Getting Back to Gaming and the Comfort it Offers

Lately, I've had the peace of mind to get back to gaming. I say this purposely because in my stressful years of school, I did not engage with gaming or honestly, I didn't engage with much of anything besides the updates of social media.

Easing Back in with Pokémon GO 

Actually, I began my return to any kind of gaming pre-pandemic actually in 2018, when I began my Pokémon GO journey."Priscilla just download it." It was this command that finally made me finally download Pokémon GO ("pogo" as we call in informal situations) in Summer 2018, two full summers after it had captured the world's attention. I had spent the day prior playing a Kingdom Hearts mobile game and my interest fell quickly. My group of friends had been on a renaissance kick of the game after the raiding mechanic had been introduced. They had wanted me to play with them since the beginning, but I hesitated because I felt like a fake fan. (Which is a whole topic worthy of a different blog post...) 

I got on the bandwagon two years late, but I had a goal to hit level 40 in a year. I ended up achieving in a year and five days, but close enough for someone who honestly didn't know much about Pokémon beyond the original 151. I ended joining a community on Discord and making a good group of friends as well as re-connecting with people from my past in a new way. There came a certain change in my cognitive behavior as a result of pogo, my constantly racing mind had replaced negative thoughts with curiosities of the world around me. Then this pandemic put a damper on connecting with others the way we had been. Of course, playing pogo from home was not the same as playing with your community members.

A New Console

Although pogo took up most of my mobile gaming time, I also was introduced to the world of Animal Crossing via Pocket Camp, an Animal Crossing mobile game that had many features of the main series games. (I just reached my goal of crafting every amenity in the game, no more constantly under construction camp site!) Of course, I was excited when New Horizons was coming out, but I was not a Switch owner. Especially in the beginning of a global pandemic, I didn't plan on becoming one. I missed the first few days of game play to be surprised when a friend of mine lent me his Switch and I began my first Animal Crossing main series game. From there I would also explore Breath of the Wild, my first Zelda game period (I loved it whole-heartedly,) and other games. I ended up buying the Switch off of my friend. Lately, I'm playing through Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity and I'm putting in effort onto my ACNH island Purepaiso again. 

Connection Required

I've gotten back to playing my mobile games Pocket Camp and Pokémon GO, but the joy of returning to console gaming during this pandemic was a comfort that I wasn't aware I was missing. And, I would be missing a big component of sharing these games through online connectivity. Whether it was visiting my friend's islands on ACNH, playing a few rounds of AmongUs, or even reconnecting with my pogo community after remote raiding was introduced online connection has given some peace in the midst of the risk that actually being together currently translates to. This pandemic has pulled out from under us something that wasn't even a thought to us prior to it: hanging out together with our loved ones. Unlike most things we've had to turn digital, thankfully game night was easily made virtually because the technology was there and largely accustomed to.