Tag: minecraft

Online Gaming – Yes, Online Friends Are Real Friends

Posted on by in Gaming

When you hear the words “online gaming”, a lot of people’s minds go to games like Call of Duty or Halo, where the most common words spoken over headsets are words that I will never repeat, especially if my mother is within earshot. Multiplayer has always been a thing in video games, even back to the original video game – Pong. We humans are social creatures and some of our greatest achievements such as flight, breaking the Enigma code and landing on the moon have been achieved through the co-operation of talented individuals, working towards a common goal. However, for those with social anxiety and other assorted mental health conditions, social events can be a nerve-wracking experience. I’d like to think that online gaming and the communities that it has spawned, has helped bring a lot of those people, including myself, together.

So, first things first. What is online gaming? That, like many things in life, is a broad question. The computing side of my brain would argue that it is any game mode that requires an outbound connection either across a Local Area Network or to the Internet, where individuals in different locations are all playing the same game simultaneously. This connection is why you can make your character jump in England and your friend over in Canada can watch you with a bemused expression. For the more psychology-based part of me, I’d argue that online gaming is more than just being able to play together. It’s the communities that rise around it, debating new updates and features, organising meetups and sharing their various fan projects based around the game at hand.

Growing up, I didn’t know many other people who were as interested in gaming as I was. Sure, there was the odd friend every so often, but I moved too frequently to really delve into those friendships properly. Most of my multiplayer experience was either through visiting my sister’s town in Animal Crossing (and chasing her around with an axe like the mature child I was) or playing the versus mode in Super Mario Bros against my younger cousin. When I hit secondary school and got into playing Minecraft, that was when I got to experience the world of online gaming.

Can confirm I spent far too many hours on this Minecraft server playing Hide and Seek, Death Run and Hunger Games.

Over the next few years, I threw myself into online servers – eventually joining a fan community for the popular Minecraft YouTuber group Team Crafted. In there, I ended up meeting some of my closest friends who I still speak to most days. Heck, even the RC in my username harkens back to those days, though what it stands for will remain a secret! I travelled to Minecon in London and met my friend for the first time, where we proceeded to spend the next two days being utterly ridiculous and laughing at our own weird little jokes. To this day, the phrase “Helgrind” still makes me laugh, much to everyone else’s confusion.

From there, I moved more into general gaming communities such as the OutsideXbox/Xtra channels, who have become an important part of my life – to the point where I’m ridiculously invested in the community and have been to conventions to meet so many of my amazing friends. (Yes, hi Fanstra I know you’re reading this). From Town of Salem to Twitch streams to RDR2 Online, I have been ridiculously lucky in my life to meet so many amazing people through the medium of online gaming and they have supported me unconditionally through some of the darkest points of my life. If any of you are reading this, and you know who you are, thank you.

Obviously, everyone’s experiences of online gaming differ and a lot of it depends on the communities you join. Some can be more welcoming than others, whilst a few can seem quite intimidating at first. Although it has lessened over the years, there is still a lot of stigma against female gamers and it can put young women off gaming entirely, which is a huge loss both to the communities and to the gaming industry. So many aspects of modern gaming wouldn’t exist without the amazing men and women behind it, with the future of the industry resting in the capable hands of our generation. Yet, so many talented individuals feel unable to join the world they so adore, in part due to the mental health conditions plaguing their everyday lives.

The OX community is such a big part of my life now, I can’t imagine it without them all, especially my friends over on the fan server.

As we’ve talked about before on this site, even entering a familiar social situation can provide a host of uncertainties and potential anxiety triggers to a sufferer of say, anxiety, for example. For me, one of my main issues when facing a social situation is my escape route. Often, when I’m panicking, most of my energy is focused on not showing it outwardly and seeking an opportunity to remove myself from the situation. Now, this can’t work forever, and I do eventually break down. Meanwhile online, I can simply exit voice chat or not reply to a message for a while, giving the excuse that I had to attend to another matter without anyone really questioning where I’d been. This escape hatch being so readily accessible is a lifeline in more stressful situations or on my darker days.

Another aspect of online gaming and the communities it creates is that you come across a lot more people who understand exactly what you’re going through because so are they. Depending on those around you, you may not meet someone who also suffers from psychosis or who is also disabled for most of your young life. Meanwhile, with the Internet and the like-minded individuals forming these groups with mutual interests, you suddenly find yourself surrounded by people who understand exactly why you need to take time out or why you suddenly want people to flood your messages with pictures of cute cats instead of talking. They know why because a few days ago, that was them.

Apologies that this week’s article is shorter than usual, I’m not sure how much more I can say about this topic because it is an incredibly personal experience for everyone. This was just a little bit of how I feel the world of online gaming has impacted me. Big thank you to Mike Hodgin for suggesting this and for his support! Let me know your experiences down in the comments, and look forward to next weeks article on the Drawn to Life games from the Nintendo DS (yes, I’ve been playing my childhood games again hush)

No, you spent your weekend off playing the series.

