I died last Friday.

It happened just outside my doorway, in the long carpeted expanse of New Quincy’s third-floor hallway. My killer concealed himself in the room across from ours, and I can still hear the terrible popping sound his twin machine guns made as he burst out into the open and riddled the walls, doors and floor with with bullets—er, nerf darts. I spun, too late, and managed to get a shot off, but it sailed wide, and then my assailant opened up with a second round and I went down in a hail of darts.

And in such inglorious fashion ended my week of playing Quincy House Assassin.

Originally, before my death—and the subsequent deaths of my valiant teammates in Sunday’s final shootout—I had intended to write a column singing the praises of Assassin, that much-ridiculed and frequently-banned adornment of Harvard’s house life. I planned to point out how the game encouraged house spirit, how it expanded one’s circle of friends and acquaintances and how it encouraged a spirit of martial solidarity rivalled only, I imagine, in the fraternal order of final clubs and the rabble-rousing ranks of the Progressive Student Labor Movement.

I intended to point out, too, how Assassin offers the cosseted Ivy League Last Man a chance to experience what a real man should experience, albeit in an artificial, nerf-dart sort of way. I speak, of course, of the thrill of the hunt, the delicious paranoia that comes with knowing that every dark corner, every shadowy alcove might conceal a killer and that one’s life hangs by an ever-so-thin thread. I speak, too, of the great struggle for mastery, in which one establishes one’s superiority by force of arms, without recourse to the prissy methods of meritocracy.

But in the aftermath of my team’s defeat, I am beginning to wonder if the red-in-tooth-and-claw competition offered by Assassin is really such a good thing after all.

You see, I am angry that we lost—intensely, passionately angry. This is understandable, I suppose, up to a point. But the strength of my emotional response to this defeat seems wildly out of proportion to the actual significance of the game. After all, as countless people (most of them female) have pointed out, it’s really rather silly, isn’t it? All that running around with nerf guns and such, and all that pointless paranoia—shouldn’t I be happy to be done with it?

But I want to win, I would say to these doubting Thomases and sneering Susans. Or, just as often, but I want to beat those other guys!