The break up

I wasn't ready for it back then, when my then boyfriend and I nearly broke up over it. But now I can play until I throw up.

Both now and at the time, my now husband and his friends did everything they could to encourage me to join in. Seventeen years after the fact, it’s hard to figure out why I couldn’t bring myself to play. After I clicked on the Halo: Master Chief Collection and waited for it to install on my PC, I noticed a stillness in the air. Even if you didn’t know anything about video games, you knew about Halo. You knew about Halo even when you specifically didn’t want to know anything about Halo. The entirety of my single life spanned the eight years that Halo was dominant. I was in the next room, growing restive. “On a sunny day in Berkeley, I played this game for eight hours straight,” he said.