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.
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.
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)
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Till next week,
CaitlinRC.