A few years ago I was auditioning for a show at a theme park. \u00a0I didn’t get the spot because they already had someone with a similar style voice, the producer explained. \u00a0She was very encouraging about keeping at the singing thing though, and asked if I had a guitar. \u00a0I sheepishly told her, “I had a guitar, but I traded it for an XBox.” She laughed because I surprised her, and I laughed too. \u00a0I left feeling good even without getting the spot in a live show.<\/p>\n
People are often surprised to discover that I’m into video games. \u00a0Telling my students that for Valentine’s Day my husband and I took a trip to Game Stop also got some reactions.<\/p>\n
So here’s my gaming history:<\/strong><\/p>\n When I was very young I remember playing Pong and some other games on my Uncle’s Atari. \u00a0Later I played Super Mario on the original Nintendo. \u00a0I remember the Power Glove and the Power Pad (you could cheat by slamming your heels down without picking up the rest of your feet). \u00a0Legend of Zelda (III, I think was the platform one that I liked) . \u00a0But as I became a teenager, I began to play less, and my younger brother began to play more.<\/p>\n I watched as my Dad and brother played, and later as my husband played games on a PS2. \u00a0I enjoyed watching, and even helped my husband solve the puzzle aspects of God of War while he did the button mashing fight sequences. \u00a0I started playing a PS2 fitness game regularly and became quite proficient at Guitar Hero, I also absolutely LOVED Dance Dance Revolution (still miss it). But the moment I was born as a gamer has to be<\/strong> when I discovered Kingdom Hearts 2 (I had never even played the first one). \u00a0I can even tell you the precise moment in the game that did it, it was when I first figured out how to spend my XP to level up and customize my fighting abilities. \u00a0That was it. \u00a0I was hooked. \u00a0I’d come home from work and play eight hours some nights.<\/p>\n What I like<\/strong><\/p>\n I like RPG’s. \u00a0If I can earn XP and search for treasure, I am a happy camper. \u00a0I also love it if I can interact with NPC’s or do quests and have the decisions I make in the game affect the game world later on in the story. \u00a0I like being able to customize my character and upgrade weapons. \u00a0I can literally spend hours doing this. \u00a0I was especially pleased with a DLC add on to DA2 that lets you customize your character’s look THROUGHOUT the game instead of just initially.<\/p>\n Favorite Games\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Fable II<\/p>\n Fable III<\/p>\n Dragon Age Origins<\/p>\n Dragon Age Awakenings<\/p>\n Dragon Age 2<\/p>\n Mass Effect<\/p>\n Heavy Rain<\/p>\n Demon Souls<\/p>\n Dark Souls (Just started)<\/p>\n Final Fantasy XIII<\/p>\n Little Big Planet<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A few years ago I was auditioning for a show at a theme park. \u00a0I didn’t get the spot because they already had someone with a similar style voice, the producer explained. \u00a0She was very encouraging about keeping at the singing thing though, and asked if I had a guitar. \u00a0I sheepishly told her, “I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":446,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/stoutje\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/stoutje\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/stoutje\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/stoutje\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/446"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/stoutje\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/stoutje\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/stoutje\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions\/4"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/stoutje\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/stoutje\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/stoutje\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}