Return.

Brought back by Overwatch

It’s been 3 months.

SUPERATOMOVISION took a hit during these past few months. I have been away because of work, personal opportunities, and to be truthful, an unfortunate return to depression.

This is my third bout with depression, and as such a lot of my regular life activities suffered. My writing ceased, my gaming stopped, and only trips to the cinema to stay in the loop were my only (brief) reprieve. I have also struggled with my health, but alas, that is an ongoing struggle.

I live away from my family, and because of my attachments and memories to my home town I find it difficult to return to see them on a regular basis. As I have lived in a new city for about a year and a half, I also don’t have many friends around me, again my support network is away from me. Also I found the general outlook of the world to be bleak, for the first time I felt disconnected with events that I had always believed would never happen. The fight, I thought, was lost.

I’m not finding excuses, I learnt that I shouldn’t do that as that can make it worse. Only I am in control.

With that in mind, I made a few sacrifices with some of my belongings and brought a PS4 and Overwatch. I went out and brought it because I wanted an attempt at taking back control, get something I always wanted.

It was a decision that I honestly thought would go the way of an expensive dust collector. Sitting on my desk, hardly getting played; a black slab of unused electronics.

Then this happened:

Thus far over the past 3 weeks since I have had both game and console, I have sunk nearly 20 hours into the game.

The cynic would suggest that this would only increase my detachment from everything out there.

On the contrary, I found the game to be something I didn’t think I was missing until it was staring me in the face. Fun.

My overall outlook because of a multiplayer FPS has been brighter. Maybe it’s simple psychology; the fact that there are bright colours, optimistic characters, a reward system that makes me feel successful. To borrow a phrase from Jeff Kaplan, I saw a future worth fighting for; both my own and the outside world.

A smile began to form, from winning, from dying, from giving it a go. That smile has changed into a more positive outlook over the past 3 weeks.

This has helped me complete my application steps so I can start University in September, taking steps to improve my diet, coming up with ways to make my life my own again, educating myself to help in the time of bleakness, learning a culture (Japan) that has fascinated me, and finally resurrecting SUPERATOMOVISION.

All thanks, pretty much, to a video game.

Jeff Kaplan, Blizzard, the Overwatch community, thank you.

Recently Jeff Kaplan gave a talk at the 2017 DICE Summit about Overwatch, he talks about everything that has made the game resonate with me. I recommend this wholeheartedly, even if you have never picked up a game controller before.

A perfect sign off would go well here, but this is a fight. And my fight won’t have a sign off until I say the fight is won.