For Yggdrasilly
The Power of Video Games, and the Worth of One Life Every day, at any given moment, someone, somewhere in the world, is playing a video game. Sadly, the same could be said for someone dying. Sometimes, the two of them intersect. Often, at least according to the media, this is a negative thing. Sometimes, however, it’s not. Like it or not, video games are a big part of our world. You can hardly look around without seen them, or something about them: huge displays in stores; arcades at the mall; commercials on TV; children and adults alike on the street with portable systems. They’re even in the news, especially when there’s been a violent act that people can blame on them, or the gamergate fiasco that flared up over the summer. With all of the negative publicity video games get, it’s hard for people who don’t play them to understand their benefit. They see the Grand Theft Autos and Assassin’s Creeds, but not the Journeys or the Flowers. Or they say that they’ll “rot your brain”, instead of seeing the hand-eye coordination that games help develop. Or they emphasize on the solidarity of the gamer, ignoring the social aspects of games. For a long time, co-op and vs. play have existed in video games. First in your own living room, then with people all over the world. Sometimes, with online play, you have the option of playing just with people you know, or random people, such as in games like Mario Kart or Super Smash Bros. Other times, you don’t even know who the random person you’re paired with is, like in Journey. And in others still, you may start off as strangers, but become as close as family. King of this last style is the MMO genre. MMOs, or Massively Multiplayer Online games, are just what they sound like. You play them online, with a massive amount of other players. Sometimes the game is small, and others, they’re so huge that they have to span across several servers. And people interact with each other, and make friends in these games. I never knew Tai (aka Yggdrasilly, aka Codex Vahlda). I recognized his name, having seen him in Backloggery chat, or mentioned in friends’ tweets about Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XIV. For me, he was just another person. But for my friends, as well as other people I don’t even know, he was a close friend, a trusted teammate, and an important part of their gaming lives. When people make friends in games, or come to a game already as friends, they want to regularly play together. In many games, they are allowed to form a group known as a Guild, or an equivalent to it. Guilds have certain benefits, such as being able to share at least certain parts of their currency and items, as well as giving you a group of people you can call on, whether to do quests, or just to hang out. In Final Fantasy XI, the guild equivalent was called Linkshells. Many of my friends played together with Tai in a Linkshell on FFXI. When they moved to FFXIV, many of them ended up on different servers, and in different Free Companies (Final Fantasy XIV’s guild equivalent), but they still kept in touch, and played together when they could. I don’t want to go into what happened, partially because I don’t know all of the details, and partially because it’s not my place. But to explain it as simply as I could, he was found with no brain activity, and was being kept on life support so that his family could pay their last respects before he passed. Wanting to do something for him, his Free Company leader bestowed upon his character the rank of “Immortal Siren” (Codex Vahlda, his character, was a bard). Then people started coming to the front of their FC House, and kneeling in silence and in prayer, or, if they are bards, playing for him. People from his FC. Friends not in his FC. Random people who saw the gathering, asked what it was for, and joined in. It was posted to reddit, and someone started streaming the vigil. More people joined in. People posted their condolences from other servers, both on the reddit and in the stream channel’s chat. People (myself included) who don’t even play the game, who didn’t know him, paid their respects. From what is understood, the video stream was even being broadcast in his hospital room, for the benefit of his friends and family there. Then some of those friends on other servers, set up their own vigils. On one server, a group of people, both friends and others who just wanted to pay respect, set up a Viking funeral. All across numerous servers, across multiple continents, players from all different backgrounds and walks of life were joining together to honor a man that most of them had never met, but that they felt the need to support the family and friends of. Even in World of Warcraft and EVE Online, other online games, people were paying respect to him. For those who both knew and didn’t know him on Backloggery, “Games for Yggdrasil” was started, for people to play and finish the games that he had left unfinished, in his place and to honor him. It was even said that word had made it to the Final Fantasy Fan Festival taking place in Japan, and that people were discussing what was happening: Hundreds of people, all over the world, coming together in a show of support for their fellow players, and one person that most of them had never, and would never get a chance to meet. Video games are all about violence. Video games rot your brain. Video games are only played by solitary people. Look at all this, and just try to tell me that you honestly believe it. One person. One person, taken before their time, who just enjoyed playing a video game, brought together hundreds of people, from all around the world, just to honor him. He may not have touched their lives directly, but the actions of those he did touch touched them, in a way that they might not even realize. Reading the reddit thread, through my own tears, so many people who, like me, don’t play the game, and didn’t know him, are crying. Because he touched someone we know, who in turn has touched us, in a ripple effect. Yes, there are many negative things one could say about video games. But in this internet age with online gaming, it also has the power to bring people together, in ways that could never be imagined even 15-20 years ago. And one person, one solitary person, has the power to bring people together and touch lives, even without having ever interacted with them. That is the power of video games, and one the worth of one life.
