Guild Wars: I Lost Sleep On This One

I've calmed down somewhat from yesterday's rage against the dying of the light. Mostly by reading a lot of the ghosts in the machine at my old stomping grounds – if there's anything I've gathered from the various boards I've glossed over it's how little it all matters. Or, rather, how much from a certain perspective that's not necessarily the point of the universal observer.

All the crying, screaming, and whining as posters point fingers at one another, try to one-up each other as they score points on some invisible scoreboard trapped forever in the finite storage of the ether makes me nothing if not apathetic. It's all so...small. And so important to these people that they burn such time and energy to fuel these things. They argue about whether they should even be arguing. And, well, I've played that game and I've burned out on it.

The pointlessness of the bickering. How lines are drawn and e-peens waggled. How the developers never seem to respond. It's all just spinning in a circle. Why does anyone bother with it?

The other day when I finished the game I did something most people probably don't do – I sat and watched the credits (After, of course, picking up a sweet scythe for my Derv. Vamp of forty over 50? And it looks like nothing so much as a giant chicken claw? Sold.). Not because they were particularly interesting but because there was a name on there I wanted to see. I've got this friend – and if you know me and your history of these things you know who I'm talking about - who works for the company now. His name's in those credits. And I wanted a screenshot of it superimposed on my character because, well, I'm a big girl at heart. But this guy and I, well, we go back even though we've never met in person (Not even sure we're still friends but that's what I get for disappearing for months on end as is my want.). I could say the same thing about a lot of other people, of course, but the time I spent talking about the game, bouncing ideas back and forth, making them stronger, making them better, and figuring out how to get them across to others and get them to listen, to carry those tempered ideas forward as if they were their own is time that I'm always going to treasure. Even though, you know, from a certain point of view it didn't matter and most of those idea – especially mine – never went anywhere. But this guy he was good and I knew it and just being around him made me want to be better – and I wanted to bask in that reflected glow just once more.

I always knew he was going to go on to greater things. Figured it was only a matter of time before some organization or other scooped him out of the ranks of volunteers in the community and gave him a job. He deserved it, of course, just as he deserves every ounce of happiness and success all his hard work has brought him. Everyone playing the game benefits from his involvement in it, even if they'll never know it. To most of them, he's just another name in a long list.

Never to me, though.

Because I've been there – talked to the developers, the artists, the writers, the musicians. Just as I've been there watching, listening, and learning from other testers and posters and admins and all the other people I've only known through the computer screen. They exist, to me, as characters. As letters. As symbols floating on beams of light through the darkness. As nothing more than words in a list. But to me, if no one else, they're still people. Just as much as the people I see when I turn away from the screen and walk out into the world. All of them. The people in the credits to the denizens of the boards, they're all individuals with their own identities, their own qualities, and that mass of humanity is involved in this project we call Guild Wars. Some of us do a little, some of us do a lot, but just like my friend even if they're not acknowledged our contributions matter. If only in the sum total of things.

Even though I never talked with him about it – not directly, anyway – I know my friend feels the same way. It's what makes him such a good person and, I'm sure, is no small part of his success. And I wonder why, with all the work I've put into things, don't I have a similar story? I suppose you could say it's because I tend to fade away for months on end out of disgust or neglect. But there was a time when I was staunchly involved in what I felt was the thick of things. I cared about Guild Wars and the people who played it – no, scratch that, the people who were going to play it – for longer and for more than I thought I'd ever care about anything. Especially something as fleeting and intangible as the lines of code that govern the game. I've, you know, been on lists for it.

It's been expunged, I think, from the record for reasons I'll get to in a bit. But back when the game was coming out the developers wanted to thank all the testers for all their hard work – as they'd promised to all along (No doubt to encourage testers to participate and work just that little bit harder.) - and one of the things they did was to release a list of the best testers. Not a ranking per se, although I think everyone around had a good idea of what the pecking order would be, but the top twenty five testers. The friend I mentioned earlier was on that list (Definitely in the top 5.) as were a lot of people I knew and liked at the time.

I wasn't.

My name was on a separate list. Of the testers who didn't quite make the grade. The honorable mentions. And when I saw it, I flipped out because, by that point I'd basically stopped testing for the past few months having washed my hands of the test and everything it tainted (Seriously, the game improved about as much in the first few weeks after release as it did in all my time as a tester – because people just played and didn't have any preconceptions or axes to grind and that gave the developers much better feedback than the pack of testers they had and probably still have ever could. This is, as I gather it, generally speaking the case. It's like book publishers say – the worst typographical error you'll ever make is the one that's not going to be noticed until the first time someone picks your book off the shelf. Forrest for the trees and all that.) and stormed off after pitching a huge fit over something that, in retrospect, really wasn't important. So I fired off an e-mail to Ms. Gray and not-so-politely asked to have my name removed from the list.

