To set the stage for the why of this post, I have to recount a sad situation. Almost a decade ago, one of our friends was killed in a car accident leaving behind a wife and two young children. His wife has always been a friend of ours, and lives less than 3 minutes between myself and another friend, so she and the kids have always been a part of our lives. On top of losing his father, the son, Joey, has (what I believe is) some level of autism that has made it difficult for him to socialize. Then COVID got in the way. It’s been difficult for his family to find ways to meet his needs, particularly when it comes to finding some level of social interaction that he is comfortable with, and that’s how when his mother signed up for a freakin’ mobile gaming truck to visit their house for Joey’s birthday, myself a a few other friends were there.

This trailer was a self-contained gaming platform consisting of 7 OLED TVs, 6 Xbox, 5 PS5, 1 PS4 (it had been a 6th PS5 but it got damaged), and one Switch console along one wall, and a double-decker leather couch situated along the other. It’s owned and operated by a guy who is apparently an ex-eSport champion (before “eSports” had a name) and opted to “stay in the game” so to speak by using some of his winnings to start this business which can take him anywhere from the tip-top of Maine all the way down to the edge of mainland Florida.

Participants can either share TVs or, as in our case, can have their own. All machines are networked, but the trailer is also sporting a 5G wireless Internet connection which means the consoles can download whatever the company owns, on the fly, or can access the Xbox Cloud gaming service. Naturally, the whole thing is air-conditioned (and air-freshened).

We started out with the “default choice” — Fortnite. None of us play Fortnite, but we formed a squad and had to figure out what the heck was going on. The first round we all died pretty quickly, but as play commenced we actually managed to reach #13 which obviously wasn’t great, but wasn’t terrible for one teenager and a bunch of middle aged guys who had never really played that game in that way (and who are native PC gamers and aren’t that used to gamepads). It wasn’t terrible, but I’m not looking to get back into it any time soon.

At the operator’s suggestion, we played Stick Fight: The Game. He claimed it was the most popular party game, and it’s easy to see why. If you’re old enough and have been around enough then you’ll remember the seeming ubiquity of the “stick fighter” animations of…well…stick figures fighting it out in high-speed, hyper-kinetic, and bloody violent battles. There have been a few stick-figure games (such as Line Rider, a non-violent and somehow addictive physics-based game of perpetual bobsledding) but we hadn’t heard of this one, released in 2017. It features up to four players who duke it out on a series of 100+ maps which run the gamut from plain plains to deathtrap platforms with all kinds of hazards. To aid in our individual quests, weapons rain from the sky and include pistols, automatic rifles, and the dreaded “snake cannon”. This game is 100% unadulterated silly fun, and when we reached the end of the map rotation and started over, the host chimed in to tell us that we had tapped every map as if to shoo us on to something else, but we kept going (and after the party one of my friends bought it on Xbox and we kept playing over at his place).

The last game we played was Star Wars Battlefront 2 which we played through Xbox Cloud via EA’s subscription service, and it went quite well. I remember enjoying SW:BF2 when it launched in part because it’s not a lobby shooter; players can respawn and get back into the action ASAP. It’s a beautiful game, the teams and maps are quite large, and the action can get frantic. I think I’m going to re-install this for when I need an occasion round of mindless squad-based shooting.

As life-long gamers, we were all both in awe of and a bit miffed that we didn’t think of this kind of setup (or, rather, didn’t have the funds for this kind of setup). The host used to operate two brick-and-mortar shops which, I believe, did the same thing but he offloaded them during COVID and resurrected the idea in the form of the mobile trailer once the pandemic calmed down. I’m not joking when I say that were I in charge, I’d be hanging out in there a lot, but it’s also apparently a cash cow as the trailer is popular with all demographics and events, from families to friends, conventions and festivals.

Joey’s mother said that he had been anxiety-ridden the night before, but got excited when the trailer arrived. He’s been a tough nut to crack over the years, but he’s been more receptive to interactions as time has passed, and I hope he had an enjoyable birthday this year because I know the rest of us did.