Play for the right reasons

I wrote this about a month ago, now that everything has cooled down I think it’s time to pasot it, Video Games should be played for fun, pleasure, enjoyment and nothing else, I personally think that if you do every other activity in your life with the same goal including your work you’re going to be a very very happy person.

Playing Video Games you make friends and you build up relationships of all kinds, part of the Video Game experience is to gather with a bunch of friends to play with, however you shouldn’t be playing for the responsability of playing or to please others, quite a few years ago in 1997 I bought a game named X-Wing Vs. TIE Fighter (XvT) because I loved the X-Wing series and was dying to fly with a group of other pilots but I couldn’t, the ISPs on Venezuela blocked a port used in the game and we were way off the gamer era to demand it to be open because I needed my Internet service to be gaming focused.  I had to wait patiently until 2002 when the first broadband service was available on Venezuela and the first thing I did was try X-Wing Vs. TIE Fighter, it worked and I could finally fly with others. I loved the game so much I just flew and flew and flew until I decided I needed to join a group , jeje apparently I needed guidance because other pilots were wiping the floor with me, so I found this very cool guy with the callsign Modock from a group named The Rebel Alliance (TRA) that was part of a bigger gaming clan called Dark Jedi Organization (DJO).

X-Wing-vs-TIE-Fighter-Demo_1

That was my first experience as an Video Game player that was part of a community, I guess I wasn’t and still am not the regular player, I didn’t care about the stats, other players or even the competition, I just played out of the joy I had playing the game, I didn’t care against who I was flying as long as I was having fun, eventually people taught me a few things here and there and I started learning from all those matches I did in the old Microsoft Gaming Zone. I was different, very different and literally drove an entire Squadron by myself to victory in the events held for DJO month after month and started which gather people’s admiration, so I guess I became a leader by example.

Over the years I kept playing games, I’m talking about Final Fantasy XI in 2005, I love the series so much my wife knows what a Dragoon, Bahamut and Chocobo are, Ispent 2 years saving up to build a PC to hold up to the game requirements and several months to get my first Credit Card approved just so I could pay the subscription, so I guess that means how driven I am and how much I really wanted to play the game, I subscribed and looked for a group to join, luckily I found DJO had a club for the game (The Sybil’s Secret Service or SSS for short) and joined some guys I knew by reference who played XvT before my time on it. The group was awesome and we formed a static party to level up together and progress through the game, and we grew in numbers, we were like a family, but in the end only 4 of us were DJO the rest were players we met in game, that’s when I noticed for the first time that you don’t choose a group, it kind of chooses you, you have needs and the group have needs and eventually you need to be were you can get fun and those needs satysfied, the SSS and TRA were that for me and about 8 years later I made what I consider very good friends, we saw some of us get married, graduate and/or become parents.

Several years later Venezuela Foreign Currency Controls didn’t let me pay for my subscription anymore and had to quit playing FFXI, broke my heart because I worked so damn hard to be able to have a PC strong enough to play it and a way to pay for my subscription but that’s life, constant change and chasing dreams all over again, I went away from the Online Gaming for a few years and made a come back with Final Fantasy XIV in 2010 and 2013 with both 1.0 and 2.0 versions of the game, again I worked hard to gather the money for a new PC that would be able to play the game and a way to pay for the subscription,  but this time everything was different, we assemble the old FFXI crew, started a Free Company and began to play the game, somehow the group turned out to be very independent, we had many leaders after the original ones left FFXI take over and we all had ideas on the direction the group should go and somehow went our separate ways.

Teretha Aelasar 05/28/2014 23:30:38

Why did we split up? What did we do wrong? I have a very good idea on what are the answers to both questions and they all end up on poor leadership, including mine, I’m not saying we did it wrong on purpose or that we didn’t care about the others, times just change and we are all grown up and have our own ideas and objectives, so if the game can’t be a priority we can’t pretend to be admired, followed and respected just because we are the leaders when the other members of the group are doing all the inspiring and leadership by example roles, we can be as stubborn as we want about it, but in the end this is what happened and triggered everything else.

So if we are supposed to play just for fun, all of this sounds like quite the opposite, right? What was the right thing to do? Does the group is really so dependant on one person? perhaps … but is that person or group of persons willing to be misserable palying a game just for the sake of the group as organization? I don’t think so … the sad part and the big question is, Why can’t we play the same game on our own ways but still enjoying each other’s company? Why do we have to play under other persons terms?


Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.