It wasn't part of some insidious plot to keep my identity shrouded in mystery (Which probably wasn't a bad idea. I play a bit coy with it around here but that's because this place is public. Anyone can come here or skim information from this place so I find it best not to get into too much detail. But my friends know who I am – I don't try to hide from them.) I just didn't feel like I'd been contributing much of anything as a tester. That even though it never meant much to me, it was an important thing (Honestly. I mean, it was nice and I liked being singled out and all. I wouldn't turn it down given the chance to do it all over again. But it wasn't something I sought out or planned for. It just...happened. And I could take it or, obviously, leave it freely.). An honorable thing, a prize that many people coveted, and recognizing me as a good tester when I'd been anything but cheapened the efforts of everyone else.

That's probably why I'm not working for ANet or anybody else in the community – I'm a horribly self-important little prick. But I've come to realize there was a deeper reason why I shunned that supposed honor that everyone else seemed rather happy about. And that's because around this time it became apparent that I was right. My friend and some other testers were going to be hired. And I, you know, was going to suffer through release and give up on the game for a time. With the only reward for my efforts a name on a list that only a handful of people would ever read or care about. Never even got so much as a T-shirt when, let's be honest here, I practically killed myself trying to do everything I could to support the game for a while there (The developers were very generous and would often mail things like copies of the game or clothing and what have you to various people around the community. Just not to me because, well, see aforementioned prick statement. I understand this probably sounds a bit bitter but just hold on – it's really not because it's never been about me. Well, maybe a little. But I'm only human.). And it wouldn't have matter what the company sent me because it would be a pittance compared to the value of the time and effort I'd sunk into volunteering my services for them.

Happily, but unwittingly, I'd been working for them all along – and so is everyone who ever makes a post or passes along the word of mouth. The marketing department, the PR department, the community relations department, whatever you want to call it, the people who work there get paid good money to do that sort of thing. And they get paid good money because they come up with things like outsourcing those kind of things to the volunteers – I'm sorry, the fans – who sweat and toil for only the merest hint of appreciation. An interview here, a t-shirt there, a pat on the head and an extra helping on their plater and it's amazing what kind of hoops people will jump themselves through. They create this monster we call the community, they feed it and tend it and make it grow as part of their jobs the way a gardener creates a garden – by letting it grow on its own. They deserve that money, of course, and all the other compensation they get for a job well done because just like a gardener, that's hard, dirty work they have to do.

Maybe at the time I could see the gears in the machine just a little too clearly. Or I was foolish enough to think I was too smart for such things, I don't know. But the truth is I worked as long and as hard as anyone in the community and while I wasn't doing it for a tester slot or a resume or a trip to the company or any other perks I was still doing it for the rewards. Which, for me, were just being a part of interesting things as they happened. Not a big part, mind, just another cog in the great machine, but a part of it.

So don't tell me that doesn't matter. Don't tell me I wasted the precious seconds that measure out my life for nothing. I cared about it. That makes it matter. That makes it important. That breathes that little portion of my life into everything I've done and, along with everyone else's fraction of a soul, it takes on a life of its own. It's a community we've built, a tribe united by the single thread that we all play Guild Wars, and while it might have been the developers and their marketing department that kicked things into motion they've long since lost any control (Except that which holding the power switch for the game's servers gives to them. But that's like holding a gun to our heads while we have one trained on theirs – pull the trigger and something's going to happen and you can't quite be sure what it is. It's not just a symbiotic relationship – where we need them and they need us – it's an adaptive one – they and we have become “us”.). We're all part of the grand weave now. Each little comment. Each little whisper. Each connection forged in light through the darkness of the unknown.

From a certain perspective, it doesn't amount to much. But from another one it's terribly important. In the end, we're all going to be dead and gone, the sun's going to cool and the planet's going to become uninhabitable, and I hope the story of humanity goes on past that but I'm betting I won't be around to see it and neither will anyone who knows me – from that point of view nothing matters. But from the perspective that lets me wake up in the morning and move around it's what we do in the here and now that's the most important thing in the world. That bleak sense of doom that comes from acknowledging you won't survive is scary but it's also what drives us to create these monuments that are bigger than ourselves – the lasting kind. Families, tribes, communities, and, I'd like to think, things like Guild Wars even though they're built on the flimsiest of materials – the ties that bind one person to another and the tiny particles racing through wires and circuits. On, well, information just like the ones and zeros that encode that screenshot I'll be able to look at to remind myself whenever I forget - we might not be able to see the results, they might not even be what we wanted...but it all matters.