You know it is 2021, yet it really feels like we haven’t finished 2020 completely. No matter how we try and believe that this is supposed to be a new year, has anything really changed?

COVID-19 is surging, Trump supporters are getting feisty, the Democrats are just shaking their fists, saying “this is all your fault, Donald J. Trump”, and Twitter has officially permanently suspended @therealdonaldtrump. I think that is his handle, I am sure because I have seen it retweeted and people constantly complain about him, or they make fun of his tweets as if they should’ve been doing stand-up their whole lives instead of an entrepreneur selling homemade toiletries off Etsy.

Without delving into politics, I recently got into gaming a little more intently. Before, I played games for fun, I loved gaming, with friends, at arcades (I was the last generation that fully got to enjoy the arcade). I remember an old classmate from high school, was a Facebook contact and he raved constantly that the game Destiny was the next Tamagotchi. I wouldn’t really play games out of my comfort zone (NHL, Metal Gear Solid, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare) especially games that were played online only, that had the word “community” associated with it, you’d have to put in a substantial amount of time really appeased to me. Although I had enjoyed “Borderlands” a lot in my university days, the game really wasn’t online as much as Destiny was, not even close.

The idea of Destiny is that it is an online-only, massive multiplayer, first person shooter. I think I got that correctly, I’m doing a lot of thinking and not a lot of fact checking and stating, However, this is for a good reason, I believe that the internet has made everyone “know everything” that there is little room for faith, and effort into finding things out yourself. Anyway, ignoring that notion, originally I thought of MMOO games were al like World of Warcraft, that turned you into a fat Eric Cartman, but after trying the game I would say 4 years after it’s original release, Destiny took me and swallowed me whole.

Every piece of this game is well put together, and when I mean well put together, there isn’t any detail left unchecked. The scenery in the gameplay, stunning, the music scores have been especially moving, the story is so interwoven and oddly enough, for a lot of players, probably relatable (at least at a sub-conscious level where they probably don’t even realize). The game is so perfectly made, if you just give yourself to the game and let the game guide you, you learn lessons about life that your parents probably overlooked and deemed as “in-essential”.

For example, if I had learned that if I just did things that weren’t in my best interest sometimes, like things I didn’t like or want to do, I would have been a much better student in high school. High school really decides most of your life, hindsight is always 20/20, but the rules that you learn in gaming can be globally applied to almost every domain in your life. When I was young, it was fighting games for me, I also didn’t really pay attention to as much detail as I could have in games. I played a lot of games for the glory, and I loved competition. Destiny forces you to do mundane activities, pay attention to the little details about your enemies. Your weapons and armor, figure out puzzles and riddles, strategy, coordinate and team work with people, on top of all of that it is like it’s own world.

If anyone is interested in finding me, I am on PS4 under the gamer tag Andeluuu (formerly kudoz8). I am with a UK-based Clan You Will Never Walk Alone, and I am a hunter. Usually on the weekend I am with random fireteams doing a team-based game mode called a raid. There are gamers who take this seriously, there are gamers who just want to have fun, there are gamers who think they are better than you as a person because they are better character level than you, I am going to write a lot of articles (I hope)in the next while about Destiny and how I find the gaming community, as well as the difficulties that arise with my disability and gaming.

If you or anyone you know is a disabled gamer, or would like to be, please contact me if you are trying to game and you are having trouble finding people to game with, even if you are having trouble gaming at all. A lot of people are impatient, and it does take me a little bit longer than a normal gamer because I learn differently, think differently and my right hand has a parkinsonian like tremor from my TBI.