I've retroactively made all that wasted time rotting my brain into research. It makes me a hypocrite when I try to tell my own daughter, "I don't know, I think we've played a little too much Mario."
Ernest ClineI was a painfully shy, awkward kid, with low self-esteem and almost no social skills. Online, I didn't have a problem talking to people or making friends. But in the real world. interacting with other people - especially kids my own age - made me a nervous wreck. I never knew how to act or what to say, and when I did work up the courage to speak, I always seemed to say the wrong thing.
Ernest ClineMy characters are all kind of geek archetypes of people I've encountered at gaming and comic book conventions.
Ernest ClineVery well! he said. You shall prove your worth by facing me in a joust! I'd never heard of an undead lich king challenging someone to a joust. Especially not in a subterranean burial chamber. All right, I said uncertainly. But won't we be needing horses for that? Not horses, he replied, stepping away from his throne. Birds.
Ernest ClineVirtual sex, no matter how realistic, was really nothing but glorified, computer-assisted masturbation.
Ernest ClineIf I was feeling depressed or frustrated about my lot in life, all I had to do was tap the Player One button, and my worries would instantly slip away as my mind focused itself on the relentless pixelated onslaught on the screen in front of me. There, inside the game's two-dimensional universe, life was simple: It's just you against the machine. Move with your left hand, shoot with your right, and try to stay alive as long as possible.
Ernest Cline