Tom startles the witch. After warning me about her, pointing her out, telling me to turn off my flashlight, admonishing me not to shoot in her direction, and generally giving me the sense that if the witch is startled, we are without a doubt done for, Tom startles the witch. I'm almost certain of it. He blames me for it, but I swear its him.
    I am in Portland for a reading, and while I am there, I get together with my friend and fellow Upper Michigander (because I will not call us Yoopers, no matter how many times you ask) Tom Bissell, author of Chasing the Sea, God Lives in St. Petersburg, The Father of All Things, and now, Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter. It is—like all of Tom's work—a dizzyingly smart book, cocksure and combative about its premise, revealingly personal when you least expect it to be. A damn fine book all around.
    I am supposed to be interviewing Tom, but for the first two or so hours, we sit on his couch and play video games. We attempt the recent Resident Evil, but I'm not picking up the controls very quickly, so we replace it with Beatles: Rock Band. Tom is an experienced Rock Band drummer. I take up guitar duties. An old friend of mine from Wisconsin has joined us, and he plays bass. We let the introductory animation play through; it's fairly stunning, this surrealist recounting of the band's history. After that, we manage a serviceable run through the Abbey Road medley. It's possibly the only time that Ringo has ever been the virtuoso.
    After that, out comes Left 4 Dead, a cooperative zombie shooter that is simple to figure out: pay attention; keep shooting; run like hell when needed; help your buddies when they get pinned down or incapacitated by either the regular zombies or the more powerful Hunters, Smokers, or Boomers; and for God's sake, don't startle the Witch, a small female zombie that presents itself as a weeping child but can render a character prone and bloody in a single, furious, clawing hit.
    On our first mission, I’m playing Zoey, a young college student and Tom is Bill, a Vietnam vet. It’s a character he has always avoided even though -- or perhaps because –his book The Father of All Things is a travelogue through contemporary Vietnam with his father, a veteran. As we fight our way through a hospital to the safety promised on its helicopter landing pad, I sense that Tom is both on my side in this and also doing his best to mess with me. Everything is happening very fast and the witch is actually managing to freak me out. She runs in my direction screaming, arms lashing out. I know this is a game, but Tom is shouting, and the zombies are running in my direction, and the guns are going off all around me, and I am more than a little bit shaken.
    And if it affects me in this way, doesn't that mean that in some way this game matters?