The game room at Otakon is always an interesting place to hang out. I would be lying if I said I experienced all of it.

Since I spent most of my time at the Guilty Gear XX boxes, and this was pretty much limited to one. I don't think this lack of variety actually limited my experience however, but rather augmented it. Having spent all my time in one place, especially such a popular one, I feel I experienced more, or at least recieved a more qualified view of things. Staying in one place the whole time enabled me to actually compare changes from day to day, beyond just that it was crowded or that that ugly cosplayer is gone. Staying in one place prvoded a control in what would become a sort of anthropological study. A study that proffered this interesting conclusion: I hated most of the people in the game room.

There were a lot of cool people, who will be discussed shortly, but my memory is tainted by the majority of people who got on my last nerve. I am a patient person, and I was never really mean or violent, only borderline (Except when playing Smash Brothers), but when I want to hear some kid tell me about how he entered into a tournement as Dan, I'll kill myself. Everyone seemed to take it upon themselves to give me an in depth description of their exploits in gaming. Most of which were yarns I wanted to wrap around my neck. I realized over time that no matter how disinterested I tried to appear or was, people would not give up the delusion that I cared. Apparently if I am just standing somewhere that means its ok to talk to me. Well, its not, so if you see me, don't. Actually, if you have never been to Otakon, feel free to talk to me, everyone else need not apply.

I honestly wish I could have liked to listen to the people, since it appeared that I was the only person besides their Mom they had talked to in a while, but I just couldn't. I eventually realized that talking in the game room works kinda like a crack in a dam. A small crack, say me talking to Jerry or verbally expressing my astonishment with the Tobogan (This makes no fucking sense), eventually developed into an all out structural colapse. The once small, efficiently phrased, pertinent peice of verbage would expand like yeast, becoming unnecesarily large and filling up all the space around it with out even being a part of a delicious bread. The only way to avoid this chain reaction was to either not talk, which wasn't really feasible because sometimes you have to say, "Wow, that guy just choked me with my scrotum!" In the event that I did actually talk, after I silently cursed myself, the only solution was to pretend to be deaf or so into the game that I was rendered incapable of conversation. I'm pretty sure this tactic dind't fool anyone, but I wasn't about to actually enter into a conversation of any kind with these people.

There was a suprising number of cool people in spite of all that was going on. I like to think that this was a result of hanging around one of the best Guilty Gear players I have ever seen. Since I didn't really think that asking his name was a good idea, I would have probably look like a loser, I can only refer to him now as the Tobogan, named thus because of his choice of head wear (Now it makes slightly more sense). This kid was nuts. I have never been so thoroughly beaten in all my life and actually been happy about it. I was sorta like the cult member who happily sacrifices himself needlesly just because the leader tells him to. It was just glorious to watch as he slowly began to let go of efficiency to attempt the more complicated and astounding combos. Function gave way to form as the Tobogan devastated one opponent after another. Never has the term poetry in motion meant as much to me as it did when he handed me my ass with Johnny. Brought a tear to my eye I don't mind saying.

The added benefit of being around him was his two fold personal gravitation. Annoying people were repulsed while the people actually worth talking to were drawn closer. Eventually, there was a group of people who were not only worthwhile to talk to, but also had intelligent and pleasurable things to say. It was like an invisible forcefiled had been established. You could stand inside and just look out at the frothing sea of unrecalcitrant pain-in-the-asses as it teemed around you. I found myself almost transfixed, juxtaposed precariously between sweet ass combos and a swarm of socially akward, yet overly vociferous, humanity.

I did move away from the Guilty Gear station and the protective bubble a couple of times to check out the rest of the game room only to realize that most of the games weren't worth playing. There was the expected assortment of Tekken and Virtua Fighters with dashes of DOA here and there. I didn't actually notice any DDR being played, but it was definetly there. I imagine someone would have probably been killed had it been forgotten. I stopped to watch a few rounds of my beloved Soul Calibur in its newest iteration. It looks like the same game pretty much with some pretty cool new characters (And shitty fucking costumes for Ivy). The most significant other game, for all games are other than Guilty Gear, was the newest Capcom Versus SNK (SHIKI!!!!). It looks like Capcom had less of a hand in the sprite design of this game, the graphics are more like a King of Fighters. I'm pretty anxious to get some actual play time on this game since the station it was at was pretty crowded (And Joel is a lady who is afraid of Ryu).

Overall, the game room was as I expected it to be. A minority of agreeable people surrounded by the unrelenting hordes of anime fandom. As a little side note, cheering when someone does a hyper combo with Ryu is just dumb.