Hello again and welcome to this edition of PSN Community Spotlight. As the only place to get your PlayStation story featured on the PlayStation.Blog, we review the dedicated space on the PlayStation Community Forums to find PlayStation stories and commentary that have moved your world. As usual, we then deliver a $50 PlayStation Store voucher code to the winner every week!
This week’s spotlight is from PSN member echogridlock. Anyone with siblings can tell you that growing up with them is often riddled with fights. Echogridlock looks back on how gaming replaced fighting and led to a reconnection with his brother thanks to PlayStation.
Reconnecting with My Little Big Brother
When I was growing up, my little brother and I would get into the worst fights. It was the stuff of mother’s nightmares. To paint a better picture, I once ran a sewing machine needle through his right index finger and the needle tip broke off into his finger. As a trade, he broke my nose which healed crooked and to this day I have one large nostril and one tiny one that I can’t breathe out of.
It gets better I promise…
One Christmas when I was 12 (my brother was 10) my parents bought us a video game system and the violence stopped. The time spent knocking each other’s teeth out was replaced with game time and talking smack about each other’s video game skills. We were hooked; we worked together to buy all the games and systems we could get our hands on. Between the two of us we had close to 400 hundred games and over 13 different systems across the years. We started doing everything together like, going to the library and the park after school, we even went over to each other’s friend’s houses to do what else but play video games. We were inseparable.
I have to chuckle every time I hear or read a story from the news saying that video game violence causes children to be violent. In our case, it may have very well saved one of our lives; no joke, it was that bad.
When I left home for college my brother not only grew taller than me, we grew apart. When I came home from school he was often nowhere to be found. Then he started college and I didn’t see him for a few years. He sold off all his video games then he dropped out of school and went walking across the country. In that time, I moved out, married and had two children, and sold my games because I didn’t really have anyone to play them with; however I kept the PS2 and later bought two PS3s. My brother eventually got bored, moved back to my parent’s house and decided to continue his college career at a school just outside my neighborhood.
This last weekend, my brother needed some time away from my parents and wanted to spend the weekend with my family. At first, he just played with my son (age 2) and daughter (age 3) for a few hours. After awhile, my kids got bored and we fired up the PS3. He quickly became so addicted to Burnout Paradise, I couldn’t get him to put the controller down. My son walked in and sat on the floor listening to the music. He started to get tired and climbed into my brother’s arms and fell asleep. His sister soon fell asleep as well. After we put them to bed for a nap, we went back into the living room and I told him “You have to try this game Uncharted 3”. He asked “Does it have multiplayer? I mean can we both play together?” I said “Yes and we can play together online.” He went “Oooo.” It was as if we picked up where we left off 8 years ago. He started talking smack how skilled he was and how old age is making me slower. Every time our grouped wiped out in a match, I told him it was his fault. Which it was.
The PS3 provided me with some time well spent with my brother doing something we used to both love, playing games together. For one weekend we were young brothers again. After this spring semester, he will be moving south to Tennessee. Who knows when I will see him again? But maybe I’ll buy him a PS3 this Christmas so we can play online.
Congrats to echogridlock, who is now the recipient of a $50 voucher redeemable in the PlayStation Store! Send in your stories here, and feel free to read echogridlock’s original submission right here.
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