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TIMBER RIDGE EMPLOYEE HOUSING, Colorado — The latest video game that allows people to pretend to do things they could just as easily do in real life is called “Latesleeper Extreme.”
Gamers form the pre-teens to their 30s have dropped their “Guitar Hero” pseudo-guitars” for the virtual, life-size cots that come with “Latesleeper.” The game challenges players to stay in bed for ungodly amounts of time, threatening their jobs, relationships and gastro-intestinal health.
“So, like, you have to decide if you’re going to get up to pee, and lose like hundreds of points for waking up and getting out of bed, or just go big, push the envelope and take a squirt under the covers,” says Bodie “B-Dawg-Diddy” Carbuncle, who claims to the high-score holder amongst his friends at Timber Ridge employee housing complex in Vail.
“The roughest part is like when your girlfriend comes in and says if you don’t get out of bed to go to the Spring Back to Vail concert she’s gonna dump you,” Carbuncle said. “You really gotta dig deep to ignore here and get to the next level.”
“Dude that was real,” added Carbuncle’s bro, Travis “T-Dawg-Diggity-Dang-D’Dang” Goldstein.
“Bummer,” Carbuncle said, and pull the virtual sheets over his head.
But Sega’s “Latesleeper” may only be the latest rage in this genre of games. Nintendo plans to release “Bread Toaster X,” in which players use the virtual toaster to try to toast the perfect piece of bread, while EASports is putting the finishing touches on “Ultra Thumb Wrestling.”
That game, in which one uses a game controller to manipulate a virtual thumb, allows players to thumb wrestle anyone from friends in the same room to strangers on the other side of the globe.
Ronny Smurf, who says he’s old enough to have been “there” when the first Pac Man game hit his local arcade, says he doesn’t get this new line of games.
“I mean, video games are supposed to be about fantasy — you’re supposed to be like some cyborg Amazon warrior wasting toxic zombie pimps on Jupiter with plasma cannons,” said Smurf, who still lives with his parents in suburban Denver. “But, I mean, ‘Guitar Hero?’ Why don’t you just learn the guitar — I mean, I wouldn’t learn the guitar, but, y’know, you could, if you wanted to.”
Young people like this new wave of games because you can learn something new with feeling the pressure of having an actual hobby that takes time and an emotional investment, said Taz Chang-Narwhal, a video game reviewer for Waste O’Space magazine.
“What’s popular about these games it is not only makes every day tasks — learning the tuba, clipping your nails, throwing things in the garbage — and makes them simpler and easier to learn,” Chang-Narwhal said.
“Plus, when you’re done playing, you’re not burdened with any new skills. I mean, you don’t actually know how play the tuba or clips you nails, so you don’t have to practice or worry about frittering away your talent — because you don’t have any talent.”
Gamers form the pre-teens to their 30s have dropped their “Guitar Hero” pseudo-guitars” for the virtual, life-size cots that come with “Latesleeper.” The game challenges players to stay in bed for ungodly amounts of time, threatening their jobs, relationships and gastro-intestinal health.
“So, like, you have to decide if you’re going to get up to pee, and lose like hundreds of points for waking up and getting out of bed, or just go big, push the envelope and take a squirt under the covers,” says Bodie “B-Dawg-Diddy” Carbuncle, who claims to the high-score holder amongst his friends at Timber Ridge employee housing complex in Vail.
“The roughest part is like when your girlfriend comes in and says if you don’t get out of bed to go to the Spring Back to Vail concert she’s gonna dump you,” Carbuncle said. “You really gotta dig deep to ignore here and get to the next level.”
“Dude that was real,” added Carbuncle’s bro, Travis “T-Dawg-Diggity-Dang-D’Dang” Goldstein.
“Bummer,” Carbuncle said, and pull the virtual sheets over his head.
But Sega’s “Latesleeper” may only be the latest rage in this genre of games. Nintendo plans to release “Bread Toaster X,” in which players use the virtual toaster to try to toast the perfect piece of bread, while EASports is putting the finishing touches on “Ultra Thumb Wrestling.”
That game, in which one uses a game controller to manipulate a virtual thumb, allows players to thumb wrestle anyone from friends in the same room to strangers on the other side of the globe.
Ronny Smurf, who says he’s old enough to have been “there” when the first Pac Man game hit his local arcade, says he doesn’t get this new line of games.
“I mean, video games are supposed to be about fantasy — you’re supposed to be like some cyborg Amazon warrior wasting toxic zombie pimps on Jupiter with plasma cannons,” said Smurf, who still lives with his parents in suburban Denver. “But, I mean, ‘Guitar Hero?’ Why don’t you just learn the guitar — I mean, I wouldn’t learn the guitar, but, y’know, you could, if you wanted to.”
Young people like this new wave of games because you can learn something new with feeling the pressure of having an actual hobby that takes time and an emotional investment, said Taz Chang-Narwhal, a video game reviewer for Waste O’Space magazine.
“What’s popular about these games it is not only makes every day tasks — learning the tuba, clipping your nails, throwing things in the garbage — and makes them simpler and easier to learn,” Chang-Narwhal said.
“Plus, when you’re done playing, you’re not burdened with any new skills. I mean, you don’t actually know how play the tuba or clips you nails, so you don’t have to practice or worry about frittering away your talent — because you don’t have any talent.”