Remember to like, comment, follow the site and follow me on twitter @OurMindGames for all updates/future polls on content!

Till next week,

CaitlinRC.

Minecraft – A Far Bigger Part Of My Teenage Years Than I Care To Admit:

Posted on by in Gaming

It’s weird to think that Minecraft is over ten years old now. Even weirder to think about how I started playing the game about six or seven years ago. Up until that point, the only games I had played on the computer were flash games on websites such as Newgrounds or Friv. I have many fond memories of eating lunch as quickly as possible and then racing my friends back to the classroom, just so we could play Fireboy and Watergirl together. So, when my friend ran up and showed me the game, I was immediately hooked.

I spent several months just repeatedly playing the demo version of the game, as I didn’t have any way of purchasing the account myself (after all, I didn’t have a debit card or anything at the time). Eventually, I sidled up to my parents around Christmas time and showed them the demo of the game, expressing my interest in a way that was hardly subtle. I’m relatively sure my parents did a full look into it but on Christmas Day, my dad built the word “Minecraft” out of Lego’s and put it under the tree for me, though it did take me a minute to figure out what it meant (because come on, whose brain works at 7:30 in the morning).

I logged onto the game the other day and was immediately killed by a polar bear. WHEN DID WE GET POLAR BEARS?

Roughly three years of my life were spent playing Minecraft in my spare time, from playing online with new friends that I’d made or just messing around in survival. I found YouTubers who had a dedicated following for their Minecraft content, and I joined a community that although I am no longer a part of it, still had a big impact on me. In fact, some of my closest friends came from those communities and my online pseudo name harkens back to those times (looking at you RC crew).

At the time, I wasn’t sure why the game appealed to me so much. Sure, it was kind of like “living Lego” and as a kid, I loved building and creating my own structures – to this day we still have a box of Lego in the house. However, now that I’m older and wiser (probably), I can see all too clearly why the game became such a refuge for me. It made sense. It had rules. There were specific ways to craft the items you needed, a process to follow to achieve your goals. The real world didn’t have that.

We all fear that we will make the wrong choices in life. That the words we choose to express ourselves aren’t the right ones, that our decisions will always hurt someone no matter how hard we try not to. For some of us, this manifests in conditions such as anxiety. For as long as I can remember, the sheer volume of information and potential outcomes of situations has overwhelmed me. I’m terrified of missing a key piece of information, of selecting the wrong path.

So, a game where I control each aspect of the world, from the structures I create to the tools that I craft, is calming. I always know what the outcome will be, there are no unknowns to fear. No matter what enemy I come across or new environment they add, there are set rules and algorithms that I can follow to ensure my success.

Even the Nether makes sense once you get used to it (and don’t put down any beds!)

I know that concept must be confusing to some people but I’m also aware, that a few of you reading this can relate. Most of you probably think this rule bound and mathematical approach is taking the fun out of a lot of what makes Minecraft special, but it adds to it. Think about it. At our core, we are simply made up of atoms. These atoms combine to form elements, which are the building blocks of the universe. Everything we see in the world around us, is built from these simple particles, following the specific rules of creation.

The insane creativity of the community is what I believe has kept this game so popular, for so long. From designing your own texture packs to insane mods to custom made adventure maps, the game provides players with all the tools to basically reinvent the world. I remember spending countless hours building the perfect home from scratch in the game, collecting every resource possible and perfecting my simple abode with my limited artistic repertoire. Meanwhile, you look around and see scale models of Buckingham Palace; working recreations of games such as Space Invaders and even the game being used to teach kids how to code.

Even if the game isn’t your cup of tea, you can’t deny the impact that it has had on the world. Sure, the creator is… problematic to say the least, but the reach of the small sandbox game he released ten years ago, is phenomenal. People use it to test machine learning algorithms, to teach economics, to learn about programming, to encourage people to go into architecture and more. When I was a kid, Lego was my main form of creativity and I adored it. Sure, Lego is still massively popular today, but it feels that Minecraft is the right step for kids to move onto to encourage their self-improvement when they feel they are “too old” for Lego. (Spoiler Alert: You’re never too old for Lego)

I’ve taught kids how to code using Minecraft and they’ve loved it. Never deny the power of games to help kids learn.

Apologies that this piece seemed a bit more scatter-brained than usual, I’ve just finished exam season myself and there is a lot going on personally. Plus, this idea came to me at 3AM the other day so it’s slightly hard to format thoughts when you’re having a staring contest with the seagull outside your window (Cardiff problems). I’d love to write more pieces about the game’s you guys know and love, so leave your suggestions in the comments!

Much love,

CaitlinRC.