Of Love Lost and Youth Wasted

Let me take you back to the heady days of 1997. Clinton was in office, and at the risk of beating a dead horse with a really stupid joke, he was, as they say, getting his weiner sucked. The dot-com boom was entering COCAINE-INDUCED DIGITAL FRENZY MODE, but like many young Americans, I had no idea that there was an internet beyond the confines of AOL keywords and chat rooms. Yes, for many years, I was a user of AOL. I am not proud of this fact, but nevertheless, it is a part of me. A non-malignant tumor, in all likelihood. 

Back then, there was a game on AOL called DragonRealms.  It actually still exists, albeit with far fewer users than it had at its peak. It was basically a MUD (multi-user dungeon, for the unsullied among you). It was nerdy as all get-out, and since I was a fat kid without fashion sense or a robust social network, I spent many adolescent evenings in the Crossing, hunting rats at the shipyard, skinning them with my cutlass, and selling them for pennies. I then graduated up to goblins and cougars, and boy, those were exciting times.

But what really separated DragonRealms from the massively-multiplayer games that we have now was that it was primarily a social game.  Even though the game's combat and crafting systems were brilliantly designed, levelling and "theorycrafting" both took a back seat to the game's content and story.  Another way to put it is that the players were people that knew how to read and enjoyed doing so. Most people that know how to read don't have a lot of friends. That's just a simple axiom that everyone can agree on. So, logically, these people who knew how to read would socialize with their fellow agoraphobes in the mystical land of Zoluren and its environs.

I had played the game in a very casual fashion as Charlo, the Dwarven Paladin. I was shitty at the game but I had fun. More importantly, I learned about life and love. It was in DR that I met Shetan Johar, an Elven Cleric who had cast a charm spell on my heart.  She had violet eyes, just like Elizabeth Taylor.  We laughed and chatted together in the Crossing, trading adolescent observations about good parenting, cinema, knock knock jokes, and some dreadfully misinformed notions about procreative processes. We grew very close, or at least as close as the indifferent 28800 baud bonds of AOL would allow.

 

One day, Shetan told me that her mother was going to cancel their AOL account. We were both heartbroken. We resolved to stay in contact via mail. After swearing to contact me, she said "I hope I see you again" and vanished into digital oblivion, never to return to DragonRealms.

To my astonishment, about a month after that incident, I received a letter from an unfamiliar address. Jubilation! A letter from my lost e-love! I opened the envelope to discover that she had calligraphied my real name on it with a blue pen (parts of it had white-out on it. Calligraphy is fucking hard, okay?) It smelled of air freshener and reunion.

Here, faithfully transcribed, is that letter in its entirety:

Charlo,

Hey, how ya doin'? I'm pissed at my mom but thats usual lately. I wish I could talk to you, I miss you so much. I'm in one of my foul moods, I think its withdrawl, ::laugh::. Anyways how are things up there? I'm trying to think of a way to get AOL back so I could talk to you again. I feel like I just gave up all my friends. I know I didn't but thats what it feels like. It would be so cool if I met you one day but I doubt that would ever happen. Do you think you might be able to call me sometime? If you can't thats ok but I'd really like to talk to you. I wish I could call you but with the state of mind my mom's in I doubt it, she keeps saying its a waste of money (she won't even let me pay for it). Either way I'll try to call you if you give me your number. Mail me a recent picture of you ok? ...or two or three. ::grin:: My dad's mad at me now ::sigh:: ....I'm not used to him being mad at me. He's mad 'cause I cut my hair without calling him first. I know I should have but I didn't think about it because I don't live with him and I only see him three times during the year....god I wish that was a good excuse. Anyways! I don't know how I got on that subject. I'm going to have to try to find some of my good pictures or take some new ones. I guess I should get new ones since I cut my har. ::shrug:: I dunno. Oh yeah I'm glad you have my necklace. It kinda made me feel special, that you wanted it I mean. Shelley kept asking what you were to me, I really didn't know what to tell her. I couldn't tell if you were being completly in character or OOC or what. Obviously I can't keep my mind on one topic. Oh well! I'm trying to think of somethin' else to say but I'm running out of ideas. Okay I'll describe myself so you'll have to do the same.

Like I said I have dark brown hair, which is now only about three inches past my shoulder (its so short!!!!), brown eyes, I'm 5'1", and 95lbs., and I usually have a tan. I don't wear glasses, I used to though, I don't smoke, drunk, do drugs etc. etc. I have a little white American Eskimo - dog, her names Sassy. I already told you that I sold the horse I had. That's what pic. I'll send you! One of me riding! My best side! ::grin:: Ummmm........I like riding, blading, arguing, talking to my friends, hanging w/my friends, ....I really like talking to you. Thats about it. I gotta go so I can sulk and try to change my moms mind ::grin:: Well I'll see ya.

Shannon Harris

2-19-97

P.S.

