Playing the same video game for 16 years straight
From nostalgic gaming memories to solo escapism in LOTRO, this edition covers my gaming journey and an introspective visit to Pride.
I’m not much of a gamer. When I started university in 2005, I took with me my recently-acquired Nintendo Gamecube, which was four years old at that point. It replaced my, er, Sega Mega Drive, which was released in the late 1980s. I like games, but I’m not much interested in keeping up with the current generation.
As a teenager, I remember our household purchasing our first “family computer”, was was not unlike the image below. It came with a CD-ROM sleeve packed full of games and educational software, including the still-classic Star Wars: Rogue Squadron flying game.
One of these CDs didn’t work in our computer, and I still remember taking it to a friend who’d been building PCs since he was in primary school. He inspected it on his own machine and confirmed it had a virus. I still remember him confidently telling me that computer viruses could spread from disc-to-disc, so the stack of bare CD-ROMs I used to carry around on a plastic spindle was putting all of my precious games at risk of contracting the virus. I hurriedly separated them all into plastic sleeves again.
As I grew up I managed to become a little more knowledgeable about computers myself, and took my hand-built PC with me to university where “THRASHER” took pride of place on my IKEA desk.
Somewhere around this period, I discovered the game Lord Of The Rings Online. Like its cousin World of Warcraft, this was an MMO: a Massively-Multiplayer Online game. What this meant in practice was that while you ran around Middle Earth controlling your customised elf/dwarf/hobbit/man, you were in the virtual company of hundreds of other real nerds/people doing the same thing. Some of them even had microphones…
Bored of the rings
I briefly joined a “Kinship”, eg. a permanent group of players who chatted and gamed together, often taking on the game’s bigger quests which required multiple players at once to defeat the big bosses. I cringed whenever we did this and we were required to go on voice chat to discuss tactics: not only did I not want to hear random Dutch people trying to pronounce “Celbrandir” (my beloved Elf hunter), but I definitely didn’t want to break the fourth wall and acknowledge that we weren’t really questing around the Shire or Moria, and instead confirming which of us was going to attack the goblins first so the boss’s health wouldn’t regenerate. It just took me out of the whole experience.
I’ve played “LOTRO”, on-and-off, for sixteen years now. Still the same character, and still not even at maximum level. I don’t play very often only really play for the immersive aspect of controlling a character in a fictional world that I love. Recently though, I was playing and another player messaged me on the in-game chat.
He’d seen that we were both in the same area and probably doing the same quests, and suggested we team up to complete a challenging section. I replied back and politely declined, saying I was only around for the next fifteen minutes (true). In truth, despite the very nature/selling-point of the game being its online, collaborative nature… I have absolutely no desire to play it with other people.
The other person wasn’t deterred and tried to convince me to pair with him, so I ignored him… and permanently disabled the ability for other players to message me in-game. I even turned off all the “world chat” features so I could no longer see the constant stream of requests of people looking for players to help them with specific quests. I felt a bit mean for doing this, but my reasoning was clear: I’m here for escapism, for pretending I’m an elf with a crossbow and defeating the evil forces of Sauron. Every clanging message from someone else only serves to make this feel like a chore instead: now I have to play by someone else’s rules, complete a task, interact with someone when all I want is solitude, and go and kill 25 orcs so I can collect a medal from a dwarf with a broken axe.
Playing games with other people is great: some of my fondest teenage memories are crowding round someone’s console playing Goldeneye on a single TV screen, or trying to win at Super Smash Bros in my mate’s parents’ living room. Maybe it’s the fact that online games are now played alone—with the company only virtual—that puts me off. But for me, it’s a solo escape where I only have to please one person: me.
Mini-feels this week
Proud dad time
We took the kids to the local Pride festival at the weekend, co-organised by TV’s Joe Lycett who rebranded the suburb of Kings Heath as Queens Heath for the day.
I felt a little uneasy about going at first: while I’m a queer ally and support LGBT causes, I’m a heterosexual man with two kids. I didn’t want to show up like a tourist and contribute to the sanitisation of queer-friendly spaces. Some Pride festivals have had complaints from well-meaning parents who are concerned about the impact of the flamboyant costumes and daring stage shows on their young kids. The answer? Don’t bring your kids to Pride, because it’s super important for these spaces to exist.
On the day though I didn’t feel like we were infringing, and we were welcome and happy the whole time – plus there was a family area which reassured me that us “tourists” were welcome. It’s also entirely possible I’m overthinking things – but I suspect that a Pride festival full of hetero families isn’t really Pride anymore.
My daughter took her first unsupported steps while we were there, too, which I’m pretty sure means that Joe Lycett is now her godfather or something – and makes me a pretty proud dad.