It will probably be no surprise for me to say that I am a casual gamer. I’m not a hardcore person yelling at teammates when someone messes up. This is mostly because I would be the one to mess up. But I’m also not someone who thinks games are a complete waste of time. At least, not the fun games with good writing and sometimes terrible puns.
I routinely play two free turn based browser RPGs. They are: Kingdom of Loathing and Twilight Heroes. Both of these games are very fun, not terribly frustrating and well written. In Kingdom of Loathing I get messages from people who think I sold something for too little meat (“and here is some more”) or receive Crimbo presents from complete strangers. Odd for a game filled with disco bandits and accordion thieves. In Twilight Heroes they have incredibly welcoming and helpful people. They also have a league of crazy buffers and that is kind of awesome.
Shortly before my husband died I signed up for a contest in Twilight Heroes. I’m not great at these games so I didn’t expect to get a prize but it was a good way to learn about how things work. Three days after the funeral the contest started. I thought about backing out. I was a newbie and it wasn’t like I was going to win. I can’t do an entire run in less than a couple of weeks at my fastest. I also didn’t feel like doing anything at all. It hurt so much that I couldn’t think or even breathe. To be honest, I often still feel that way.
For whatever stupid reason I started the contest and played. I got up every day fed the rabbit, sat down beside the rabbit and played Twilight Heroes and Kingdom of Loathing and then stared at the TV without comprehension for the rest of the day. I could concentrate for those couple of hours but not much more than that.
I can’t say I enjoyed it in the same way as before but as silly and as small a thing as a game can be it was a reason to do something each day. (Turns only accumulate to a certain point so after a couple days you use them or lose turns.) I can’t say I looked forward to playing but it was something to do each day that did not completely suck.
There are big reasons to keep going and there are small reasons. The problem with a lot of the big reasons (not all but a lot of them) is that they take deep resources to make worthwhile. It takes the commitment of your mind, heart, body and will to run a marathon or go to the important and meaningful job. The payout is tremendous but when you’re grieving those parts of you are difficult to give. With the small things the comforts and rewards are less but what you need to put in isn’t nearly as costly. That’s important when you don’t have a lot of yourself to give. It’s also very important not to make those small comforts into the big reasons for living. When you do that then you become the kid your party screaming at someone for messing up a run and that’s not cool.
The point of this long winded rambling is this: be thankful for the people who create things that give you a small comfortable reason to wake up each day. Thank and support the creators if you can. Also, you should play both Kingdom of Loathing and Twilight Heroes. They are fun games.