Hello Jane
Yes I can't agree more! I am sure videogames improve our mental abilities and can also shape our characters, which is something that happened to me when I joined BFM! But I am not retiring from gaming (oh my God, never!), just online gaming...I've had so much going on after I left Halo
I left Halo to join another american/global team for some years, then I moved to an arcade racing game called Trackmania, I joined a very small italian clan, but I quickly ranked up there, becoming Vice Leader after a couple month, and inherited the leadership in less than one year.
Under my leadership the clan grew a lot and recruited some valid people, we were very well respected despite our skill was far below other teams. Our reputation grew also because we've always had a "twin clan", we all were friends, shared all servers and helped each others without any fight ever, the main difference were clan rules and genre specialization. During our last years both clans became more known thanks to our improving skills, we managed to get into top3 in some worldwide championship, and our diplomacy had a huge boost as well. In the meanwhile I became one of the most known and respected track author, won some contests and managed to build several tournament tracks for official tournaments like ESL, trying to renovate the way to build tracks.
Despite growing so much, we noticed people were losing interest in that game, so our twin clan leaders and me finally decided to team up more to survive and grow stronger, we merged the two clans and founded a new multigaming (the same group but active in many more games), that was a very good move for everyone and we moved to other games too, mostly to a free FPS and RPG games. The golden age was over, our leadership was awesome and made the clan and leadership one of the most loved, the clan finally had one official and shared webiste with forum, one self hosted big Teamspeak server, several (almost unlimited) game servers hosted in our first game, and the clan itself grow bigger than BFM with over 150 members, would have been many more but we decided to cycle memberships and remove members after long period of inactivity.
The leadership was very well respected, I loved managing it, handle diplomacy with others, boost our reputation and helping all our members, in the FPS game I played I became known among some communities for being a very clean player, a very good leader of a very good clan and, in later years, again a good map builder, winning a map contest along with the most known and respected map builder back then, and scored in top 3 the following time, winning good prizes.
Unfortunately times changed, recruiting was harder and the clan was changing too much inside, and due to the very bad community in that game, I became tired of it and mostly just managing the clan to avoid to lose the so hard earned reputation we built around it, playing games from time to time. Unfortunately when I saw the clan changing too much into something I didn't like, and having no power to make strong choices to get back to our roots, I began feeling very tired to handle things and people into something I didn't believe anymore, and eventually became to leave my leadership and give it to the last of the 3 original leaders. That was a sad move for several, and was my official retirement from online gaming, the great times I had in Halo and in other games with my clan were just past, recruiting new people was just dangerous because of backstabber, most of players (especially italians) were just skill-drunk children showing off how good they were, liars and very bad mouthed kids (my clan allowed swearing as far as not offensive to guests, you can imagine how bad were guests instead). I am still in contact with (former) leaders there and all my friends, and whoever believed me to be a good leader, latest rumors say the clan has been very inactive, went through some internal wars and had a big split, giving birth to a new clan. The main people are still inside the old clan, but it's meeting its demise after being very inactive online and inside, already lost the old inactive site and kind of disappeared from public scene. A sad end but nothing last forever.
Sorry for the long post about my gaming life but it's worth of an analisys. My retirement was all about new kids having no respect for nobody, making it way too hard to recruit good people, and eventually changed our clan mentality as well, giving in later years lot of problems hard to handle, in one case we had to allow a mass expulsion of a big group giving problems inside, it was a hard move but the best we could do as we realized these people didn't care about fellow mates and clan itself. I love to manage a group of people but I hate when nobody cooperates, and new generation just generated kids willing to show how good they are, eventually leading to cheating to look even better, ruining everybody's fun. All new games are like this, made me regret the times I had in Halo and Trackmania, were cheaters were rare and people were true mates worth this name.
Before I joined BFM, I was already a good guy but with immature manners, when I realized BFM was like a family, I did my best to join it and totally changed my character, and became what some of you remember. If there are good communities inside videogames, they can help a player to grow better and improve characters, that's what happened to me and I totally changed my real life behaviour, claiming the same respect I had inside videogames. I also learnt to join and manage groups, diplomacy, and so many important features. I am so proud of my change and I am not ashamed to say I must thank videogames for it, and mention Halo and BFM as my first online videogame and clan, it's already giving me some gains in my life and job.
It's been about 2-3 years since I left my last clan and I don't regret it, the good of the past can't come back anytime, sometimes it's better give up instead of forcing what can't happen, I already gave all I had to my clan and helped me to grow even more than BFM did. But so tired of new generations, almost brought me to misanthropy.
But videogames are still my life! That's where I want to be when I have free time and that's where I will surely stay! After leaving my clan I kept playing single player games only, I've been doing it since before Win95 was ever released, and I truly enjoyed playing on my own, without the fear to meet cheaters and rude people. Almost played all kind of games, despite no communities still helped me growing up, like managing money and companies inside tycoon games, one of my favourite genre.
Forgive me for the long post but I had several years of backlog, a true story worth to know and a nice analisys about Jane's statement. I won't hide I am thinking about resuming playing online again (also to test my brand new net about 7x better than my BFM time).
I wish you all a good day and I hope to see more "old school" BFM back here too
