Love And Video Games
living and dying together
“There’s a witch! Shoot her in the head!” We’d scream things like this at each other then laugh because the windows were open and our neighbors were outside. “Why did you shoot me?” he’d yell and I’d say it was only an accident and wonder what Kathy next door was thinking was going on in our house.
We played Left 4 Dead day and night. All our spare time went to killing zombies and taking on the boss infected. We played offline co-op, which means we were a team. We fought the good fight together, side by side. I’d play as Zoey, he’d play as Bill, and that never changed. We dove into our characters right away, became one with the game.
The times when we played co-op video games together (we also played Borderlands) were the best times in our relationship, and that’s no coincidence. We had a common hobby, a shared interest. Every day after work we’d play. Six o’clock on Saturday mornings we’d be up and shooting. Weekends were for killing zombies. We would take a break to go out to dinner and often talked about the games while we ate. Sure, we had other things holding us together, but gaming tied us into a tight bond.
The best thing about playing a co-op game with someone is the camaraderie. We were in it together, from beginning to end. I have your back, you have mine. No one gets left behind. We fought side by side, and complemented each other’s playing style. I liked to crouch behind objects, he liked to jump out into the open and dare the enemies to come get us. I covered for him, he ran in to save me when I got into trouble. He never, ever left me alone, even though he was so much better at the game than me. If he saw me faltering, he came and helped. If I fell, he’d pick me up. If I needed health, he’d give it to me.
The game was a microcosm of our relationship. He was the rock I depended on. I leaned on him, learned from him, benefitted from his prowess. I did what I could to further us along, but I mostly lived in his larger than life shadow, and I was ok with that. When we played Left 4 Dead, we became our characters - or our characters became us. We dove into our roles in the game the same way we played out our roles in life.
We thrived during those years. There was a closeness that I had not achieved with anyone before, a trust that I spent my whole life searching for. The care he took with me while playing, the way he made sure I didn’t die, was the way he cared for me in our daily lives.
Somewhere along the line, I lost interest in playing video games. We finished two Left 4 Dead game, we finished Borderlands. I was tired, and my depression was getting the best of me. We couldn’t find another co-op game that held my interest and we stopped playing together. And when that stopped, something was lost. We no longer had that shared interest. We no longer spent hours and hours in each other’s company doing something together; instead we sat on separate couches while he tried his hand at solo video games and I read. Which is a fine way to spend some time in the same room, but something was missing.
I missed that feeling I got when he saved my life again and again. I missed laughing at my missteps. I missed the strategizing, the excitement of the end stages of the game, the shared joy when we beat the final boss on each level. We had something special and that was lost. We retreated into our own worlds, me on the couch twittering and reading and writing, him at his AA meetings every single night. The pandemic hit and there was nothing holding us together the way a video game did.
I don’t mean to say that Left 4 Dead was the only thing holding us together. We had over a decade together before the game came along. But playing that game as partners deepened our relationship because we were constantly depending on each other to stay alive. When we both became depressed and anxious, we stopped being able to depend on each other. I don’t think any amount of video games would have helped at that point. I knew were were withering, but thought it was something that could be fixed. He didn’t have that faith.
I think about Left 4 Dead and Borderlands a lot. I think about yelling things that made our neighbors knock on the door and ask if we were ok. I think about saving each other’s asses, about having the common goal of staying alive, together. It’s too bad we could no longer translate those intense survival skills to our regular lives. Our best years were the years we spent holed up in our living room shooting and running and surviving, simply because we were doing something we loved together. Once we lost that, we lost everything.
Sometimes I think of hooking up the XBox and giving Left 4 Dead a go again. See if I can survive on my own. But it wouldn’t be the same without him. Nothing really is.