I have a terrible confession to make, and an especially terrible confession to make in TechSmart – I am not a gamer. I haven’t always been the total disgrace to geekdom that I am today, once being so into games that I found the line between the real world and the virtual one beginning to blur. I became addicted to a game called Carmageddon at roughly the same time as I got my driver’s license.

License to kill

For those who’ve never heard of Carmaggedon, it’s essentially a racing game, the twist being that you are not only able to run over the many pedestrians walking around, but encouraged. Interestingly, the game was initially populated with human beings but censors forced the developers to change them to zombies, because for some reason mowing down hoards of innocent passer-bys indiscriminately was seen as a controversial idea back in 1999.

I played so much Carmageddon that when I eventually did find my way out into the sunlight and into my first ever car, I had to constantly restrain myself from swerving off the road so that I could take out a granny or two and pick up a few points. Thank goodness I wasn’t into Grand Theft Auto or I may have found myself struggling to resist the urge to kill prostitutes or torture people until they confess.

To get lucky

Apart from having less homicidal urges, what I really don’t miss about my days of gaming is the sheer amount of time it consumed. The biggest advantage of my non-gaming ways is as follows: While you are spending all night playing Final Fantasy XIV, I am hitting on your woman.

I must apologise to TechSmart gaming columnist Pippa Tshabalala for the sexist implication here that all gamers are men. And thanks to Wikipedia I am shocked to report that, in fact, females made up 47% of the global gaming population in 2012. I therefore direct this at the pasty-faced male gamers out there who prefer a night in with their console or PC to a night out on the prowl.

Gaming does a lot of things for you, but making you seem attractive in the eyes of the fairer sex is not one of them. For many women, just explaining that you’re not interested in games will make you seem vastly more attractive than you did seconds before. In some cases you may as well tell her that you own a yacht. So by all means, enjoy your new game. I’m going out to try and hone my new strategy. Something along the lines of: “Your boyfriend’s at home playing games? Sorry to hear. But don’t worry, I’ll keep you company…”

Photo of Deep Fried Man: GA Goodman.