Video Games can Change Lives

Hello, My name is Jonathan. I was Born in Colorado and have lived there my whole life, and this is the story of how I lost my PLAYER 2.

Five years ago I met this girl named Caroline. She was quite and reserved really only speaking once in a while at lunch. One of my friends had told me that she played video games, so the next time I saw her, I tried to ask her about it. We hit it off,
however there was one problem, she was a nintendo fan and only played one series of games; The Legend of Zelda with her favorite one being Twilight princes. I thought that was crazy and knew just how to fix it. I brought my xbox 360 over to her place on her
birthday. We ‘played’ a Team Deathmatch. I say it like that because she could hardly handle the fast paced nature of the game. I had to figure out how to get her to fall in love with Microsoft the same way I had when I was six. I spent nights trying to find
a game that was like Zelda but captured what made Xbox stand out, then it dawned on me. I dusted of my copy of Skyrim and sat her down in front of the TV. She fell in love with it right away, learning stats for weapons, figuring out what kind of character
she wanted to be, doing in depth research into the skill tree; I mean she spent an hour creating her character. We had to of had little to no sleep for a whole week. Now that she had gotten a taste for these open worlds I wanted to introduce her to my favorite
game sires, the Assassin's Creed series. She was not super fond of it upon first impression. It took us a whole month to beat the first one because we still had school and our parents to deal with seeing how i was 15 and she was 14. Once she beat it I remember
her asking me with such joy and happiness, “There has to be more of these, how many?” When I told her that there was, I think 5 at the time she was shocked yet determined. She told me that maybe not now but we have to play them all together.

Gaming had become such a big part of our relationship that my promise ring to her on our on our anniversary was a set of rings. My ring was the player one ring symbolizing that I can deal with almost any situation on my own. Her ring was the player two ring
because not every situation needs a second person, but any situation I could have her with me would become easier and more enjoyable and more memorable.

We had played at least 40 other games over four years and each of them had their own story. I'm not talking about the in-game story. I'm talking about the things that we're going on in our lives. We took the time to sit down at least 4 times a week to take
a break from the stress in our life play video games. And sometimes we even used video games to solve problems. On our 3rd anniversary we had an argument about where we should go for dinner and to settle it we played a match of Mortal Kombat. I won and so
we ended up going out to Olive Garden. Some games even strengthened our relationship like playing co op games and laughing when the other messed up or creating massive strategies to deal with foes. And sometimes games are even a point a stressor in our relationship
like when she would be playing a single player game and she had to deal with a backseat gamer. Because we played so many single player games we had to make special rules for when we would switch the controllers for example we start playing Outlast one of the
rules were every time you jump or scream do you have to switch controllers.

Those memories were in those games, in those saved files. We learned how to work together thanks 2 video games. Well at the beginning of this month we packed up the systems. After 6 months of planning we were finally moving in together. All the way 2 Spokane
Washington might I add. We struggled a lot to get ready for this move; whether it was trying to get boxes figuring out which moving company to go with or struggling to get an apartment. This is hard mostly due to the fact that we just turned 18 and 19. It
came down to the day that we had to move. We loaded up a moving truck with all of our thing besides the games, TVs, and systems. Those went into the car for safety. We finally had enough time to be all of the Assassins Creeds like she wanted, and she was so
excited about that. I was driving the car and my mom had volunteered to drive the U-Haul up. It was time to start our lives: Go to College, get job jobs, go to concerts, that kind of thing. Well 7 hours into starting our life on July 10, 2018 we hit a patch
of dirt, lost control of the vehicle and rolled over 2 ½ times. I woke up in the Emergency Care Unit in Wyoming. A day had passed before I had found out her future was ripped from her instantly. For the next six days one of the only thing that got me through
was knowing we still had all those games, all those memories. I was released with several broken bones and when I arrived home my friend set the Xbox next to me. It was a pile of bent metal and broken circuits. I actually wasn't that depressed that I lost
the system because all of our save files were on a terabyte hard drive. When I had ask him about it, he had said that there was no hope of finding it. It finally hit me in that moment. I had lost my other half.

I'm writing this this so that everyone knows that a video game can be so much more than just a distraction, or a waste of time, or a hobby. For us it was love and a way to communicate and solve problems and create problems and I'm happy to say I made another
Xbox fan.

Please upvote so more people can read this and if you have an experience that could change the way people view games, SHARE IT.

:)

 

Video Games can Change Lives!

Touching story mate. Really. Sorry for your loss, you have my condolences.

I hate how the media and some people around me claim that video games ruin lives. I know for a fact that those statements are a load of bull dust. This story, many other's I've read and my own personal experience proves otherwise...

I don't have the nuts to share my story like O.K.1245 but all we need to know is that if it weren't for my trusty old Xbox and my Halo games throughout these years, things would be very different for me- In a bad way.

 

Video Games can Change Lives!

Why do people do a lot of things? . . Because they feel like it probably.

 

What a great story, thank you so much for sharing!