My phone # is XXX-XXX-XXXX call me if you can. Can you give me your #too? Alright thats it. G'bye.

I believe I mailed her back, and that she mailed me back one more time, but I don't know what happened to either letter. In the end, we weren't meant to be. Shetan, if you're out there, I'd just like to say thanks for the memories, and also that I hope you weren't a rapist, because if so, well played, good sir.

Are We the Baddies?

For whatever it's worth on a YouTube channel as small as mine, my LP of Silent Hunter III is probably my "flagship" series (har har, it's a submarine game, and then it's my flagship, and then... I hate myself.)  It definitely comprises the majority of my videos and views.  I'm glad that people seem to like it because I like playing it, most of the time.  Sometimes it devolves into a grudge match where I feel like I need to finish a patrol simply because it needs to be finished, not because I'm having fun.  Silent Hunter generally reminds me of fishing.  I sit for a while, sometimes a long while, before I get a bite.  The time between bites can really drag and I can get a little cranky waiting.

In those long moments of quiet, a fisherman often finds himself in idle introspection.  I did most of my fishing as a teenager and thus my thoughts generally involved video games, warrantless self-pity, and boobs.  My tastes have since become more refined, and while I still pay due consideration to the odd boob now and then, I can say that I've become a thinker-gamer.  Between sinking ships and infiltrating ports, I have to consider the fact that I'm playing a game that casts you in the role of a German naval officer in World War II, and that I'm most definitely fighting for the bad guys.

I should mention that nobody raised this point to me other than one of the many voices inside my head.  Nobody sent me some sappy jeremiad about how I'm corrupting the minds of 50-some YouTubers (an achievement which I'm really happy about, by the way!)  If I allow myself to think about it, I feel... well, I don't feel BAD about it, I just feel odd.  It's a video game, after all.  It's pixels and switches.

So why have I tallied the number of people my digital kaleun has killed with his boat?  It's 2,937 so far, according to SH3 Commander.  1,449 of those were civilians.  I've sunk 266,193 tons of merchant shipping, most of it vital materiel for the Allied war effort.  103,338 tons of naval wreckage sit on the bottom of the ocean too.

These numbers have no meaning whatsoever since it's a god damn video game.  Yet there's something irreverent to me about quantifying human misery and using it as the "score" in a game.  It reminds me of Robert MacNamara's statisticization of war, an extension of Stalin's infamous remark about a man's death being a tragedy, while a million deaths is a statistic.  It's probably an undeserved association that I'm drawing because, again, it's a silly-assed game.  It's also a historical fact that a u-boat captain's success was measured in tons.  If you're going to make a game about it, there's nothing else you can really use.

I'd probably be okay with all of this if I didn't feel an irrational tinge of guilt by association.  World War II video games seem to attract a small but highly vocal cadre of what I'll call revisionists.  Not necessarily Nazis, mind you, but some people whose "what-if" scenarios are frankly kind of sick to consider in the level of detail that they go into, and they seem to dwell on them.  I'd cite examples but it's naturally kind of a touchy thing; I'm not really interested in calling random Internet people Nazis.  I do feel safe saying that a few minutes spent on a wargame forum, especially ones that specifically deal with WWII, will show you that there are people with a strange sort of Wehrmacht fanboyism.  They talk about how great German tanks were and muse about the results of a successful German campaign in Russia, and so on.  I'm sensitive to that kind of talk; not hostile, mind you, I just feel like it's sort of an inane effort that becomes ethically suspect when it's repeated often enough.  In order to find the merits of Nazi Germany's technological advances, you have to do a hell of a lot of surgery to detach it all from the fact that we're still talking about Nazi Germany.  Some people seem to dispense with that easily.  I don't.  And I don't know what good it does to make a habit of envisioning Nazi successes where there were historical failures.  Barring some sick fantasies, I don't think there's much of a result to that line of thinking other than "well, that's fucking terrible to consider.  Glad it didn't work out that way, hope it doesn't again in the future."

Video games invite us to project our own preconceived notions upon them.  Interactive as they may be, games can't answer for themselves.  Any statement we make about a video game's social value is going to reflect our own social values because the game obviously can't answer for itself.  When someone like Jack Thompson sees a game like Counter-Strike, they see a path down the rabbit hole that leads to a fat legal settlement.  Others see nothing but the pixels.  Others can't stop screaming "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!"  Maybe some people see an outlet for their violent fantasies.  I'll admit some guilt on the last count.  I cackled like a banshee when I blew up an ammunition ship in the game not too long ago.

When I have this little moral quandary about Silent Hunter III, I'm speaking as someone who has the unfortunate distinction of having a bachelor's degree in History.  I can't help but feel a little queasy about the Nazis.  I'm also probably just an oversensitive guy; after all, I have a blog.  There's my bias, and there's my game.

Don't worry though, I'm still going to play the game and laugh like a woman whenever I do something cool.