Gaming Memories Helping to Heal Katrina Wounds

waterlogged writes "Lara Crigger writes a compelling account of the effects of hurricane Katrina on a person's sense of videogames in The Escapist. From the article: 'Hurricanes destroy more than just property; they destroy the sense of property, as well. They smash that universal belief that objects intrinsically carry some emotional gravity or weight. Acts of destruction remind us that physical substances are only equal to the exact sum of their parts: Plastic and cotton, metal or wood. What's left over is a painful buoyancy, an unbearable absence of feeling; you mourn not just your lost PS2 games or your Xbox controllers but also the fact that these once precious things have been proven completely meaningless. Even if they do remain intact after the storm (like the Samus poster), the only entity that really survives is you.'"

Comments

Being illiterate is fun

[DoctaWatson]

Because, in my mind, games can heal katana wounds.

XBox?

[ackthpt]

If they had any of the original controllers they could have climbed on them and floated to safety.

Katrina's influence on gaming

[amightywind]

you mourn not just your lost PS2 games or your Xbox controllers but also the fact that these once precious things have been proven completely meaningless.

Deep. It makes me think that the lawless, gangbanging aftermath of Katrina in New orleans would make a compelling Grand Theft Auto scenario.

Some damn guru tried to tell me that once

[spun]

So I stomped on his foot.

Imagine that....

[Almahtar]

so it's a new thing that deriving your life's worth from your material possessions leaves you lacking in the long run? Don't feel sorry for these people whose stuff was destroyed: at least they have a chance at gaining perspective. Feel sorry for the guy that's still got his XBox and wastes all day, every day on it, or the guy that has a bright shiny car but no sense of personal worth.

Relevant Quote

[KingoftheAges]

"It's only after you've lost everything," Tyler says, "that you're free to do anything."

Katrina destroyed PS2 and Xbox consoles

[Kohath]

Why did Katrina destroy PS2 and Xbox consoles? We know why.

It's because George Bush doesn't care about black game consoles.

wow

[crabpeople]

This article is so melodramatic its insane.

Hanging close to a window now smashed in by Katrina is a limited edition poster of Samus Aran, circa Super Metroid era. Gleaming in her Varia Suit, she kneels among sand and rocks, with her smoking arm cannon raised upward and the lonely Zebian desert reflected in her visor. Only 2,000 were ever made, and he has #1,968. But it is more than some collector's item; this poster is a tintype of the first girl to ever steal his heart. Like every man (and most women) of his generation, part of him still loves Samus Aran. She is his adolescence, his coming-of-age, a symbol of permanence and power and invincibility. What would it mean if she had been destroyed?

That people still live here, that some of the evacuees have returned to their homes, that must mean something. But what home can stand firm on a foundation of mold and tears?

The whole article is like that!!!

But as we clean, I can't help but feel something indistinct and odd has transpired. I notice he avoids looking Samus' direction. Even as he carefully packs away the poster to be sent by mail to our apartment up north, he does not look too closely at her, and he does not idle in his task. Briefly, I wonder if he might blame her somehow for surviving the hurricane. Or, in light of his subtle detachment, if she had really survived at all.

wow. seriously someone should tell this chick that not everything is an emotional rollercoaster. I get it, hes stoic marble man and your the sensitive girl that brings out his soft side, while probing his mysterious ways. just wow. This puts some of those homoerotic slashdot trolls to shame.

ph

[u-238]

isn't that the whole point? having a good time with friends?

i remember realizing this some time during my ROM collecting phase -- it didn't take long before i realized that it wasn't the gameplay i craved but the memories of that time of life (childhood).

tell me how one's fond recollections of videogame playing--with brothers, sisters, neighborhood friends--are different from your grandparent's stories of fort building and crayfish hunting?

-1, Redundant

[I Like Pudding]

So, video games aren't really that important when your personal Maslow Hierarchy goes Jenga.

Big. Fucking. Revelation.

Boy, I was drowning this one time and I sure needed air and not video games. Makes you think LOL!!111

Wow, you're fucked up in the head

[Moraelin]

First the disclaimer: I'm not an American, I'm not in the USA, I don't even have relatives there or anything. And I'll be the first to bitch and moan about contemporary American politics and about the occasional chest-thumping redneck. But this... you, sir, are a fucking lunatic and it's people like you that are the problem with the world today. Seriously.

For starters even if you make everyone who voted for Bush personally responsible for all of Bush's idiocies, only slightly less than half the votes went to Bush. So what's your problem with the other half, then? You're willing to dance on someone's grave just because they were born in the USA, or what? How fucked up is that?

And at that point, how does it make you any better? If you're willing to cheer for destruction and suffering inflicted upon civilians, just because they're in the USA, then how does that make you better than those who wish the same on people just because they're born in Iraq? No, seriously. What moral high ground can you claim, from which to look down on them, when you're as big an idiot as the most retarded bible-thumping rednecks they have?

And I'm serious about the "people like you" part. The whole vicious circle of inflicting nasty stuff upon each other is based on people taking the whole Us-Vs-Them thing too seriously. People willing to wish you a flaming death just because of where you were born or who your grandparents were. It's _precisely_ such people who thought it would be a great idea to fly an airplane full of innocent civilians into a building full of innocent civilians, or anything of that calibre. All the way back into ancient history, when an army entered a city and proceeded to rape, kill and enslave just to show them who's the new boss, it was just that mentality that was the problem. That it's "Us" vs "Them". That if you happen to be born in Carthage, you're personally to blame for what Hannibal did to Rome. Or that if you were living in Jerusalem, you're personally responsible for the Muslims' being in command there. (See the Crusaders slaughtering a ridiculous number of the very Christians they were supposedly trying to save.)

And you're willing to cheer for... what? For Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, i.e., for permanent psychological damage? Because under the whole bullshit philosophy angle in the summary, that's the cruel reality. It's not that those people had a flash of Nirvana-like enlightenment that material possessions are worthless. It's that those people had the trauma of seeing everything they owned turned into junk or washed away, and went through some hell just keeping onto their very life. A lot of them are probably _affraid_ to get attached to any item any more, and are looking forward to a life spent in fight-or-flight mode, and of waking up in cold sweat after a nightmare about it.

PTSD is a bitch. Your brain gets switched into a semi-permanent mode of trying to learn how you should have dealt with the horror where you actually had no control and no way out. There is nothing to learn, but that's the only thing that would naturally end it. So you're stuck re-living it over and over again. And yet avoiding anything that reminds you of it. So, yes, a lot of them will be stuck fearing the very notion of ever getting attached to something or someone ever again. It's not just their gaming life that's taken a change, it's that their whole _Real_ _Life_ is fucked up now. Including any hope of a meaningful family life, social life, etc.

Yes, it's not fun for the people who got it in Iraq. (Both American soldiers and Iraqis.) But it's not fun for the poor buggers that got it from Katrina.

And frankly, I find it distasteful to use someone's hell to make some personal political point with. That goes for both you, and the pseudo-philosophy in TFA. Those people didn't reach some Zen enlightenment, they were scarred for life. And if all someone can think about is how it affects the gaming habbits, that someone is either a prick or completely out of touch with reality.