One of the primary precursors to starting this website outside of dreaming about it for years has been the sheer amount of time I have found myself with over the course of the past twelve months. In July of 2019 I made the decision to seek out a new challenge; this led me to leave a job of five years that I enjoyed and was wildly successful at as well as colleagues whom I truly enjoyed interacting with on a daily basis. While I loved that job and my co-workers I found myself wanting something more, primarily because I had simply accomplished all I could in that position and needed greater responsibility. So I set out scouring the internet for positions that appeared they would meet that general desire. Needless to say I found one that at the time I thought would be perfect.
The position seemed tailor made for my background and experiences. As you can probably already guess it was far from perfect. There are many reasons why it was far from perfect but to sum it up, it was one of those positions that looks good on paper but in practice was far from it. For one I failed to critically think about the organization and identify whether or not it held but more importantly practiced the same values and ideals as myself. Also in a rush to seek greater responsibility, I failed to ask myself why I loved my previous position so much. Information that in retrospect would have been very beneficial to avoiding what became a series of seriously misfortune events. I could go into all the details of the who, what, when and why but let’s just say that I found a challenge just not the one I was looking for. Unfortunately for me that challenge wasn’t completing some puzzles and getting cake; instead it was jumping from room to room trying to escape a rogue AI hellbent on destroying me. After three very long months evading the inevitable, I found myself for the first time in twelve years with no job.
Initially, I was bound and determined to march on, after all I have always been a very resilient and adaptable individual. Fast forward several months of failed job interviews, relationship troubles, soul-sucking part-time work and a global pandemic, I found myself feeling depressed, defeated and absolutely pwned by life. This time was different not because I am some prodigy feeling failure for the first time, I mean I have failed a lot in life and I do mean a lot. Instead it was different because for the first time I hadn’t bounced back yet. Simply put I ran out of tokens.
This sort of feeling can have a profound effect on a persons psyche. For me it meant waking up dreading each day of mindless part time work and looking for yet more professional jobs. Pretty much nothing brought me joy, even the thought of playing video games brought a sense of pain and hopelessness. With each passing day I found myself slipping more and more into a world of despair. That is until one day when I forced myself to sit down and start playing a game that I had started but never finished. I guess in my utter state of despair I decided that finishing something, anything might give me a tinge of hope. So I opened Steam and went through my seemingly endless list of games and settled on one game that I felt I could pick up where I left off. With a few clicks, my computer was re-installing Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age. At the time I didn’t think anything of this decision, but in retrospect my choice would have a dramatic effect.
Happiness in Darkness
If you haven’t played the game yet and are a stickler for even minor spoilers then you should probably just stop reading at this point (thanks for reading up until this point too!). With that said the primary reason I picked Dragon Quest XI was because I remembered definitively where I left off. The last time I had played the game months before I had left off during Act 2 in Cobblestone now refered to as the Last Bastion. I had already defeated the darkness plaguing the region and was about to set out with my now frenemy Hendricks in an attempt to rid the rest of the world of darkness. I started off following the games suggestion for where to go next, however, after a few minutes I found myself wandering off to explore as I often do in video games. Exploring the world to see what had changed led me to the Champs Sauvage where I on a whim decided to head south to Phnom Nonh and see what was happening there. What happened next seemed like destiny both digitally and emotionally.
As I approached the bridge to cross over into the Southern Champs Sauvage I found myself speaking with a random NPC in need of help. As the consummate hero I of course decided to help him when to my surprise an old companion re-entered the game. It was at this moment that Sylvando appears and not only became my new favorite companion but brought something to my face that I hadn’t had in a while…a Smile! After a fight and some brief cut-scenes you learn that Sylvando after what seemed to be the end of the world set out to defeat darkness not by physically destroying it but instead to bring happiness back into the world with his Soldiers of Smile. Now I was already smiling but the next part of the adventure brought true unfiltered joy to me. After the cut scene ends I find my character transformed and ready to lead the Smile Parade.
In that moment I suddenly felt myself be happy for the first time in months as I sat there going back and forth between all out laughter and giggling like a little kid. Needless to say it was a wonderful moment. It was so beautiful and pure that I found myself marching up and down the road to Phnom Nonh over and over again as I didn’t want that moment to end. But like all things I eventually had to move on. Only this time was different than before, as I completed Sylvando’s re-recruitment arc, I found myself contemplating everything that had happened to me in the past year, finding parallels between my life and the game at that time and feeling a sense of calm. In learning about Sylvando’s mission to make the world smile, I found myself feeling empathetic for myself instead of sorry and found a sense of clarity again I had been missing. I resolved to move forward again and find both my physical and metaphorical smile again.
Lollipop Moments
This all got me to thinking how in a former life before I re-spawned, I used to work a lot with leadership development and loved a particular speaker named Drew Dudley. During a Ted talk, Drew makes a statement that “Leadership isn’t something bigger than us. Instead, it’s a series of ‘lollipop moments’ – those moments that change lives when we’re not even paying attention.” Basically, lollipop moments, are moments in which something we did unbeknownst to us had a profound impact on someones life. This statement has always stuck with me as I have trained countless people on leadership. But in this instance it got me thinking if video game developers, writers and composers have any idea how profound an impact their artwork may have on a persons life. I am fully aware that good developers create games to elicit emotional responses such as happiness, sadness and anger from their players as it is just good storytelling. However, I wonder if in the process of telling a great story they honestly realize how much certain scenes or events can have a truly positive impact on someones life. Perhaps this impact is just a “happy accident” as Bob Ross would say. If we are to think about human nature, they probably don’t.
Soldiers of Smile
Reflecting on my recent experiences, it made me start to wonder if game developers and creators truly know just how meaningful they are to the community. I would love to say yes, however, looking back at all the things that have happened within the gaming community over the past few years I find it difficult to believe they do. Between layoffs, scandals, hate mail and full fledged gamer rage, it seems that they are likely flooded with negativity on a daily basis. This is a truly difficult pill for me to swallow as I know I am not the only gamer out there who has been profoundly impacted by game developers and even gaming content creators. For me video games have often been a beacon of hope in the darkest of times and as such moving forward I want to make sure that developers and creators know as my hope is it will provide a brief respite from their own daily struggles so they too can continue to push forward and make wonderful art. While, I am not some wildly popular influencer or writer with millions of daily views, I still want to call on the community and myself to do better in this regard.
To this end I truly hope that someday I will have the opportunity to meet the people responsible for Dragon Quest XI and personally say thank you for being my Luminaries during the darkest point of my life. Until that day comes I hope that others within the community will go forth and do the same. In the words of the Great Sylvando “Alright! Let’s go out there and make the world smile! Aaand… shimmy!”
Musings of a Gamer 
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