When I was walking to the Game Room over on 17th & "O" Street all I was thinking about was, really okay, I have to go spend a good amount of my time, watching preadolescences play, loud obnoxious, noise making boxes, while drinking Mountain Dew and eating Cheetos. This type of environment or community is extremely foreign to me so honestly I was not looking forward to the next couple hours of my life.
As I approached the store I noticed a really cool, very colorful store front, with the name spelled out in what I would probably call "Pac-Man" font. I thought hey this is kind of cool. As I walked in I was expecting to experience sensory overload from blinking lights, and various beeping sounds, but what I found was more of a retail atmosphere, somewhat quite, more subdued and patrons focused mainly on playing gaming consoles and not so much on what I would call "arcade" games. In fact the arcade games were located over in a back, virtually unused.
The people/patrons of the Game Room probably surprised me as much as the atmosphere did. I found the diversity of the group to be interesting, stemming from UNL Athletes, to dead beat adults, to just a few of my dreaded preadolescences, to what I would refer to as "Gamers".
After a few minutes of observing I decided to make an observation of the general relation between gamers and that community of people to their appearance. I counted; 8 out of 10 people walked in wearing clothes too big for their form. Most smelled like smoke and when they smiled their teeth had been yellowed and worn down. Most of the women had their hair dyed un-natural colors. As for the men, about half of them had long hair, enough to pull back into a ponytail. The other half's hair was greasy and tousled. Overall their physical appearance was not in tip top condition; however, I probably heard them laugh more than the general person. It made me realize a couple things. It forced me to see that people are and can be very content and happy with life without having all the luxuries of a rich man. It also made me see a pattern in the community. The way people dress is very dependent on how the people around them dress. For example most sorority girls will curl their hair, put on a nice dress and a big blingy necklace. That is a commonality for a sorority. For the gamers here, it appeared to be the thing to dress the way they do; oversized shirts and baggy pants, maybe a pop cap and usually some sort of gold.
The interesting thing was how all of these people interacted with each other, sharing a common interest, and relating to each other through this one commonality Gaming.
-Anneliese Feldner
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