
A video game community filled my nephew's final days with joy - mattkevan
https://www.theguardian.com/games/2019/jul/04/how-a-video-game-community-filled-my-nephews-final-days-with-happiness-elite-dangerous
======
scwinji
When a close friend's body was starting to fail from lung cancer (and it was
clear that it was his final days), I think we were very lucky that we both
enjoyed video games. He was bedridden, slowly losing his motor functions, and
it was hard to talk since breathing started to become difficult - but in a
multiplayer video game with a controller and large buttons, he could be very
expressive!

There were goofy moments (where he would make his character wear something
silly, and I'm pretty sure he was fishing for a reaction from me, too) or
moments where I could see him emote through the in-game characters (like
making a character's animation look like it's panicking by moving controls
around arbitrarily, and you can see the video game character flail wildly).
Through these actions I could see my friend's personality clearly, and I think
being able to express yourself is important when you've been in the hospital
for a while. I can only assume that he also found some joy from it as well,
since it could have been difficult to express the same emotions when you're
attached to machinery and often short of breath.

I think it's important to connect with people using the time we have alive,
and I really think anyone in palliative care (or knows someone in palliative
care) could consider video games as another option for connecting with your
friends and family. With the right game/accessibility of controls, and an
appropriate level of energy/attention span, it could be something that brings
people closer even as we hit our physical limits.

~~~
LilBytes
I've been fortunate that I've not had a close friend pass in my life at the
young age of 31. The day it comes around, I hope to share your world view.
Thank you for sharing your story, and I'm sorry for the pain you must have
experienced.

Thank you.

Small edit: my partner in life is about to finish her Physician training to
become specialised in Palliative care, her wounds motivate her to be a carer
and lover for those who need her specialised care. I'm quite honestly humbled
and grateful people like you and her exist in the world who can bring joy and
love in moments of anguish.

------
applecrazy
This is beautiful. It's amazing how the good side of the Internet really
shines through in these pieces. Things like the 7,000-word script and
professionally-narrated audio story for the kid to listen to are examples of
how people sometimes go out of their way to do an amazing thing for little to
no recognition, and that's what makes it even more wonderful.

I believe this is what Internet communities should aspire to be like, to cut
through the toxicity and memetic warfare and just do something great together.

~~~
fatnoah
> Things like the 7,000-word script and professionally-narrated audio story
> for the kid to listen to are examples of how people sometimes go out of
> their way to do an amazing thing for little to no recognition, and that's
> what makes it even more wonderful.

...and these things happen far more than we realize. My "dad" wasn't my
biological dad. He married my mother when I was four and he was the one who
was there for me for my entire life, so much so that I've never even known (or
cared to know, beyond a passing interest in my health history) who my
biological father is.

One quirk of that is that my "dad" never formally adopted me. About a week
before he passed away, we had one last time alone as a family before inviting
friends & relatives for a last visit. During that, he mentioned that he
regretted not officially adopted me. Thanks to several local folks, including
a local lawyer, local probate judge, a city clerk in another state, and
probably a couple more, were were able to complete the adoption and present my
dad with the paperwork and an updated birth certificate that lists him as the
father within four days.

With the Internet especially, we see the worst of the worst, but I personally
feel that it's overwhelmed by the good, and stories like Michael's show the
power to bring people together.

~~~
applecrazy
That's beautiful, thanks for sharing your story.

I agree, the good parts of the Internet are more apparent if you know where to
look. The darkest corners, however, are highlighted more by the news,
perpetuating a cycle of negativity and pessimism.

~~~
fatnoah
>The darkest corners, however, are highlighted more by the news, perpetuating
a cycle of negativity and pessimism.

I've basically stopped watching the evening news as a result of this. A guy
stealing a wheelchair 2,000 miles away makes the local news, but 100 people
helping someone out doesn't merit a mention anywhere.

~~~
em-bee
this. at this point, besides friends, hackernews IS my news source. if
something important happens in the world, someone will bring it up here.

------
Theodores
My sister plays this game called Bakery Story. I played for a while too and
shared a lot of my sister's online friends. There were a few people who had
exquisite bakeries, each a world of intricate design and my sister was in the
top tier of that type of thing. My bakery was a bit more functional, I was
there for sibling rivalry reasons rather than the global community.

We had not heard from one online friend for a while. But then we got a message
from the daughter of the lady who had the neatest bakery in the American mid-
West. As you can imagine it was doom and gloom, she had not made it out of the
hospital.

Both my sister and myself were shocked by the news, however, we had been there
for this lady, her life coming to a premature end in a hospital. Online her
world was nothing like the sad reality of her real life. We envied her in this
online world, she was in the handful of true greats, not just for the bakery
but for the personality.

We did not have time for anything too fanciful, we heard our online friend was
poorly and two weeks later we had the message from the daughter who was not
yet teenage. Everyone in the game added a tombstone - a game prop - in memory,
there was mourning going on, nobody knowing what to say for the weeks after
that.

I can remember telling my workmates that I was in stunned silence due to an
in-game incident, but you just don't expect online friends to die and you
don't imagine that you could be stunned into silence by such an event.

We also had no further messages from the daughter so that was that, abrupt.
But, if I think now of how ill she must have been and how we lavished praise
on her for her creations without knowing that she was at death's door, I think
we helped provide an escape. In our own special way we visited her online
every day during those difficult times and talked about what mattered to her
in her world.

Games can be special like that.

------
MrGilbert
Man... just woke up, checked HN as usual, and now I‘m up in tears.

Communities like the ones from Elite Dangerous or EVE Online really tend to
shine in such moments. I‘m... I don‘t know what else to write. Dang it.

o7

~~~
sundvor
Yes, this story really got to me as well.

