8 Comments
Nov 7, 2022Liked by John Birmingham

There's a life lesson struggling to find its way out, I think.

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Did anyone else read “Then they took the console away” in a dramatic voice? Like it was the opening to some tragic redemption story.

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Sounds like it was a Skinner Box that the department set up to run an experiment on students as part of a study.

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Reminds me of my friend Bill (come to think of it, remotely possible you knew him, he seemed to know everyone at UQ) who had a trick with a coin and a piece of string, and could get free games by letting the coin dangle down far enough to trip the detector, then hauling it back up.

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I did my degree later in my 30s so it was all coffee , school runs and questioning my life choices. Arcade games were something I couldn't afford as a 12 year old in small town NZ, and when I did play it wasn't defender , that was way too hard. I made up for it though by playing Call of Duty at home when I should have been studying and not breezing through a law degree with minimal effort.

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There’s nothing like a game obsession to get you through uni…for me it was some car race game I can’t quite remember the name of. But it was in the games room of the Plymouth Student Union next to the pool tables and foozball (we called it table football) not far from the bar. But I had to pay for that. Still, I eventually beat it into submission. Quite surprisingly got a degree, too.

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