Domestic City, Part Six

Given the demands of his office job, Anthony needed to blow off some steam occasionally, and so had organised an informal golf game with three of the other managers. On Sundays the regular four convened in Anthony and Nina's living room, uniformly dressed in polo shirts and khakis, and lined up in front of the Wii.

Jason erred on the third hole with a wild swing that sent his ball flying into the ocean. His friends laughed at the apparent ineptitude but Anthony, as the senior manager, secretly wondered if this was Jason letting him win. Anthony did win these games an awful lot, and he was a casual player at best. If it was true, he considered, at least he was getting some respect.

An hour passed, and Greg was first up on the ninth hole. He asked his caddy to hand him the Wiimote, and the fifteen year-old boy standing behind him passed it over from his shoulder bag. Greg stared at the proffered controller and said "if I wanted the nunchuk, I would have asked for it." As the boy rummaged deeper into the bag, Greg shook his head at the guys. "Unbelievable."

After a sandwich break, Paul asked Anthony if he had any other games: "maybe something by Rockstar?" Anthony explained how, with his job and everything, he didn't have much time to play video games for fun. He indicated his entire game collection present on the living room bookcase.

"I mostly play these now, these are what's called 'serious games'. This one," he said, pulling down a shoebox-sized DVD case, "is about managing your stock portfolio in an economic crisis, and this follow-up by the same developer is about controlling inflation. We're saving that one for the kids."

"That's a pretty big case," said Paul.

"Well, this is the collector's edition, it comes in this cool tin box and it has a little figurine of an investment banker."

"That's cool, can I see it?"

"No, nobody's allowed to touch it."