Sometimes they’re more than games
For many people video games are a way for people to relax, or a way to lose themselves into a world other than our own. Some people get paid to play video games, and others create video games for a living. For every person there is that one game that sticks with them, a game for one reason or another that is important to them, it’s the same for any other medium. Someone could watch Star Wars and it could change their outlook on the world or be inspired by it and dedicate their life to it, like many who went into special effects after the opening scene in A New Hope.
I have a few separate things that had that effect on me growing up but never that all defining thing that changed me, you never know what it is going to be and it can surprise you in the end what sticks with you over the years. For me Persona 3 is the thing that has stuck with me over the years, and it is something that I continue to come back to and play at least once a year. I had just finished High School and I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. I had just moved to a new state at the beginning of my Senior year of High School thanks to my father being in the military. I had never played a Persona game before, I can’t quite remember why I first decided to give this game a try but I suppose it doesn’t really matter any more. I rented Persona 3 FES from Gamefly and after several sleep deprived nights of playing the game (still just barely scratching the surface of it) I started bursting at the seams talking about the game to my best friend.
Growing up with my father in the military meant that we didn’t stay in any place for very long. I started going to college knowing no one, I’m naturally very shy so I sat at the back of the class not making eye contact with anyone or speaking to them. We then took a short break, and I went and sat in the lounge area by myself and this guy comes and sits down across from me and tells me he loves the hoodie that I’m wearing. We struck up a conversation and ended up being really close friends, we were very close we spent a lot of time together. We would spend weekends playing through the game on my ps2. He ended up finding a copy of it at a store and purchased it, now we had competing games going on.We discussed the game constantly and became avid fans of the series that we had only just become aware of. After months of playing and replaying the game it became the game we enjoyed to talk about. When Gears of War 2 came out we each purchased the game, I struggled on one of the first missions luckily he was a big fan of the original so we would hop online to play through the game in co-op. Now I own Persona 3 FES and Persona 4, that time I spent playing the games with him and the countless conversations we had over the game are cherished memories.
We didn’t get the chance to learn about or play through Persona 4 together, as he heartbreakingly passed away in a car accident in 2009. The Persona series will always be the series that reminds me of my best friend more than anything else, of him and the vast amounts of weekends that we spent playing the game whenever college didn’t demand our attention. I own a copy of Persona 3 FES and once a year I make sure to play through the game at least once, and every time I do I’m flooded with the feelings of losing him, and the feelings of unabashed love and enjoyment we both shared for each other and the game that brought us together. The persona series has since become something that is more than just a video game to play to cure my current boredom, It’s become one of the very few ways I can still feel a strong connection to him even though he is gone. I have kept everything that I possibly could of his or anything that reminds me of him. I refuse to delete his gamertag he created on my 360 hard drive I refuse to get rid of the converse that I have had since high school because of the fact that he wrote on them a week after I met him.
It’s such a horrible feeling to lose someone that meant so much to you, to know that all the plans we had made were never going to come to fruition. I’ve never had the luxury of staying in one place for very long, my military upbringing meant we were always leaving for a new base, a new state, a new country. I’ve never been in one place for more than six years at a time. Getting stuck here in Ohio to spend my senior year in high school felt horrid to me, to think that after spending my high school years with a consistent group of friends and then having to leave just before my last year. Starting to go into college to find that he was in each and every single one of my classes, spending all our time playing video games or drawing for school. Spending countless hours during countless weekends trudging through Persona 3 and playing Gears of War 2.
For many people they have something that pushed them, that inspired them to go out and create something. I have Persona 3 and the time and love me and my best friend spent together enjoying it.
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