the video game that restored my faith in KINDNESS

I’m guessing a very specific group of people will have clicked on this from the title BUT if you’ve stumbled upon it.. stick with me, it’s a modern day fable of sorts.

I’ve always been a gamer. I’m not a COD/shoot em up kind of gamer, but I’ve always had the latest hand held and have, at this point, been playing The Sims for more than TWENTY YEARS. A few years ago, thanks to lockdown and some well timed title releases, the term ‘cosy game’ was coined and we finally had a good name for the genre of games I’ve always gravitated towards.

I’ve spoken a lot over the years about my love of gaming as an escape from reality and how it’s one of the only things that allows my overactive brain to really switch off all the background noise. It’s because of that that I don’t enjoy a lot of tension or combat and so I’ve avoided many of the MMO (massive multiplayer online) games that have been particularly popular since 2020.

A friend of mine recently pointed me in the direction of a FREE game that was set to launch on Switch called Palia. It had all of the boxes ticked for a cosy game - farming, fishing, foraging, relationship building.. and it had a Zelda feel to the world that was really appealing BUT it was an MMO.

After watching the trailer - and IT WAS FREE so, why not? - I decided to give it a go and although the gameplay was enjoyable, I soon realised that multiplayer gaming wasn’t just encouraged, it was necessary to complete quests and progress the story. There are no deadlines in Palia so I thought I would play casually, get in on my regular side quest action and just enjoy the other elements, since I didn’t intend to run down strangers on a server to play with me.

There’s a chat box in the corner of the screen, that I usually keep closed, but one evening I was playing and it popped up. There were some flow trees on a hillside, who was coming to help chop them down? I looked at the map, I wasn’t too far away so again.. why not? Cut to a solid 10minutes later and my HORRIBLE sense of direction and the irritating layout of this flipping beach had me further away than I had been to begin with. I checked the chat - ‘are you almost here?’.. stressful! This is what I like to avoid!

I was about to throw in the towel when someone asked, ‘shall we start?’ and another replied, ‘wait for mikhila’. Now I don’t know where I was at hormonally that day but I am not exhaggerating when I tell you, I could have had a little cry. I Even recalling this now, I’m welling up. WAIT FOR MIKHILA!!

I eventually made it there and we chopped the trees and I got the resource you can’t get without working as a team and everyone said thanks and then everyone left. I have no idea if those people knew each other but I know none of them knew me. Since then I’ve seen it happen multiple times. Everyone gets to the area, they absolutely could go ahead and get their goods and leave but they let people know where they are and they wait. These little avatars of strangers from all over the world stand around in a virtual forest, waiting for other strangers they will never see again so that everyone can benefit from the resource required for the game they’re playing.

I think we can all agree that the internet often feels like an unkind place. It’s made people mean and too comfortable verbalising that meaness. This is such a tiny tiny fragment of something but it’s a fragment of kindness and it truly made me feel wondeful.

So thank you, Singularity 6 for creating this game, attracting the loveliest community of players and restoring my faith in humanity.. one flow tree at a time.