History is shaped by our hands.

This is the text of an e-mail that was sent to nomad and chilly earlier this morning. It was good enough to blog.

chilly is a bigger gamer than me. Okay, no earth-shattering revelations there, but it needs to be said. I used to be able to hold my own with him, but I've been losing ground. I'm no longer an uber-gamer like I used to be. I've slipped into the ranks of casual gamer, although I still purchase games near the level of an uber-gamer.

I just haven't been making the time for games lately like I used to. Its not that I don't want to play, I just don't make the time. After my a marathon of 3 huge RPGs in a row, I decided to take a break. That was over 2.5 months ago. With the exception of 2 crazy multi-player game-filled days, I haven't played much at all. I had a brief resurgence when I first got Xbox Live, but I've slipped off of that. Granted, the last few months have been busy for me. My parents have been around a lot for two people that retired 1500 miles away from me. I was in Florida for 2 weeks, which also required a week of getting things back in order when I got back. I had a girlfriend who didn't play games at all for a month of that time. Yes, I was playing FFX-2 while I was with her, but as soon as I beat that she started grabbing up available time. Tivo, which originally freed me from broadcast television schedules, has now enslaved me by always having something for me to watch and threatening to delete it to make room for more. TV again has made game time difficult. All the shows I watch are airing new episodes. I don't watch nearly as much as my co-workers, but the few I watch are all hour-long dramas. That's 5 hours a week gone. So when FFXI gets released and costs $12.99 a month in addition to the cost of all the hardware, I can't jump on board because I don't feel I have the time to justify another monthly cost.

And to be honest, I never gave the game a fair chance in the first place. The moment they announced the title, Final Fantasy XI, I was upset. Couldn't they have just called it Final Fantasy Online? That way it could stay in the realm of a Final Fantasy game but not be one of the flagship Final Fantasy games. Did they have to make it another chapter in my precious series? I didn't like this. Then they announced the cost structure and I disliked it even more. I ignored all the hype about this game because I was determined to hate it. I wasn't giving this game a chance and being the open-minded person that I am proud to be. I was shutting it out. And for the most part, chilly was with me. He was, however, admittedly curious. I never faulted him for that because he always has been the bigger gamer. Its hard not to be curious about something with as much hype as this game. But my disgust crushed my curiosity and I didn't follow the development or release of this game at all.

But then chilly shocks me. He gets the game. Not only does he get the game, but he gets a pricey, yet cool, controller with a keyboard built into it. He's agreed to pay the $12.99 a month fee and goes for it. Something about this game is good enough for him to take the plunge, despite being skeptical from the beginning. Not as skeptical as me, but still skeptical.

So now I'm curious. Of course my curiosity comes at the price of my initial anger. The first moment when I realized he bought FFXI, I was hurt. It was like he cheated on me. He bought the game I was determined to hate. But then I got over it and just accepted that being an uber-gamer, he was eventually going to get into an MMORPG. At least it was by SquareSoft.

Then I slept on it. Now my curiosity was at an all-time high. I needed to read the review of this game. I needed to know what the hype was all about. So I read it. I woke up early this morning despite being up super late and read the review. Now I'm really interested. Yes, the game has some issues, but what game doesn't? The beauty of this game is that its online and can constantly be patched. And the $12.99 a month fee goes to continuously improving the game. So any bugs or clumsy areas of the game can be ironed out. And its online. I used to play a text-based MMORPG when I was in middle school. It was so cool. I wanted a modem so bad just so I could do that. I always loved it, but got away from it all when I went to high school and got a job. My definition of cool (MMORPG) was not my senior class' definition of cool (car). I stopped playing online in order to procure funds to purchase a car.

Do I want to play FFXI? Oh yeah. Am I willing to pay almost $200 in hardware plus $12.99 a month to do it? Maybe. It won't be worth it unless I can make the commitment to play this game. I need to cut down on watching TV. If I lose a show or two from my lineup, that will help. WB is helping with that by canceling Angel. HBO is also helping by not showing The Sopranos again for 16 months after this season ends. I also need to be willing to sleep a little less at night. I've already started doing that, so that might not be a big deal. If I can commit to playing this game a few hours a week, then it will start to seem worth the initial cost.

So I'm seriously thinking about this game. Plus, it doesn't help that Best Buy has every piece of hardware required to play it on sale this week.