A link to the past
Something changed in July. Something deep with in me. For those who do not know I turned 40 this July. To me when some say it is the end of half life but I actually see it as a brand new phase of a life which I have not really thought of having because I realized a
strange truth about myself.
Wouldn’t it be hilarious to you if I say that till now what ever I have done in my life has been just to get “NOTICED”. How uncool is that? But sadly that is what it has been all this while. You would laugh at me if I told you that such a realisation came to me when I watched the first few episodes of an anime called Naruto. In it during a scene the protagonist realizes that everything he had been doing since he was a kid was to get others to notice him. It struck me in the heart as that was exactly what I have been doing.
What have I been doing?
Lets go back to year 1992. I was a kid and I used to go outside in the park and play with other kids. Just to pretend that I was good enough for them I used to buy a lot of marbles or “Kanche”, Quoted by “Hexcode_”, and show it to all the folks and sometimes even distribute a few to them so that they would notice me when I was around.
Among my cousins I used to buy action figures called G.I. Joes and I had the largest collection. Now in all my collection, not one toy was my favourite but I had them anyways. Now I come to think that it only was for showing it to my cousins and finally getting noticed among them.
I had a tough time in school. Even though I tried to get the attention from people around me but I failed. So I tried my best to hang around the kids who used to study strong and were top in the class. I studied myself so that I could be in their league but I failed because I was not so good at studies or may be the studies at that time were not appealing enough for me.
Down came time when I moved to college. I assumed a persona of a person who is bold and strong and presented myself as hunk in front of the bunch that were in my class. It seemed that people had fallen for it, this gave me a boost in confidence. Lots of people in my college noticed me and gave me the attention I desired. That was a comfortable time, falling in love, heart breaks, excelling in studies and making a lot of friends. But deep down in me I knew who I was, a silent afraid kid thinking that there would be someone who would see past my charade but nobody did and the time passed.
Finished college and graduated with decent grades and a masters degree, MBA in Human Resource Management and Information Technology.
Came back home, got married to a beautiful woman and became a father to an amazing boy, Steve!
I opened my first business. It was called Robin’s Health Arcade. The business was Gym, Dance school, Martial arts school and a cyber cafe which was later converted to a Gaming Cafe. I used to call it Robins Cafe De Cyber.
My cousin, Anmol Thakur, he introduced me to a game called Battlefield 2. A very different kind of a game which involved amazing teamwork and great tactical play with an unimaginable capacity for fun. This was the game that introduced me to the more mature side of gaming. Awesome people on the other side of the microphone talking to me in ways that I have not experienced before. Teamwork, learning, strategy, fun!! Some of the things I learned from gaming. I was quickly noticed among the community. It was called Xtreme Honor Brigade (clan tag, =XH=).
I used to search for “V street” on the Battlefield 2 server listings because there was a V street server for CS 1.6 at that time. I only assumed why isn’t a server for Indians present? This question???????? OMG what followed next is history.
From spawning the first Indian Battlefield server to hosting an array of servers one after another, to serve the community. Battlefield 2 was great and so were the iterations of the game, new and improved. Eventually as the time passed, the game took a turn towards being not so cool/fun anymore. Starting from bugs to early unfinished launches to underestimated server loads and finally ending up with a genre of WW1 that completely turned off the game for me. In due course of time I lost trust in the community as well that I had so dearly formed and nurtured over years. While the peers of Battlefield were constantly coming out with a competitive edge, BF came out with one disaster over the other. I couldn’t do anything.
So I turned to other games. Dota2 and PuBG Mobile became my go to games. In due course I had a chance to experience being a content creator at Facebook Gaming. It was fun while it lasted. I attended several events both in India as well as abroad and pushed myself forward to get noticed by the officials and I tried really hard to build a community out there as well. Seems like I failed there too because apparently ideals were of little value to the people in there.
I quit Facebook Gaming and turned my eye towards Minecraft and to explore the community of Minecraft content creators. All the amazing Indian creators had their own SMPs (survival multiplayer server). So again the show off and getting noticed kicked in. I floated a server for myself and the first thing I did was scout YouTube for Indian creators and invite them to my server one way or another. Reshaped my very own discord server to cater to Minecraft SMP needs. Built a team to support it. Tried hard and failed.
So what happened next?
Towards the middle of June my son Steve encouraged me to start watching anime. He said that there were some really good ones out there. He made me start by watching a show called One Punch man. I did develop an interest in the story telling and emotional connections involved.
This was the time when I came across Naruto and watched that fateful episode that brought major change in my life. The same thing that I mentioned in the very beginning of the article, the revelation. All the years of my life played back in front of my eyes and all I could see was my struggle to get……….NOTICED…..
I had a reason to believe that I had found the fundamental problem with me. And before it was too late I have to correct it. I sat down with a pen and paper and started writing the unnecessary activities I was doing to get noticed and this was the list that I came up with:
- Minecraft servers
- Discord server + boosts (30 boosts purchased so that I could a vanity URL)
- Web server
- Bot services hosts
- code test servers
- Social media promotions
- Abnormal amount of subscriptions to creators for the sake of making my presence felt.
The Correction
- First step I took was to immediately cancel all subscriptions with the server providers.
- Cancelled the Discord boost subscriptions and transferred all the boosts to several servers that I had been a member of.
- Cancelled creator subscriptions that were not at all meaningful to me.
- Cancelled all my social media promotions.
- Disabled the “Number of Viewers” counter from my display placeholders.
- Declared my retirement from the server side life and embracing the user experience.
A link to the past
I took a leap of faith. Trusted my instincts and took some major decisions that changed my life completely. I had closed all the doors that I had been cruising through in my career.
And then out of the blues I came across a website called BF2Hub. Didn’t really know what it was but as I looked at it, my eyes opened up wider and wider with amazement. They said they were able to get the Battlefield 2 game working again in Ranked mode and that I could also retrieve my old account. Woo!! I checked my account status and there it was, RobinSAlways, rank golden leaf! Oh boy the joy was oozing out of me. I read the instructions and was able to get the game working!
I was extremely pleased to find European servers at play and that too full servers with a joining queue. I did try to find Asian servers but there weren’t any. I tuned into Gulf of Oman map on a 2F4Y server and the pleasure was wholesome. spent a couple of hours reliving history. I couldn’t get my microphone to work so I couldn’t speak with the players but still I smiled all the time.
Later that day I called my old friends whom I used to play with. I found out that one of my friends who lived in Sweden, passed away due to sickness. Others got busy with their lives or moved to newer Battlefields. Life happened to us all in its own ways.
I got sad but slept on it accepting the inevitable truth about our existence.
From that day on I often visit the Battlefield 2 servers. I stream it to my Twitch channel as well as a private stream on the discord of Battlefield India. Young players of Battlefield franchise found it interesting and appreciated it for the graphics at that time. How can I tell them that the Essence of true Battlefield game was born here for me? I simply don’t. I let them be with their thoughts. I just enjoy myself.
Also while finding other veterans of the game I came across many players in discord. I found Shark, Gunn, spaghetti, dimcord, legionsa and many many more.
Never thought that I would link to the past like this. But I am glad I did.
To the future, via the past, I live in the present, one day at a time!
…. Thank you for reading!
Special thanks to:
- Battlefield India Community
- Bf2Hub
- Battlefield Franchise
- Joel Eriksson
- Xtreme Honor Brigade
