My son has been playing video games since he was 3. His first game was World of Warcraft; he would love to watch me play. One day I left my account open at the character select screen while I went into the kitchen to grab us drinks. I came out maybe 30-45 seconds later; he had crawled into my seat, created a new toon, and was in the game shooting tigers with his night elf hunter's bow. He was using WASD + mouse like he had been using it for years. I found this to be amazing as I had given him no help, no guidance, nothing at all toward ever teaching how to even use a computer. He just watched me play, and he began to play by himself following my actions. He absorbed everything from what I did, without me ever knowing he was even paying attention to it. I just figured he was watching the colors and pictures; in reality, he was gleaning what I was doing, how I was doing it, and what it did to the screen when I did it.

Ever since that fateful day he has become a very good gamer. I have seen this child wipe out entire groups of people in PvP as a Choppa in Warhammer Online. I have seen him play his heart out completing quests using a quest guide system in WoW just so he can get in a battleground to kill people.

This kid is obsessed with PvP or Co-Op play. Most recently, at 6, I have seen him turn into an extremely efficient gamer. I can't believe the skill this kid has. He uses immense strategy in games like Modern Warfare 2, sometimes surpassing even what I would have done strategically in a given situation. His best finish was recently when he had 26 kills and 13 deaths. This is a 6 year old boy playing against people at least twice his age and probably much more experienced. It literally took him 3 hours to get used to an FPS control system on a console controller. It took me far longer. He jumps into pretty much any video game and begins to play it without any real thought or help. He can beat me in Street Fighter, he can kill me often in Modern Warfare 2 local split screen, and he has helped me through many missions in the Spec Ops mode. He has accompanied me through hills surrounded by dragons, he has healed me through invasions of Alliance, and he has helped me live through zombie infested areas of Zombie Apocalypse.

All in all, I can't believe how good he is at this. While it may be for naught in his eventual career path, he is still very good at them. I often show off his skills when people come over, or rather, he demands people watch him play video games because he loves it. Especially in a game like Guitar Hero where he is center stage, he loves the attention. Maybe he'll be a rock star!?

We are currently into some serious co-op games; we are playing Zombie Apocalypse, Trine, Fat Princess, and Deathspank right now. It's a great experience and well worth the little monetary investment for the memories. I am excited for what the future holds for us when Star Wars: The Old Republic comes out. He is reading now, and by then, he should be pretty fluent. It will be awesome to go through a game with my son as possibly two Jedi or Sith. It's an experience no one could have ever imagined would happen. Fairy tales becoming reality. Father and son, hunting down a Rancor... how much fun will that be!?!?

Some people say that these experiences aren't real. That I should be out making memories with my child, playing baseball, football, and all other sorts of "real" things... but I ask you as Morpheus asked Neo... What is real? What defines real? Is it an experience or a taste!? Clearly I understand that playing baseball with friends on a game and playing with them in real life are two different things, but both are real memories. The experiences are both real and are lasting memories. I would not deprive my son of all types of experiences, realities, or memories, but you cannot tell me that they are not all "real" memories.

Real is the experience we have and its associated memory. It's the experience I had when I kissed my wife for the first time. It's the experience I had when I drove my first car. It's the experience I had slaying my first dragon in a table top game. It's the experience of my first raid in Everquest. It's the experience of my first relic raid in Dark Age of Camelot. It's the experience of my first play-through of Super Mario Bros. It's the experience of defeating the god Hades in GOW3. It's the experience and emotions I had when I watched Ariel die in Final Fantasy 7. It's the experience I had going to my first Charger's game. It's the experience I had playing in a Little League state-wide championship game. It's the experience I had playing football in Louisville Cardinal Stadium in a high school state championship game. They are all experiences, they are just different.

Being a Navy brat has stopped me from making close friends from childhood. I moved too often to keep long-term relationships going. Thankfully, some of my closest and longest friends are the ones I met online while in college in 2000. Fist of the North, I salute you. I have some of the best memories of my life with those guys and gals. Experiences are just memories in the end. Granted, a person needs to have many different types of memories and experiences to be a well-rounded adult, but whether they happened digitally or concretely, it's the memory in my brain that is the reality of it all.