Mock wedding shows extent of gamer's addiction

This week I'm resurrecting an old topic from this forum: computer addiction, especially to gaming. I found the following "E-Briefing" column by Janet Korblum in the February 21, 2000 edition of USA Today. No offense is meant for those mentioned in the article. But, it reads as follows:

"No sooner had the judge pronounced Paul Wratt and Merle Doubell married than Paul turned to face Merle and shot her dead.

"Fortunately, she has a sense of humor.

"'In the practice, I blew him up,' Merle says. 'He was just getting me back.'

"All's fair in love and war, and Paul and Merle got a little bit of both when they tied the knot in a Valentine's Day Quake 2 ceremony.

"That's Quake 2, the shoot'em-up 3-D computer game that you can play online, in character.

"Which is exactly what they did. Merle, dressed in a traditional wedding gown, and Paul, wearing a formal suit, sat in front of their computer terminals in a South African cybercafe and operated the controls on the Quake 2 game. The crowd, which included café onlookers as well as online observers all over the planet, saw them as 'BadBoyBubba' and 'db_High.'

"They say it's the first Quake 2 wedding, and it's a claim that would be hard to dispute.

"Paul, 29, who met Merle, 32, at a mall, is pretty much a Quake addict. He works eight to 12 hours a day at his job as an Internet developer and plays the game up to 12 hours a day. Do the math. His fellow Quake players have become like family to him. So it seemed logical to get married in character.

"He asked. She thought, 'Why not?'

"'We're both a little bit different,' Paul says. 'I wanted to be inside the game so badly. It just felt so natural for me. It was one of the best things I've ever done in my life.'

"The wedding, Merle says, 'was stressful but beautiful.' The voices in the ceremony were prerecorded to church music, and the game's scenery was altered to be more churchlike. Merle's mom 'wasn't too impressed,' she says. But her father is 'very open-minded. They're very happy I found myself a good man.'

"Even though he killed her? It was only natural.

"'You can't physically kiss in Quake, but you can kill,' Paul says.

"For those wondering, yes, they did get officially married. And when he was told he could kiss the bride, Paul did not pull out any automatic weapons."

Go To Page: 1 2