Online Gaming Helped Me Survive Two Lockdowns
From drinks with friends to a 35th birthday party on my Animal Crossing island
We cannot deny that 2020 was a tough year for everyone around the world. There is not really a sector of our society that has not been impacted by what happened last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. No one could have predicted just how badly the economy would be affected by the coronavirus and the impact that it would also have on the mental health of people around the world due to lockdowns and stay at home orders. Isolation, loss of face-to-face social interactions, and uncertainty about when potentially-vulnerable loved ones could once again be seen triggered depression and other mental health challenges for many.
Living in Melbourne, Australia, we were unlucky enough to see two waves of the pandemic spread to communities and aged care homes. The “second” wave led to the Victorian Government implementing restrictions that kept people at home (including work from home requirements).
Before I go any further, let me briefly discuss my profession. I am a lawyer, and as such, I am required to take the weight off a client’s shoulders and work out the appropriate tactics and strategy to formalise a resolution and outcome that a client will be happy about. Legal practice is not the glamorous profession so often portrayed in television and movies; it’s often very stressful. In 1990, a study by Johns Hopkins found that out of 28 occupations, lawyers were the most likely to suffer depression — 3.6 times more likely than the surveyed average. Some reports suggest that nearly 40% of law students and lawyers deal with depression. Combine that with a pandemic, a state-wide lockdown, and isolation, it could make anyone go crazy.
Being a casual gamer under these circumstances helped to ensure that my stressful 9–5 job wouldn’t affect my mental health. A typical outlet for stress would be social face-to-face catch ups on Friday evenings or weekends with family and friends. But the pandemic made such gatherings both inadvisable and technically banned. Alternative arrangements had to be considered. Some people took to Zoom to host Friday night events or family gatherings. Others jumped on multiplayer gaming for its unique form of escapism.
I could not see myself sitting in front of a webcam and chatting with family or friends, inside a tiny box looking like part of a Brady Bunch remake. I felt I needed more — a sense of freedom, comfort, and a more immersive escape. Sometime around May last year, I was chatting to a few friends who shared a common interest in gaming.
We discussed the types of games we usually played, but it never really occurred to us to play together online.
One friend enjoyed Apex Legends. Another preferred Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Call of Duty. We had a light bulb moment. What if we could take our social outings into the virtual world? Agreement was unanimous and instant; why didn’t we think of this earlier? Maybe a barrier had been our work commitments and limited time. But now we were all working from home, and as a result, we had more time to play online together. So, we agreed on the games we all wanted to play and decided to try to meet at least once a fortnight in our chosen virtual space. Our need for social interaction merged with our love for video games.
Here are the three games we played together.
Diablo III
We started with Diablo III on the PlayStation 4, which came out back in 2014. Although it had long been a popular action-RPG, I had never been especially interested in it. And, at any rate, I felt it would be better-enjoyed with a group of friends, each playing different character classes.
Playing Diablo in multiplayer from the beginning was the best experience I had during lockdown. We were all armed with our PS4 headsets so that we could chat away while playing. Not only did this offer an outlet for social interaction, but we found ourselves conversing for hours without realising how much time had passed. My attention began to shift from solo campaigns towards games that involved greater social interaction.
We enjoyed our time together in Diablo so much that, upon completing the main campaign, we started the game all over again just to continue to have a place to meet — until we were able to catch up in person.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons
While it’s true that you can enjoy Animal Crossing: New Horizons on your own, the biggest attraction is the ability to interact with friends.
I managed to get my island of “Zakynthos” to a 4-start resort level. And of course, the famous K.K. Slider performed a few shows on my island, including on my birthday. Speaking of which, I turned 35 on the 16th of July…in lockdown. It was impossible to have a typical birthday party, so instead, my friends (who had been playing Diablo with me), met on my island for a virtual birthday party. I provided cupcakes upon arrival, and my little community of anthropomorphic animals — who remembered my birthday — supplied a birthday cake (and prepared a piñata as a party game).
Animal Crossing ensured that I could still have a memorable birthday, despite the circumstances. I was spending time with friends, making memories, and having some laughs along the way.
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
Much like Diablo, I was initially reluctant to purchase Mario Kart. I’d bought a Switch in 2018 and believed that Nintendo would surely announce a brand new Mario Kart for the console. However, my friends convinced me that this wasn’t a concern to be worried about. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe was still popular and was likely to remain so for a while to come.
Diablo and Animal Crossing facilitated social interaction, craziness, and laughs — but these games weren’t exactly competitive. We were missing that element. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe would test our friendship as we took to the racetrack.
Nintendo don’t offer native voice chat on the Switch (you have the option to use the Nintendo Switch Online app on your phone), so instead, we resorted to chatting via Facebook Messenger. We’d send messages back-and-forth between races. Our conversations mostly involved light-hearted smack-talking, or laughing at each other’s dirty tactics.
They do say that laughter is the best medicine. The competitiveness of Mario Kart helped us all escape the pains we may have been experiencing within our normal lives.
Conclusion
Online gaming helped me maintain my sanity and gave me a precious window of opportunity to catch up with friends during the pandemic.
These games were an escape from the constant barrage of news about the Coronavirus (at the time, everybody was glued to their TVs each day to see the latest numbers, as we eagerly awaited the end of lockdown). The ability to log into a game and speak to friends helped to ward off anxiety and depression, no doubt.
Of course, the virus will not go away anytime soon. As such, I feel we need to have an interactive haven where anyone can temporarily escape from their current realities. Online gaming is the perfect platform to allow for safe social interaction with others while avoiding feelings of loneliness.
