It’s In The Game: Part One

  You know when I got my first computer, back in the stone age of such things, I became very addicted to online chatting. My brother and I created a chat room of our own on mirc called “The Oasis Bar”. For a year that was our favorite virtual hangout. He and I had complete control over who was welcome in the bar and who was not, which was a function of mirc that made their chat rooms so much more desirable than those on AOL. Those were the days of dial up modems and slow download speeds, but the chat room worked pretty well most of the time. Tinman (me) and Muddog (my brother) could talk to people all over the world. We thought it was awesome. We had regular “customers” at the Oasis Bar who showed up every night. Muddog and I kept them entertained with our zany antics and it was fun. He would say something just a little bit bad and I would say, “Tinman rolls up a newspaper and hits Muddog on the nose with it – bad Muddog!” And he would come back with “Muddog gets a shotgun and shoots Tinman and uses him for a cheese grater.” It was fun and way more entertaining than anything on TV. And I got to know my brother a whole lot better even though at the time we lived eight hundred miles apart. When I was at work, all I could think about was getting home and slipping back into that virtual world. I was that addicted. For all that year, my wife was working evenings while I was working days. So being at the Oasis Bar probably kept me home and out of real ones and kept me out of trouble.

  After a year, things changed in my life and the computer world began to change more quickly than I could keep up with financially. The Oasis Bar closed down never to reopen again. Several years later, armed with a brand new computer and high speed cable internet, I got back on mirc to see what it would be like. It had changed. People weren’t just “chatting” anymore by typing what they had to say and waiting for a response. Most of them had gone to voice communications. And there was all this omg, bbl, wth, ggp, rofl, lmao, stuff going on with the ones who did still stoop to non-verbal communication (and I use the term lightly here – for nothing was being communicated to me). It was like I stumbled into a foreign language room, and I was the only one who didn’t speak the language. So I uninstalled the mirc software I had just downloaded and never went back again. The magic was gone.

  Three or four years ago I heard about something called “My Space” at work. I was encouraged by a friend to check it out. I did. I created my own myspace page. It allowed some communication with people I knew but was nothing like the old mirc chat rooms. I had e-mail of course, but it seemed like the novelty had worn off there too, and people quit using it. I may still have a My Space page out there…I don’t know. Facebook came along and blew My Space out of the water. Two years ago, I started my modest little facebook page with my one or two friends posting pictures and daily inconsequential stuff. Then all my relatives started getting on facebook too and were sending me friend requests. How cool was that? Now I have over two hundred friends on my friend list. I never had that many friends in real life. Hell, who am I kidding? I never had more friends than I could count on one hand with some fingers left over. So Facebook was an awesome way to keep in touch with friends and relatives on a daily basis, and I even got to know some relatives that I had never met face to face before.

  Through one of those relatives, I was invited to play a little game on Facebook called Farmville. I did for a while but it was one of those never ending games that only serves to kill a little time when you’re so bored you would go sit outside and watch the grass grow for entertainment. Then I retired. That changed a great deal of how I spent my time. Facebook became my link to the real world as I was feeling no longer connected to it in a real way otherwise. During the next two years I wrote three books to fill up the long isolated days and nights. It was something that had been bottled up in me for so many years and, when I uncorked that bottle, it just came gushing out. But with more changes in my life, that most of you are aware of and we won’t go into here, time became a vast wasteland that needed something mindless to fill it to keep the boogey man away.

  On a bored out of my mind day, one of those little thingies on the side of the Facebook page caught my eye inviting me to play a game called “Battle Pirates”. Hey there was an Errol Flynn time in my younger days when I dreamed about being a pirate plundering the high seas and saving damsels in distress. If I couldn’t be a real Indian, then I wanted to be a pirate. So I tried Battle Pirates and I’ve been addicted once again like I was to mirc in the olden days. In Battle Pirates you have your own island base that you have to defend and can build fleets of ships to go out and do battle with the evil drac empire or with your neighbors. You can also form alliances with neighbors and friends to pillage and plunder together while protecting each other from the bad guys. And more importantly, there’s a little chat window down in the bottom left hand corner of the screen enabling you to “talk” to everyone who is in the same sector as you. My pirate name is Crabbe. I googled historical pirate names and found an interesting one named John Crabbe. Now everyone mostly calls me Crab or Crabbie on there, and tells me to pinch my opponents with my claws or keep my eyestalk peeled for intruders.

  Like Farmville, Battle Pirates is one of those never ending games but, because of the interaction and ability to chat with other players at the same time as battling for your pirate life, the game is very addictive. The alliance I’m in is called SWAC (Salt Water Crocs), and is made up of people from all over the US, Great Britain, and even one guy from New Zealand.  Most of them are just as addicted to the game as I am. We all spend hours every day battling our mutual enemies, discussing improvements to our island defenses, building bigger and better fleets of ships and just chatting about our part of the real world. For me, it gives me a sense of not being alone in the world. I spend seven days a week basically alone and isolated. But this silly little game keeps me sane and in touch with what’s going on “out there”. It would be nice to have friends I see on a regular basis. But I don’t. So for now, my virtual friends will have to do. And some of them, by now, probably know more about me than some of my real friends and family do.

  So now I have something that keeps me grounded and, at the same time, keeps me from sinking into a very lonely abyss of sadness and despair. I shudder to think how these days would have gone for me back before we had the internet. Sometimes, late at night, talking to my pirate friends KaBcruiser, or her mate ssssspaz, or aCe, or rjsmarauders, or Twisted_Pyro, or n2xdr helps me make it through a very tough time. So if you ever find yourself lonely and bored, jump on board matey – adventure awaits you. There are lots of scallywags out there that need to be taught a lesson. So all hands on deck, grab your swords, and join the battle alongside the good Captain Crabbe.  You never know whose life you might help save and what interesting people you might meet that you never would have otherwise. Arrrrrrrrrg!