From makeshift memorials to found family: How video games can help forge powerful human bonds

CBC Radio Specials48:57Connect to Play

When reports broke that actor Lance Reddick had died, John Rathiganthan knew he had to visit The Tower.

Since 2014, Reddick has played Zavala, a taciturn commander in the online multiplayer sci-fi shooter Destiny 2. In addition to leading the player through missions with intercom chatter, he could be found in The Tower, a headquarters and social hub in the game.

"I saw him as someone who knew that he meant a lot to his fans, and they meant a lot to him," Rathiganthan said about Reddick, who also regularly played the game.

Hours after news of Reddick's death broke last month, a crowd of players could be seen gathering around Zavala, kneeling or displaying in-game lighting effects, in effect holding an in-game memorial.

"Two hours after the TMZ news, there were people in there with candle vigils going," said the gamer from Toronto, who added that players' reactions online were mostly of "shock and upset" at the time.

The gesture did not go unnoticed. Reddick's widow Stephanie thanked players for their tribute in a Twitter post the day after his death was announced.

It was a bittersweet gathering that showed how people can form meaningful connections through playing video games — even if they've never met in the real world before.

The CBC's Danielle McCreadie and Sameer Chhabra explored more of these kinds of connections in the radio special Connect to Play.

Emotional jump-start

Whether you're a heavily armed Guardian fighting off alien invasions in Destiny, or a stumpy little dude building block forts in Minecraft, players find video games are uniquely suited to building communities through shared challenges or tasks, according to Rachel Kowert.

"It's this presence of a shared activity that really creates a foundational level of trust for these relationships to be built," said Kowert, a research director at the U.S. non-profit Take This.

Kowert's work is focused on tackling the stigma often associated with playing video games, and to increase support for mental health in video games.

She says the "horrible stereotype" of video games as a hobby for lonely, isolated people originated in the 1970s when games became popular in arcades.

"It couldn't be further from the truth," she said, noting that arcades, in the first place, were highly social environments similar to a bar or pub.

"I think just this idea of kind of a dark, dimly lit arcade has carried over into the games of today, which we know are like massively multiplayer, thousands of people at the same time, [and] as far from antisocial as you could get," she said.

• Connect to Play airs Monday, April 10 at 4 p.m. local time, 4:30 p.m. in Newfoundland, on CBC Radio One, or you can listen anytime at the top of this page. Hosted by Sameer Chhabra and Danielle McCreadie.

Relationships in games can be "emotionally jump-started," she said, especially in co-operative multiplayer environments. If an experienced player can teach a newcomer how to complete a challenge or defeat a powerful enemy, for example, it can quickly form a bond of trust.

"That emotional jump-starting of that sense of trust can build really close, really long-lasting friendship groups that we don't see in other places in the internet," she said.

Found family in Last Shelter

Andrew Hodge of Saint John started building that kind of relationship in 2019 when he started playing Last Shelter: Survival. It's an online strategy game where players from around the world band together to build up cities and states and protect them from invaders.

Hodge soon became a key member of an international community of players numbering in the thousands.

"I'd be like, sketching maps out on big pieces of paper, trying to plan, and people would show up. And if I wasn't there, things would go wrong," he said.

"I had developed this sense of responsibility to this world that nobody else really got to see. And so I probably looked absolutely off the deep end."

Hodge was in a long-distance relationship before the pandemic. His girlfriend happened to be visiting from Nova Scotia when COVID lockdowns started in that province, preventing her from going back home.

Suddenly, spending all their waking hours together revealed many things about each other they had not anticipated — including Hodge's Last Shelter obsession.

But as cracks formed in his romantic relationship, the game would lead him to a new family of sorts across the globe.

Throughout the pandemic, Hodge's conversations with his fellow alliance members became less about the game and more about their lives — from talking about the weather, to sharing photos of their families.

When pandemic restrictions began to loosen, he bought a ticket to Bali, Indonesia, to meet some of them. It turned into a life-changing excursion.

"Instead of being a tourist, it was like going to hang out with family. By the end of it, like, their kids were calling me uncle," he said.

He still keeps in close contact with a handful of players he met on that trip. To this day, he considers them as close friends or even family.

Hodge acknowledged that spending so many hours of the day on the game probably put stress on some of his relationships. But he hopes people can recognize that it's helped him find new and meaningful connections he would never have found otherwise.

"I always felt the whole time, whenever I faced any kind of criticism socially for how I played, I always just wished, like, if you could see what I could see, you wouldn't feel that way."

The sacred act of play

Veterans of the Dragon Quest series will fondly remember visiting a town's local church to heal their party and save their game's progress.

But Erin Raffety wanted to examine what games could offer those engaged in real-life theology.

The researcher, anthropologist and pastor wondered how technology — and specifically video games — could enhance the spiritual lives of neurodivergent people within Christian congregations.

Raffety found that a church environment in Minecraft allowed neurodivergent players to engage with a congregation in more accessible and inventive ways.

"Play allowed people to interact with religious hierarchies in kind of subversive, new, interesting ways. So people could go up to the front of the church and pretend to preach, even though they weren't the pastor. And there was nothing weird or disarming about that," she said.

She also formed surprising bonds within the game — but also outside the church environment. One time, Raffety got lost while exploring a mine. But another player, an 11-year-old neurodivergent girl, confidently and skilfully guided her to safety.

"It really flipped the script in terms of what we do sometimes in our physical communities, or the roles we ascribe to people," said Raffety.

Even though Raffety doesn't consider herself "a natural gamer," she found exploring Minecraft allowed her to build "real sincere connections" with other players just by wandering the digital world, breaking blocks apart or building structures.

"I think it's just such a wonderful way to connect."