Forums » The Lounge

What has gaming done for you?

    • 36 posts
    March 5, 2016 6:30 PM EST

    I started gaming when I was about 11 and throughout the years it has given me fast reflexes. But I grew a desire when I discovered this site and made me open to whatever ideas I can conjure up and share them.

    Although I have only 2 platforms and working on to get a 3rd one.

    • 203 posts
    March 5, 2016 8:32 PM EST

    I started gaming as a small kid, at first it were mostly educational games my mom got me but soon those would get replaced with some of the old RTS classics. I played AOE I and II to bits as well as AOM. I wasn't particularly good at them (I was what? seven years old max) but I enjoyed playing them. To the long list of RTS games a long list of simulation games followed (Rollercoaster and Zoo Tycoon, the Sims ...) but in the overall picture I still played games for fun.

    That changed when we (my parents, siblings and I) moved to France from the Netherlands. See, my parents had been advised against teaching us french before we moved, they were told that we "would all end up fine", so low and behold: the first few years were absolute agony. In the first year, I was exotic so people tried to be interested in me, if only for the novelty. The second year I got Lucky and found a few friends from local villages but after I suffered a first concussion, we had a falling out (Long story short, they didn't really understand how much pain I was going through) and the third year started.

    This is were shit really hit the fan, as I simultanously hit the floor (literally, I fell on the back of my head) and got myself a second concussion, this one was a bit more severe and I ended up not being very present at school for a little over a month. Of course this was the first month of school. Normally you wouldn't think this would be a problem, but in the institution I went to they arbitrarily changed classes every year, to break up problem groups or something, anyway I ended up in a class in which I knew virtually no one and even worse I arrived a month late. So I ended up alone, was bullied and ended up severely depressed.

    It is at this point that I dug up an old copy of Oblivion I had recieved from a friend years before. And that my love for gaming turned towards the RPG genre, not because these games were specifically more fun to play but because I needed an escape, from school, from the world and mostly from myself. I have always been a very creative person (as some of you may have noticed on the vault) but in times of depression that gift would turn against me and so it was that gaming became a way of smothering my dark thoughts.

    I eventually managed to get out of the situation when I started to plan my own suicide. The entire affair scared me so much it washed all my usual pride away and I stepped to a therapist. I got cured (kinda) and went into the next year a lot happier and light heartedly.

    I made a friend, and guess what our relation was built on: video games. Mostly FPS-like games this time, and for the first time in my life I started to play multiplayer for a different reason than "you should let your brother play!". Video games brought me my best friend to this date, and while our relation evolved a lot from there (as the passing of time usually does) and with a friendship under the belt and a (somewhat, we'll get back to that) healthy brain, the position video games had in my life changed again: They became a way of channeling my creativity. And in a way, they have always been since that moment.

    I started writing, first fanfictions based off of my MMO guild, then I started brainstorming on my original (yeah the same one as now, it hasn't advanced all that much). And I even managed to greatly repair my social skills to make friends without video games.

    But now, I have arrived in a different situation yet again. I am severely depressed again. I don't know if it came back or if it's something entirely new, but the fact is that every so often I'll have weeks, or months where I don't feel any particular emotions, no joy, no sadness, no anger and no satisfaction, no matter what I do, all I feel is more similar to fatigue or boredom. Of course as I started feeling stuck again I returned to what had helped me come through it last time: Video games and creativity. Video gaming have become less of an escape over the last months and more of a test to see if I could still enjoy things I used to like doing. The test has been negative more often than not.

    Anyway here I am, a person shaped by the hardship he went through and his love for video games and the written arts. I may be in a tight spot right now but I have the confidence that I'll get out there some day. Because if there's anything fiction has told me is that there's almost always a happy end, sometimes it's to the entire story and sometimes just between major plot lines but there will be another happy moment. But what have videogames done for me in the end:

    They were a great way of spending my childhood, an escape from a harsh reality when needed, an escape from myself but also the foundation of the person I am today. Without games I wouldn't have been able to recover from my first depression the way I have done and I doubt that without games, my writing, and to quite an extent this place, I would still be around today, and honestly I'm glad I am.

    • 1595 posts
    March 6, 2016 5:47 AM EST

    Hang in there Teineeva, don't give in to apathy and doubt. Keep channelling that creativity and give your friends here a shout if you need an ear to talk into.

    • 367 posts
    March 6, 2016 7:08 AM EST

    It's hard when life treats you like that Teineeva and it's easy for the  rest of us to say, "Hey we're here, your not alone" yet the moment the computer's turned off the walls come crashing down. I know, a good few of us do really know. Aela and myself have had our own hardships these last three odd years.

    There are others here who have been where you are as well. Know you aren't alone and we are always about should you want to talk to someone. The blog isn't just a place to post stories and builds, it's our home.

    Hang in there and don't hesitate to reach out.

    Or howl, that works too. Even better in fact.

     

    • 203 posts
    March 6, 2016 10:45 AM EST

    Thanks Phil, I'll certainly do so when I need to.

    And to be honest, my own creativity is the only thing I don't feel apathetic about right now, so I'll most definitively continue pouring my soul into it. Btw this does not mean that what happens to some of the characters actually crosses my own mind, just so you know.

    • 203 posts
    March 6, 2016 10:48 AM EST

    Sotek, I can definitively agree with that sentiment, the vault is a community, not just a place to post shit (of variable quality ). And I'll definitively try to howl if I need you, be aware that it might sound quite pathetic I haven't changed in years.

    • 312 posts
    March 6, 2016 11:15 AM EST

    Seeing as this thread's still got some recent responses, I'll spin a li'l yarn about my own experiences.

    Well, I've always been an introvert, and gaming's what let me out of my shell all those years ago. I first began really gaming with the advent of WarCraft III and Defense of the Ancients (DotA), though I quickly moved on to other games. My most memorable game was definitely Shin Megami Tensei Online:  Imagine, since that was the first MMO I truly committed to. My clan there was like family to me, and even though the game was shut down, I still chat with several of the "old timers" regularly. Since then, I've been a wanderer in the realm of MMOs, playing games like League of Legends and Blade and Soul, but never staying for too long. I will, however, attribute a lot of my self-discovery to MMOs. It's thanks to LoL that I really figured out what kind of person I wanted to be. I mained Support and Jungle, and I found that I loved helping out from the shadows. Sure, I wasn't getting amazing 25/0/0 scores like the ADC, but knowing that I was contributing even if my score didn't reflect it was an amazing feeling. It still is, and I seek out the tank or healer roles in practically every game, and that viewpoint has carried through to my real life as well.

    So, long story short, don't expect my name to be on any large and famous projects, though if you look close enough in the contributions, I might make an appearance every so often. It's just my way.