I consider myself fairly savvy about ad campaigns and marketing schemes. Not perfectly immune, but I am happy to let someone give their spiel and then walk away. After all, it’s good practice for them.
But the ads on my timewaster apps are different. They’re just annoying and I can’t skip them fast enough.
But there was this one.
It had dragons and knights and castles and pirates. All the things to catch my fantasy-loving eye. I resisted for years. But about six months ago, I finally broke.
It wasn’t in my head that this was a role-playing game. I just wanted to create a character and play with all those dragons and knights and castles and pirates.
I spent a ridiculous amount of time figuring out my character’s name. When I finally jumped in, I only did what the game told me I needed to do to build my character and take part in arena fights, negotiations, and in-game events. I stayed away from game chats. I didn’t want to be the creepy old lady in the room with the kiddos half my age or less. (Yes, I now consider anyone under 30 a kiddo.)
But I couldn’t figure out how to kill dragons. I kept seeing notifications about other players getting rewards for it, but fighting them simply wasn’t something I could figure out how to do.
Turns out, I had to join a team. That’s where the dragons were. I still wasn’t thrilled about interacting with people I didn’t know. But I approached a team. Not the top team. I didn’t plan on being that active, and I was still a baby lord (both men and women are referred to as lords). They rejected me. I was disappointed but I understood.
Then someone DM’d me. They had been keeping track of how I played and how often I was logged in. Suddenly, I was invited to join, and it was the top team.
Gameplay went a lot faster then.
And something else happened. I started talking. My teammates were nice. And funny. And they knew a lot more about how to do stuff than I did and were willing to help. They demanded only what players could give. I didn’t have to spend money; I just had to be active and contribute to the growth of the team.
Now, since COVID, I have become a bit of a hermit. Or more than a bit. I am firmly in the old-man-yelling-at-the-kids-to-get-off-his-lawn stage of life. And while it is fine to be a cranky hermit, we all need social connection. Otherwise, our alone-ness can pull us down into depression and isolation.
Interestingly, my biggest tool in keeping myself going from banal loneliness to dangerous isolation is the game. I don’t know anyone’s name. I only know them by their character’s name. They don’t know mine, either. But within the team, and even the larger server (there are about 3000 servers globally), I know where people are from, what language they speak (English, Spanish, or Portuguese) whether they have a job or go to school, and their personalities based on our conversations.
My more experienced friends warned me about the potential nastiness of online gaming, and I have seen a touch here or there, but the people I spend time with are not hostile at all. I lucked out on that, I think.
And there is always someone online. A lot of us acknowledge that it’s a certain kind of relief after a long, difficult day, to jump into the game and escape for a while, work out some of our feelings through competition, and/or even vent to the players we have developed relationships with.
Color me shocked. At the age of 48, I am in a leadership position in a global, multi-player role playing game. I mean, we strategize, connect, and gossip on Discord. The demographics of Discord end four years before me.
As much as I like my work, my books, and my TV shows, I have come to value the place this game has taken in my life. If I am going to be a hermit, my game friends are going to be there to keep me from going too far, whether they know it or not.
Who’d have thought?
NOTE: I am an adult, and I am at a point in my life where I am immune from online bullying. I have no problem reporting other players who cross a line (and I have) or calling them out. I also have a handle on how much I want to spend on this game. I also happened to land softly in a supportive server and a supportive team. It is like the perfect storm for a good experience.
I am given to understand that this is unusual. So, if you would like to give something like this a try, make sure you take measures to protect yourself.