WITH everyone hunched over laptops the other day, typing away inside their respective cones of silence, the place looked more like a Starbucks than my kitchen.
At one end of the table, a fifth grader had the glazed expression of someone who became carried away playing dress-up at an arcade games site called Oyunlar1.com. Across the room, a college student who was home on break was this close to mastering Level 27 of a balloon-popping game called Bloons. And in a corner armchair sat a man deeply involved with online poker.
“Are you at least winning?” I asked my husband.
“Up a hundred and twenty thousand,” he said, barely glancing up from a pair of queens.
Remember how we used to play games together? Me neither. It’s been a long time since my family gathered in the kitchen for anything besides the beverage service and the Internet connection.
It’s not that I begrudge them their games. I am addicted, after all, to my own insidious poison (perhaps you’ve heard of Scrabulous?) that turns me into a competitive maniac with no time to think about what to eat for dinner or which family member to trick into cooking it.
But I can’t help but notice that all the cool families in town — O.K., mainly the Barnetts and the Goldsteins — play computer games together. Or more specifically, they play Rock Band.
All it took to transform the Barnetts’ household of taciturn Halo 3 lovers into the Partridge family was to plug in a plastic guitar to an Xbox 360. One day, they were struggling to set up their peripherals. By the next, the girls were harmonizing on vocals while their little brother shredded Bon Jovi as effortlessly as if he were making coleslaw.
The Barnetts bought one of the more than 1.5 million copies of Rock Band that have sold since the game came out in November and, judging by the YouTube videos, tempted holdouts who never before played video games into rocking out with their kids to Iron Maiden.
The new gamers included people like Jean Agra, a 50-year-old mother who one day found herself grabbing a microphone away from a bunch of college kids who had no clue how the opening lyrics of Boston’s “Foreplay/Long Time” were supposed to sound. “I had to sing,” said Ms. Agra, a high school teacher in Elsmere, Del., who subsequently created a Facebook group called “ ‘Rock Band’ and ‘Guitar Hero’ for Parental Units.” Now, she added, “My husband and I are good enough to play everything on ‘medium.’ ”
The appeal for families is simple. “It’s one of a new generation of games that’s meant to be a group experience, collaborative more than competitive,” said John Davison, the president of WhatTheyPlay.com, a video-game guide for parents that describes Rock Band as fun even “for the musically challenged.”
Musically challenged is one way to describe me. Still, a few weeks ago, I drove to the sort of badly lighted consumer electronics store that I hate more than anything and paid $170 plus tax for my own Rock Band.
My goal was to start a family band good enough to compete against the Barnetts. But almost as soon as I saw the huge cardboard box the game came in — containing a plastic drum set, guitar and microphone — I started to reel from the nausea that plagues only the truly tone deaf.
“You don’t need to carry a tune to play,” my daughter Clementine, 10, said comfortingly, explaining that all I had to do was to follow the color-coded on-screen notes.
Reassured, I watched her unwrap the drum pedal, connect the Xbox to the television set and type in a name for our group: Sex Kittenz.
This led to our first fight as a band.
My husband said he didn’t want to be a sex kitten. My oldest daughter, Zoe, initially said no, too. But when Clem said fine but someone else would have to change it — it was no piece of cake to type it in by pressing the buttons on the guitar — the rest of the band grudgingly agreed to the name although not to the costumes (furry ears and whiskers) Clem had in mind.
After Clem assigned everyone a role (her father on drums, Zoe on guitar and me on audience), she picked up the microphone to sing along to Weezer’s “Say It Ain’t So” as the lyrics streamed by, in karaoke fashion.
The band made it through the whole song without messing up. I applauded wildly, hoping they would notice I could play, too.
But they apparently didn’t notice me.
For the next hour.
Then my husband had to take a phone call. Clem scanned the room, searching for someone — anyone but me — to play. When she couldn’t persuade her 16-year-old sister to join the band, she grudgingly put me on drums.
That led to our second fight.
I badly messed up my first solo. The on-screen audience booed. Zoe took away my drumsticks.
“You ruined it,” another band member said. “We just lost fans.”
“Give me another chance,” I pleaded.
They laughed callously.
I left in a huff.
Then a few days later, after I walked into the house unexpectedly and caught the last notes of a Nirvana riff, I realized the band was sneaking around so they could gig without me.