We surely live in a world which is being quickly taken over by the digital phenomenon. One might argue that we still hold on to the roots and stick to the conventional ways of meeting friends and making plans, but NO! we don’t and given the overall milieu, it’s okay. The fast paced life and digital means of communication has made it easier to be in touch with almost all of your friends, with just a click or tap of a button.
Sometimes, we drop a text or make a call, trying to hold on to that ‘friendship’ which gets instigated during the first Sunday of August, celebrated as ‘Friendship Day’ and eventually revert back to a text.
However, when it comes to gamers, I have found the story to be somewhat different. While, people are struggling to create that quaint social bonding of friendship amidst the rush or this fast paced life, gamers around the globe create new friends and memories whenever they communicate to the gaming community and that happens almost every day while playing games. Countless stories can be brought to the picture which show how the games of the virtual world mediated to create memorable friendships in the real world.
In my personal experience, I started playing when I was in school, visiting cyber cafes, meeting new people; it was fun and exciting. Why? Because we all had one common interest, gaming. My gaming friend circle further expanded with the advent of the internet. I started playing online games and quickly made friends all around the country and some overseas too with everyone asking me to come visit their place. So, you generally would be sceptical to hang out with folks you met over the internet, but honestly for me the experiences have always been great. I have travelled over the country to meet the gamers, been in touch with them since years now and I still meet up with them at least once a year (when we have a get together followed by a Lan party) and we’re always connected thoroughly through a medium called ‘video games’.
I’ve heard similar stories from my fellow gamers as well. Mukul Shinde, a Mumbai based gaming enthusiast says, “Being a gamer you have a relatively small social life compared to others as you spend most of your time playing games. But that does not fetch you away from making friends. While playing an online multiplayer game you occasionally find people with whom you can enjoy the game and at the same time you can accomplish your in-game goals.” He even mentioned a story of his own, “I started following competitive gaming through DOTA and after the release of DOTA 2, I used to play it a lot even though I was not so good at it. While playing a party match with a friend, I met a guy from USA who is originally from Phillipines and since that day we have been best friends and are also working on a project related to eSports, as we do share similar goals and have a similar thought process.”
It’s not just the regular gamers who believe in that, the Indian gaming industry testifies this fact too. Nodwin Gaming, founder, Akshat Rathee states, “I met the co-founder of Nodwin Gaming while playing StarCraft. Nodwin Gaming would not have existed if I did not make an online (gaming) friend called Gautam Virkh. He had just come down from Canada and he enquired on the Team Liquid forum that if anyone from India is playing StarCraft. Eight people replied, of which I was one. We started playing together and we became good friends. So, one day I asked him to come down here, so that we could start some venture together and once he came we did a lot of things together and eventually founded Nodwin Gaming together. So, I don’t have a better friend in life than Gautam and he is a friend I met online while playing StarCraft!”
Novaplay is a fairly new, indigenous community platform which aims at bringing together and Nova Gaming Ventures, CEO, Amitesh Rao expressed his thoughts saying, “Gaming teaches you much like football, team work, how to deal with other people and obviously you reach out to a lot of likeminded people who have similar interests. So, I think there is a lot of tribalism in gaming. It’s not just a gaming network, it helps you groom your social and collaborative skills. I don’t think gaming is about making one friend or making five friends but it develops you as a person in many ways, it also prepares you for non-gaming scenarios. Novaplay is fundamentally a community platform for multiplayer gamers and we offer a host of functionalities and technologies for gamers to collaborate and talk to each other and to find other people with similar interests. So, at its core, it’s a social networking platform for gamers, therefore, it is designed to help you build your gaming clans and communities.”
Jai Sachdeva, a gamer from Delhi shared a similar perspective, “Smite has been a life changing game for me. As someone who appreciates friendship more than anything else, it was an amazing experience. I met many people on Smite that have become very good friends of mine. The most awesome thing about gaming community is that race, gender, religion, orientation never are a concern when you meet a fellow gamer. I met a guy named Karan who had started an initiative of bringing all the Indian players under one hood and I joined him in the cause. Our joint efforts brought almost 300 Indian players together. Some international Smite community groups got me some more friends and got me acquainted with some fabulous people. I had also started a Smite photography page after Karan’s suggestion and it got me thousands of followers shortly. Consequently I got into Smite Magazine staff and have been there ever since. We also have a really active Smite India group on whatsapp and it’s probably the only group that stays on topic most of the time, out of all other groups that I am in (laughs).”
These are just some of the many stories and if you think people who play games all the time instead of socialising, reality check: they’re always making friends, from all over the world and there’s just one common interest that binds them, their passion for gaming.
So, on this Friendship Day, I wish all my fellow gamers and everyone else out there, Happy Friendship Day, keep playing games and keep etching memories!