A video game made real…or at least sort of social

Tonight, students looking to use the Regenstein’s stacks for, well, finding books, will have met with something of a revelation: Pac-Man in the library.  Yet, instead of the familiar, two-dimensional video game interface,  scavvies dressed as various personages from the classic arcade game ran through a maze of dusty grammars picking up pac-dots along the way.

I can only assume that there was some in-fighting amongst teams as to who got to participate; to many here at the University of Chicago, it must have been something of a dream come true: a video game made real… or at least sort of social.

Upon entering the stacks on the third floor, I soon noticed that something was off when a girl dressed all in red jogged casually by.  I made a right and headed for my aisle, determined not to care or inquire–I have learned at least this much in my four years.  Then, from ahead of me, a man with two home-fashioned googly eyes hanging from his breasts told me to “watch out”.

Determined to continue ignoring the increasingly imposing spectacle, I ducked into my aisle, B1745-B3279, only to re-emerge into the corridor a few seconds later having located my text (Brentano).  There was then a whizzing and a crashing.  A tennis ball thrown with some speed slammed into the stack standing next to me, and bounced away down the corridor.  I looked back at Mr. Pac-Man. He had a handful of tennis balls.

“Are you kidding me?”  I asked, knowing, somehow, that there was no humor to be found.

“What?” he responded, as if neither the tennis ball nor his googly eyes existed.

“If you’re going to throw something, try saying something first.”  It is an advantage, after all, that when Pac-Man is played with real human beings, those human beings have voices.

“Did I hurt you?”  It was a none too blithe attempt at assertion.

“No but I assure you you would have been if that had hit me.”

And that was it: my unnecessarily antagonistic exchange with a man wearing googly eyes, playing human Pac-Man in the Reg at 1AM.  Scav hunt seems to be back in full form, though sadly out-matched by The Go! Team.