Load and Lock

It’s well past the 10 p.m. curfew Minnetonka imposes for minors, and 40 teenage boys are in lockdown. They’re spending the next 10 hours at Game Tech, at an all-night LAN-o-thon, where they will battle each other in video-game tournaments until 8 a.m. LAN parties are erupting all over the country, and serious gamers are paying big bucks to spend the night networked with each other. Tonight’s entrance fee is $25. Most of the kids admit their parents are footing the bill.

Despite the signs that say “all-night party,” I’m convinced I’ve stumbled into the wrong place. The room is crowded with 17 computers and numerous TVs with video-game consoles. It looks more like a Best Buy warehouse than a party palace for Gen Y kids with attention deficits. But there are telling details: A collection of action-figure miniatures? Check. A raft of junk food? Check. Extreme beverages? Check. (“Have you ever had Bawls Guarana?” one boy asks me. “It keeps you up all night. We drink it all the time.”)

Game Tech owner Kevin Meitsma is the lone chaperone. A father of two of the teenage partygoers, Meitsma jumps on a table and lets out an earsplitting whistle, by way of laying down the ground rules. “You will not leave this room,” he commands. “But what if we have to go to the bathroom?” a boy asks. Yes, that’s allowable, young man. “You will listen to me when I’m talking,” he says. That’s not so easy.

When they find out I’m a reporter, massive cheers erupt, and they do their best Wayne and Garth “We are not worthy” cries, despite the fact that the Saturday Night Live characters hit their peak well before these kids had their first dial-up connection. (See, so media-savvy.)

Another boy, 15-year-old Eachan Lunn of Minnetonka, is skeptical. “You’re not going to write a typical story about how violent video games are and scare our parents, are you?” To be sure, the brace-faced boys will be spending all night gorging on an all-you-can-eat Happy Meal of violence, whether it’s playing Capture the Flag in Unreal Tournament 2003, engaging in World War II combat missions in Battlefield 1942, randomly killing each other in Counterstrike, or whacking prostitutes and suspendered stockbrokers in Vice City. But to be fair, the stockbrokers beg for it (“Don’t mess up my hair!”), and it is a virtual reality.

According to Game Tech rules, the kids must get their parents’ permission to stay and play. “I just, like, tell them how much fun it is,” says 14-year-old Mike Dunn. “They totally understand because they were geeks when they were younger, too.” Wearing an oversized Nirvana T-shirt and a computer-geek-chic haircut, Dunn says he wants to open a Japanese restaurant with all the cash he’ll earn as a video-game programmer. What’s so great about video games, dude? “I like that I can die. And still not be dead,” he says, with a smirk.

What unites Dunn and everyone else in the room is their pride in being self-proclaimed geeks who are more into computers than girls or booze or skateboards or any of the other temptations of modern boyhood. I learn that, after 10 minutes, I hold the record for a female visit. I learn that, despite their nerd status, a few of the guys have girlfriends other than Lara Croft. And I find out that, unlike the little punks I knew when I was a teenager, these guys would rather play a hand of Magic than take shots of Mad Dog. They call themselves teenagers? I was expecting to bear witness to some form of illicit behavior, at least a few punches thrown or a bottle of contraband smuggled. But I discovered that, in this parallel universe, these 14-year-olds are able to hold more interesting conversations than most 30-year-olds I know. I’m not sure what that says about me, but I do know it’s 1 a.m., I’m completely Bawls-free, and Real World reruns are whispering my name. Though I don’t need to, I ask permission to leave the premises.—Molly Priesmeyer


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