whuppin’, and I can’t bring myself to say one negative thing about Brett. The joy in which he played football is what I want my kids to have. It’s what most people wish they had in their jobs. I hate to see him go so much. Bears fans may say unkind words about the Packers, but I would bet Harry Caray’s glasses that if he ever expressed an interest in playing for the Bears, this city would move heaven and earth for our rival. He wasn’t just damn good, he was a damn class act.

When I play games, I want to play them like Brett.