Growing Up Gaming: An Interview with Jake Harden
“I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was 12 — Jesus, did you?”
-Stephen King, The Body
Past generations often lament the death of the daily after school playtime. They experienced their childhood with other neighborhood kids, and are saddened that their kids seem uneager to do the same. Countless Facebook rants have been authored on the topic, many pointing to the advent of modern technology as the killer of childhood socialization. These parents and grandparents are correct, the local kickball game is cancelled forever and nobody is occupying the soccer goal. What they do not understand is that in today’s world, these social events often happen online instead of at the cul de sac.
Jake Harden, now 18 years old, joined the Royal Scottish Army (RSA) when he was 12. To him, it was the only way to make it through the day.
“I was the weird-ish kid in school and I only had a couple of friends. I’d come home at 4 and play until midnight”.
For most people, that amount of gaming would be concerning. For Jake, video games weren’t the point.
“We were a support group for each other. I would come home from whatever the fuck I did that day and there would be all these great people in this one spot that were super nice and supportive of each other”.
Jake found more than friends in RSA. In the community he developed his greatest passion, music.
“I grew up listening to music. You can express yourself so many different ways with it.”
He became best friends with another RSA member, Andrew, through their shared love of music.
“Andrew had a great appreciation for music as well. We really hit it off. He inspired me to start playing the drums, and we would jam together for hours over Skype.”
More importantly to Jake, music was key to rebuilding the father-son bond that was missing when he first joined RSA.
“Music helped me improve my relationship with my father when I got older. I was a stupid kid and hated him, so we were at odds for awhile. But he was super into music, and it helped us build a bond again.”
RSA is why Jake believes he is able to live a happy life today.
“I felt like I didn’t have a relationship with anyone before joining the community. I was depressed and didn’t know how to express myself. In RSA, I learned how to get passed those bad feeling with the help of my friends.”
Even with the community’s end in late 2015, Jake still maintains a relationship with all the friends he made along the way.
“They are always going to be my friends, even if they have moved on with their lives. We all grew up gaming together, and I will never, ever forget that.”
Children meeting with their friends after school never went away. Jake, and all of the other kids in this generation still experienced their childhood with other people. Yet instead of their experience being limited to their neighbors, they can talk to a boy from the city of Chicago and a girl from the suburbs of Budapest simultaneously. Technology has expanded our streets and widened our neighborhoods infinitely. For the first time in history, the world’s children can grow up together. Perhaps, Jake described the phenomenon best:
“The friends I made are thousands of miles away and have never met me. Yet, when I think back on my childhood they are the faces in my head and the voices on my mind.”
