The geek system

Last Tuesday saw the release of the highly anticipated video game "Halo 2" selling more than 2.4 million copies in the first 24 hours. That's $125 million in a day. For some comparison, "The Incredibles" grossed $70.5 million its entire opening weekend. For those of you that have been in a coma under a camouflaged lead rock for the past few years, "Halo" was a well-designed first person shooter where, basically, you killed aliens and zombies. The thing that made Halo so popular, however, was the multiplayer mode, where up to 16 people could get together to play death matches, king of the hill or, my personal favorite, capture the flag. "Halo 2" was designed to be even better, and it is. I myself haven't stopped playing it except to eat Starburst Jelly Beans and write this column. \nHow did this happen? Since when did video games become so wildly popular? I remember when the only people who played video games were physically incapable of playing "real" games like basketball, or were so socially inept they could not interact with other human beings. There used to be an entire underground culture of gamers, where if you were in, you were in, and if you were out, you were out. If you were in, it meant you knew how to use MS-DOS, you owned a copy of every "Mario" and "Final Fantasy" there was, and you played "Dungeons and Dragons" on the weekends. If you were out, it meant you knew the names of at least two professional athletes and had a skin tone several degrees above "bone white." Now when I sit down with 15 other people at a "Halo" party, I see jocks, frat-boys and girls. These are the people who beat me up in elementary school. Where did my fellow pimple-faced, scrawny, pale guys go? \nThey're still around. I play "D&D" every week, and everyone there is still a dork. Talk about any video game more obscure than "Halo" or "Grand Theft Auto" and you'll pretty much just find geeks. However, the fact is formerly geeky pastimes have become more popular. Video games are just one example: More people know the workings of computers, and the number of people playing "D&D" has burgeoned in the past five years. \nI don't have a clear-cut answer for why this is happening, but there are a few options. The first is that dorky entertainment has simply become better: The graphics and sound of "Halo 2" are kilometers above and beyond those of "PAC-MAN," "D&D" rules actually make sense now, and thanks to the Internet one can play "StarCraft" with other human beings instead of a mindless AI-bot. The second is that the nerds have the power and they're either pushing it on the rest of the world, the rest of the world is emulating them to get the power or a bit of both. Everyone's heard the comparison of Michael Jordan's net worth vs. Bill Gates.' Geeks know how to actually work all the new-fangled cameras and PDAs on the market. Dweebs develop multimillion dollar companies like Google and Amazon. Dorks design the satellites, cell phones and cable modems that allow you to watch the game, talk to your friend in Bangkok and steal a copy of that term paper that's due tomorrow morning at 8. Nerds win. \nThe truth is probably a mix between the two, but in the end it doesn't matter: What was geek is now chic, and things will continue to go that way. Consequently this message is not for those outside, but those inside the dork circle: Let's open up a bit more. They're coming in anyway. We're no longer in a cybernetic ivory tower, and we need to learn how to interact with the rest of the world. Maybe we'll even get girlfriends.