THE METAPHORS OF GAMING AND LIFE DURING THE PANDEMIC
...I am my own character in this world where skills are not limited to four types unlike the agents from the game Valorant, the heroes from Mobile Legends, or the champions from Apex Legends, but instead, I adapt skills and it evolves as if I am a Pokemon type owned by a trainer. It is exciting and somehow amusing as I get to know how these things control where I teleport in life, or in which alley I should go; which lane I should defend. However, the fact that this idea requires change every time; the constant change in life, sometimes hangs us up in exhaustion— glitching may be the term in terms of gaming which we do not like. The pandemic hit as if a bug from our games messes our experience to champion every turn and round, and this forces us to keep on finding ways to fix the unwanted circumstances by waiting to automatically restart our game, refreshing our main desktop by aggressively pressing the F5 on our keyboards, or by forcefully close other running applications alongside our current window. Basically, life during the pandemic was buggy and laggy, like the internet connectivity in our country. But upon these circumstances, there are features which make both our games and life during this unprecedented time become less of a grief, a relief despite the events—communication. It helps ease the circumstances in both worlds.
In today's popular games, especially the multiplayer ones, gaming requires not just skills but also communication for teamwork’s strategies in order to win a round or get into the objective. If not, a team might be hindered to success, and worse, they might lose. Relatively, friends and family have shifted into communication online for over two years now, and it is a drastic change to everyone as some tend to neglect the sense of belongingness as we enter into this situation, and I, myself, is one of them. Shockingly, I get to interact with newer people with gaming despite this. Strangers, it may seem, but with the game’s features—chat box and voice chats, it is one of the most effective ways to survive on our own game at this point in time. Looking into friendship, it can grow; it might also outgrow. The essence of going with the flow, the tactics in games to achieve a goal where communication in teamwork requires, the importance of companion and communication today, the waiting era for friends to sign in and be available online, and the reality where we want to feel the sense of belongingness are relatively significant.
Community before the pandemic were typically the group of people you share the same interests with through physical interactions, face-to-face discourses, or the belongingness we felt which develops our social self; the identity that we define for ourselves. In the pre-pandemic life as a student, I was the typical person who happens to be a semi social butterfly, as if everyone I see who shares the same uniform as mine, or just by someone I walk past by inside the cafeteria, a classmate in one of my courses happens to say hi while they order in Julie’s Bakeshop, the unfriendly vibe of the cashier in Mang George’s all-time-favorite chicken, or within the walls of Intramuros, can be a friend or feel like secured due to a sense of belongingness. Even just by gestures and non-verbal cues, the community felt real, and it felt even more real when interaction starts. Unfortunately, a lot has changed for over two years now.
Being a part of a group also shares a distinct idea in gaming. Once a person plays a game, a community becomes part of your identity and journey. As you share the same interests, you acquire the same knowledge and mindset as well. To be particular, by watching live streams of a game that you play, you can relate to everything’s going around. Even acquiring knowledge and understanding about the slangs and jargons of the game tend to be the result of adapting to a certain community. This is what gaming in today’s generation adheres. Gaming is not a typical entertainment purposes for oneself, it transcended into a community which makes it part of the social network sphere.
With the advent of the phenomenon where gaming is one of the spheres for socializing, the community evolves. It is new and has a lot to experience with possibly rising of both pros and cons, but it is a fact that gaming as an instrument is one of the people’s companions during this time. Among the items that we can build to strengthen ourselves, the orbs that we can acquire as we play alongside other players, and the variety of maps that we might walk by; as a battlefield or our spawn area, one thing is essential—we play, but not alone.
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