Memoirs of a Rideshare Driver: The Video Game Connoisseur
Episode 34 in a series of true rideshare stories
He’s a very large man with a neckbeard, still young but already losing his hair. If you asked a caricature artist to draw a gamer, and that caricature artist didn’t have a high opinion of gamers, this is the guy he’d draw.
It’s three in the morning and he is getting off his shift at Jack in the Box. I ask him how his night went and he says it was long.
“I’m not even going to play video games tonight,” he says, giving ammo to my imaginary caricature artist. “I normally unwind with video games after work, but I’m so tired I’m just gonna go straight to bed.”
“I feel you,” I tell him. “This’ll be my last ride of the night and then I’m going home and going to bed. I’ll still probably play twenty or thirty minutes of video games to unwind, but not much.”
He perks up. “What are you gonna play?”
Generally, when I run into gamer guys, they like Call of Duty and Fortnite—getting online to team up with strangers and shoot each other. I like RPGs (which are “geeky”) and platformers (which are “for kids”). So typically, if a passenger—at least a male one—thinks he wants to talk video games with me, his eyes soon glaze over, he says “Oh” in a tone that’s as polite as he can muster, and that’s about the end of it.
But this guy looks like a geek gamer if ever there was one. He looks like he collects Magic: The Gathering cards, has a weekly D&D night, and uses Monster energy drinks as fuel to stay up painting his Warhammer miniatures with a magnifying visor. He has to be on my side!
“I’m playing Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth,” I tell him.
“Oh,” he says, and his eyes glaze over in that familiar way.
Huh. Maybe he’s a Call of Duty guy after all, caricatures be damned.
“What are you playing?” I ask.
“The sister series of that one.”
“What’s that, Dragon Quest?”
“Huh,” he says. “At least you’ve heard of it.”
I’m not sure why that surprises him. If Final Fantasy is the Coca-Cola of Japanese RPGs, Dragon Quest is surely the Pepsi.
“I’ve played a couple of them,” I tell him. “I was always more into Final Fantasy, Suikoden, Breath of Fire… but yeah, I like Dragon Quest.”
The light is back in his eyes. He leans forward, like he’s been challenged.
“Which ones did you play?”
“Let’s see… I’ve played VIII, I’ve played the original…”
“Have you played XI?”
“I don’t think so, no.”
“Okay, well you have to play XI. Otherwise, that’s like saying you don’t like Final Fantasy when you haven’t played VII.”
I’m pretty sure I specifically said I did like Dragon Quest, but fair enough.
“It’s like modern and classic at the same time,” he explains, “with up-to-date graphics, but turn-based combat.”
“That’s cool,” I say. “You don’t see turn-based combat much anymore.”
Again, he acts like I’m challenging him. “Yes you do. Persona. That whole series.”
By now I’m starting to notice that the “Oh” and the glazed over look that I took to mean he looked down on RPG fans, was actually the look of a self-ordained RPG sommelier who sees Final Fantasy players as basic bitches.
He tells me about how Persona blends RPG mechanics with Jungian philosophy, how the .Hack series is another turn-based one I should look into, how there’s an animated series to learn all the backstory and I can watch all 12 episodes on CrunchyRoll or whatever obscure fucking streaming service I’d subscribe to if I was a real RPG lover.
Even when I get him to his apartment, he doesn’t get out of the car. He sits there another few minutes, telling me all the RPG series with turn-based combat he can’t believe I’m not privy to.
When he finally gets out and waddles to his front door, I find myself thinking, goddamn, that imaginary caricature artist was on point.
I go home and play my basic bitch RPG.
Memoirs of a Rideshare Driver is a series that tells true stories of my 10,000+ trips as a rideshare driver. I will post them every Monday.