Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Virtual Friends


It's been challenging to figure out how to summarize my online gaming experiences in a bite size chunk suitable for a blog entry. I've played numerous multiplayer online games over nearly the last decade but favorites were Everquest 1 & 2 so I'll just limit myself to talking about my experiences in those virtual game worlds. In this entry I'd like to focus primarily on some of the relational aspects of my Everquest experience.


My EQ1 adventures began around six years ago when a colleague/friend at work invited me to join his group. About half of the guild he was in was made up of people living here in the Boise area. They met once or twice a month for lunch at a local pizza place and when I started playing I instantly had over a dozen new friends when I joined their community. I really enjoyed the camaraderie we shared as we laughed about past foibles in the Everquest world or planned out our future endeavors together. On a couple of occasions we even got together for dinner and invited our spouses. At one such dinner we even had a couple from the guild who lived in Oklahoma drive all the way up to Boise to meet us. They were an interesting couple. They had met in-game, dated, and then got married (in the real world). This may sound strange but I've known several couples who met online like that and ultimately married. Anyway, I really enjoyed the opportunity to get out of my normal sphere of relationships which tended to be friends that I knew from church and ministry involvement. I felt it was good because it gave me an opportunity to take my light out from under the bushel so-to-speak. Too often we Christians isolate ourselves from contact with people "in the world".


My colleague and I became much better friends after we started gaming together. I think it was Plato who said, "You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation." I got to know him much better through play than I ever did through work. Unfortunately, he went through a rather painful divorce a short time later. Instead of using gaming to medicate he looked for other more social opportunities and later began dating. We kept the friendship going over the next few years though. Often we'd get in long discussions about the Christian faith. Later in our relationship after he had remarried he even gave me the opportunity to come over to his house and share the basics of the Gospel with him and after that he visited our church. His new wife was also a believer and I think he was just trying to sort things out. Somewhere inside I think he genuinely wanted to believe but just had trouble with certain aspects of the Christian Faith. Later, things changed at work and our relationship drifted apart. I wish it hadn’t and I accept the majority of the blame for it. I'd like to get together with him again. In fact, I just sent him an email to see if he'd like to do just that.


Our guild leader, and personal friend of my aforementioned colleague, worked out at the Micron PC site which was going through tough times. We encouraged him to apply for a job at the parent company since there was an opening in my group. He had great qualifications so I hired him into the group I managed at the time and soon we were all working together. It was a fun season until things became tense as Micron went through its own round of layoffs in 2003 and work conditions deteriorated. Oh well, that's another story.


After I had played EQ1 for a while my son decided that he would like to play the game as well. At the time I had proven myself as a very competent player and was fairly involved in one of the premier guilds on the server. Most of my friends from the Boise guild joined this larger guild so we could play some of the most difficult content the game had to offer that required 50-80+ people to complete. However, my son was having difficulty getting his character up to a high enough level with good enough equipment to accompany us. It was more important for me to game with him so I sold my EQ1 character and we waited a few months for EQ2 to come out. I still remember how excited both of us were to play together from level 1. It was great father and son time. I still think of those first few weeks of EQ2 as some of the most fun we've ever had together.


During our second week playing EQ2 we met a group of people who became some of our best in-game friends over the next few years. After we had played together for a while we formed a guild and added more people to our ranks. We had a lot of great times together. Even so, it's not all roses and sunshine. Sometimes people have differences of opinion that develop into conflicts or maybe they just get on each others nerves. Virtual worlds can be just like the real one in many senses. For example, our guild leader, Cord (his in-game character name), and I had a conflict once. I had a sense of humor that he found somewhat irritating and one day he let me know about it quite emphatically. I logged off and sulked like a kid for a few days before reconnecting with him to work things out. After that, we got along much better. I learned something valuable about being careful with my humor and was a better person for it. Several months later Hurricane Katrina hit the area that Cord lived in. I ended up leading a team from my church down to New Orleans and I offered to bring them over to help Cord with his house. He was very blessed by the offer but informed me that he and his dad were fortunate and that they were able to get the trees off of their houses a few days before I had arrived. We wanted to meet in person but the long drive around the lake and the curfew imposed prevented us from doing so. Cord decided to retire from EQ in order to help his family rebuild their lives in the wake of Katrina. I miss him but I fondly remember the relationship we shared for a time in the world of EQ.


One of the things that people like about virtual worlds is the anonymity that they provide. Many times people with disabilities, unattractive appearances, etc. can socialize in a way that they couldn't in a normal setting. Although this is a sad situation, I think it is good that they can get past those limiting attributes and be accepted for who they are on the inside when they visit a virtual world. Obviously this can be good and bad, especially when taken to extremes. Although some people choose to hide who they are in real life for various reasons, I am always very open about who I am. In our small EQ2 guild I became dubbed as "The Counselor" because I was always willing to talk with people who were struggling in life. I posted a biography about myself on the guild website and in that biography I shared that I was a deeply devoted Christian who was involved in marriage ministry in my church. As a result, people saw me as a person that they could go to for help. I specifically remember two people who came to me for help with their marriages. I was completely candid about my lack of formal credentials but that didn't bother them in the slightest because they had really come to appreciate me for qualities I demonstrated during gameplay. One of them really just wanted someone to talk to who was willing to listen and offer occasional feedback. Another was genuinely seeking help and I steered him in the direction of some materials that I thought would help him address some issues in his marriage. I also suggested that perhaps he needed to spend less time with EQ and more time with his wife. He agreed and I was sorry to see him retire from the game but I was glad to know that he was putting his marriage first.


Those are just a few highlights of my experiences that I hope will provide some insight into how relational online computer games can be. When I game in a virtual world I have a choice. I can hide behind a mask of anonymity or I can open my heart to others. It's no different than the choice I have in the real world.

1 comment:

steven hamilton said...

i think you are right on there, greg. i agree one of the atrctions and possibly a primary motivation (equal qith fun) for online gaming is the sense of community.

thanks for sharing your thoughts...