How Video Games Prepared Me for Quarantine

Stay in our homes? Order takeout? Don’t talk to anyone? Work from home? A lot of gamers are coming to the uncomfortable realization that life under a globally devastating quarantine isn’t actually all that different.

1. Quarantine is a team-based game and no one else knows what the hell they’re doing.

“Stay the f*** at home!” is the new “Get on the point!”

Just like a team-based shooter, we “win” a pandemic by working together. And we’re really bad at it. I’m sitting at home, and I’ve got people inviting me out to drinks and telling me not to give into fear. I’ve had relatives tell me that they’re going to use the pandemic as an excuse for a road trip!

This is precisely as useful to me as Hanzo spamming “need healing” when I haven’t even seen him in three minutes. Do you know why we lost? Because no one was on the goddamn payload.

2. Beans are just like potions.

These are to have. They are not to use. They are to have. I have some vague idea I might need them in the future, but all that means is that I’m going to have massive bags full of beans after the pandemic, just like I’m going to have stacks of 999 potions after the end boss.

Mind you, I’m not insane. I didn’t hoard. These were pre-existing beans. I was too lazy to hoard, just like I’m too lazy to keep checking bodies for their shoddy inventory throughout an entire game. But, during any time of crisis, I stubbornly hang on to absolutely everything I have, until well after they will be useful.

3. I could die a horrible death at literally any time.

I’m… bad at real-time games. When I play CoD, it’s a real toss up as to whether I can even identify what killed me. Coronavirus is the same thing! It could be anywhere. It kills 3% of people, but for 33% of people it does absolutely nothing.

Even better, if it does kill you, it does so by going from “mild flu” to “can’t breathe without mechanical assistance” overnight. You could already be dead and not even know it. Comforting, right?

4. Just like in the video game industry, any deadlines given are arbitrary and mythical.

In March, we were told to quarantine until April 15th. Obviously, that’s not a meaningful date. It wasn’t like COVID-19 was going to pack up and go home on the 15th, especially with non-essential businesses still open. “Thanks guys, it was real.” So, of course, deadlines are getting pushed back — our quarantine date is now the 30th. It’ll probably get pushed back again.

And that’s fine.

Just like when CD PROJEKT RED pushes something back, I really just want it done right, and frankly I respect them for doing it. Let’s not rush out a Bethesda game with the fate of the world resting upon it.

5. Trying to figure out government relief packages is like a never-ending side quest.

Old Lady: Please, hero, find the miscreant who stole my Turnips!
Thief: Look, I don’t have the turnips, I brought them to the market.
Merchant: Oh man, I’m sorry, I sold the turnips to my customers!
Customer: Yeah, I bought those turnips. And I’ll give them to you, but you’ll need to kill my wife, first.
Hero: Here’s your goddamn turnips. I hope you’re happy. Someone died.
Old Lady: What? Turnips was my cat.

Independent contractors, gig workers, and small business owners have three programs to choose from to get relief, all of which have eighty different steps to take — but don’t worry. None of them work anyway. By the end of the side quest, you’ll be wondering why you even started. And the XP won’t even be worth it.

6. The crazy ones are always right.

You know your friend who lives underground? The one who has a pantry full of dried goods and prepper barrels? The one you always tell to “calm down”?

You feel kinda dumb now, huh?

If, in the first act of a video game, someone comes at you screaming about a conspiracy, you listen. That person is going to very meaningfully die in the second act to introduce the boss, and depending on the quality of the game, you could be momentarily upset about it.

7. People are still going to incorrectly call me a chink.

First: the Chinese people are not responsible for Coronavirus. But even if they were, this isn’t even the correct racism to throw at me. Here are the things you can accuse me of: Unit 731. The bombing of Pearl Harbor. Pretending that sake is good. Making other people pretend sake is good. Hentai, all of it. And that’s even ignoring the fact that my family was American by the time most of these things rolled around. (Not the hentai. That’s been… a while.)

Overall, life in self-isolation is pretty much the day-to-day average for gamers. And we’re excited to see our family members and casual gaming friends picking up Nintendo Switches and Oculus Quests and starting to get just as into gaming as we’ve always been. We told you. We told you the digital world was better. Come to us.

None of this is to make light of Coronavirus. It’s obviously a serious issue, but it’s also something that isn’t going to go away overnight. Certain things we are going to need to adapt to — some things we will recover from, and other things will become the new normal. For now, however, the best thing we can do is kick back, relax, and boot up an old game.

P.S.: Apart from all the above, I also learned: It really does take the end of the world to get a six person D&D game together. Who knew.