June Renew: Day Twenty-Two
She Was a Gamer Girl
I’m no stranger to video games. My cousins and I would thump away on our SNES’s for hours when we were together. Heck, even when we were down the shore each year, we’d spend a majority of the time upstairs trying to beat Super Mario or Donkey Kong Country 2. Games have been a constant in my life. I’ve even been shirking writing this entry because I’m getting sidetracked by Fallout New Vegas. It’s so easy for me to get carried away by the fantasy of it all that I tend to let reality take a backseat to my virtual adventures.
But I know I’m doing it too much lately. I feel like I need to be distracted by something at nearly every moment of the day. I know I’m just wasting time, but I’m having a hard time stopping. Lately I’ve been on a jigsaw puzzle kick, and it doesn’t help that this particular mobile game has achievements attached, something I have a near manic need to fulfill. This is not the first time my gamer instincts have been destructive, even as I’ve found positivity over the years.
Mobile Crew
For a while, I was playing an iPhone game called Fishdom. It was like all those random puzzle games in the Candy Crush vein. Match gems, get powerups via certain patterns, all that jazz. I considered it a time-waster, but it was something for me to do when I was otherwise preoccupied, whether traveling, couch surfing, or spending time “on the throne.” It wasn’t a particularly challenging game, but it did its job. And over the years (yes, years) it grew into games within games. Monthly challenges you could participate in that I just had to come in first for. Pay $4.99 and get access to special perks, like extra bonuses or more lives. I’m embarrassed to say I spent a lot of money on this game, paying in $0.99 increments to keep my game going so I wouldn’t fail when I ran out of moves.
But the aspect I really liked about it was being on a team. It was just something one does in-game. It’s not like these teams mean anything, you’re speaking with God-knows-who from a global pool. But when I went to choose mine, I chose one from the U.S. calling themselves Atlantis. We were the Sharks. Normally, this is just a way for the game to keep you playing, as you’re asked to send lives to your fellow teammates. But Atlantis had rules about that. In order to stay on the team, you had to give at least ten lives to the team per week to stay on. That wasn’t a problem for me, as I was on so much. But I felt so connected to this team that I’d give lives even when I pulled the brakes on too much played.
And even more than that, this team would chat. There’d be words of encouragement when users would express difficulty in a stage. Words of congratulations when we as a team would win a communal treasure chest. And wishes for good health when the group ‘leader’ told us about long stretches of hospital stays they’d have to be at. It was such a neat little micro-community that I actually felt a sense of obligation to; a cute little area of my life I wasn’t sure anyone else would understand. But I knew all good things had to come to an end.
I decided that when I got my new phone, I wouldn’t re-download the game. It was getting to be too much, and I was spending way too much of my money on nothing. So I gave one final note to the Sharks, thanking them all for their encouragement and support, marveling on the adorable community they built up. The response was that I could come back any time, and they’d always be saving a space for me. Even though it was a purely digital experience, I felt like I had found something special within, even if it was attached to a silly little mobile game.
Game On Back Here
It’s entirely possible gaming can connect people from all across the earth. One can form a bond with your fellow enthusiasts without ever actually seeing them in person. I’ll always appreciate this, as I’ve done it with all sorts of games over the years. But it’s high time I step out of that digital world and remember there’s a lot of things going on out here in reality.
I say all this because I’m still feeling so distracted by this jigsaw game. So much so that I was playing it while in the car with my friend when I was supposed to be the Waze navigator. And he was just telling me about a past girlfriend who would play around on Instagram instead of being mindful of the next part of the route. We’re rarely on our phones when we’re with one another, so this is certainly another behavior to monitor.
There’s a million other things I could be doing with my time. I’ll just never discount what one can find in the online world if you play the game well enough. Go Sharks.