The Eve Online and E:D communities are very supportive; players truly do care
about each other underneath all the other layers. The communities have existed
now for so long that they go deep. Also there's a fair bit of commitment
needed to get into them, from a learning cliff perspective, so perhaps this is
a factor as well? Common to both is how they are highly social communities.

(For others seeing this) look up "Broadcast 4 Reps", how Eve players encourage
each other not to stay silent, but to call out when you need help. This is
referring to the in game mechanic of letting logistics (a supportive fleet
role) know to direct repairs your way, that you are in trouble. It's really an
amazing thing to see the message spread that it is _ok_ to need help and talk
about it.

o7

------
headmelted
I was holding it together until the end when I saw the Elite tribute in the
Hearst (a hand flipping the bird with the message "PILOTS NEVER DIE THEY JUST
RESPAWN ON ANOTHER STATION").

This is the Internet at its best for sure, but I'm more taken aback at the
resolve of this kid - staying positive and doing what he loved right up until
his last moment. It's heartbreaking and inspiring all at the same time.

Godspeed, Commander.

------
hirundo
The Hermitcraft gang played Minecraft with a dying kid this season. I wonder
if it was the same one, or if this is becoming a (wondeful) trend.

Hermitcraft is a bunch of adults doing their best to play with the spirit of
children, and they're good at it. The energy and creativity they spent playing
with this kid were impressive. They seemed to get a lot out of it. In fact
they should probably make a point of inviting a kid to play regularly,
terminal or not, because it seems that they gain from it about as much as the
kid.

~~~
em-bee
i have seen other stories like this, even here on hackernews, so this was
surely another one.

------
em-bee
the original longer version of this article is here:

[https://westhorpe.net/2019/07/an-open-letter-to-frontier-
and...](https://westhorpe.net/2019/07/an-open-letter-to-frontier-and-friends/)

~~~
em-bee
another relevant link taken from the youtube post of the audio story:
[http://www.drewwagar.com/elite-dangerous-saga/michaels-
story...](http://www.drewwagar.com/elite-dangerous-saga/michaels-story/)

~~~
em-bee
was anyone able to download the audiobook from this page? i don't see any
clickable links.

------
mothsonasloth
Great read, there are many other examples. One example I read in a Wired
magazine many years back, of a World of Warcraft mass funeral and mourning in
some place.

~~~
xaner4
Or like the one from Norway from a few monthes ago, where the parents did not
know he had friends until WOW players meet up in his funeral and a lot of
players around the world mourned him in the game
[https://www.bbc.com/news/disability-47064773](https://www.bbc.com/news/disability-47064773)

~~~
em-bee
HN threads:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19122079](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19122079)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19104044](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19104044)

------
flywithdolp
I just got into HN, looking for some cool new tech updates as usally

and this article hit me hard

Got me into such an emotional mode

This community is amazing

------
bloopernova
o7 right on, commander. ("right on, commander" is the phrase from the original
Elite when your combat score reached Elite status)

Not much else I can think of that adds to the conversation here. Poor little
guy, I'm glad he had happiness before he left.

------
libraryatnight
I love when I read stories like this. Sometimes I feel so hopeless over how
toxic and awful the internet can be, but then moments like this remind me that
there are lots of good communities still out there. o7

------
Tepix
Right on, Commander!

------
bitwize
Meanwhile, Disnarvel won't let a kid's family put Spider-Man on his headstone.
As much as Disney has been trying to pivot into social consciousness in its
various media properties, it's the direct fan support that the Elite Dangerous
crew showed Michael here that stands out as truly magnanimous.

~~~
gambiting
I'm sorry, but putting whatever character on a tombstone does nothing for the
kid, he's already dead. Like, this kind of thing makes no sense to me -
gestures towards dying people are fantastic....while they are still alive.
Also, if the family really cares about it this much they could just do it and
then Disney has to consider the bad optics of suing a family over a kids
gravestone. Most likely unless someone goes and tell them no one will notice -
my local cementary has plenty of children's graves with Mickey mouse and
donald duck on them and I'm 1000% certain no one asked disney for permission
either.

------
bracobama
Thank you for posting this Matt. What a wonderful story! It's small acts of
kindness like these that make the world a better place.

------
di4na
o7

~~~
nrmn
fyi to the downvotes: o7 is a farewell salute.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/3sdixv/what...](https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/3sdixv/what_in_the_world_is_07/)

~~~
codingdave
Just because it has a meaning does not mean it is adding constructively to the
conversation.

~~~
Lutzb
You are right, but maybe once, we can just see it as what it means in this
context. o7

------
pageandrew
beautiful tribute by the community.

o7

------
sebastianconcpt
Which happens to be a legendary glorious game BTW.

------
professorTuring
So many kudos to the Elite Dangerous team!

I salute you guys!

Rest in Peace CMDR.

------
SigSeg0wl
o7

------
tugkancengiz
o7

------
paulgibbs
o7

------
anbop
I couldn’t find it inspiring, only heartbreaking and anger-inducing. It makes
me so geared up to think how shitty the world is to some people who have done
nothing to deserve it and so generous to some who have done everything to not
deserve it. Just one more reminder of how the world really feels like one
wretchedly sick joke concocted in the mind of a wretchedly sick fuck.

~~~
vijayr02
And that's fine; cold impersonal anger can be a very powerful motivator if
channeled properly. My question is what are WE going to do about it?

For me:

1/ support the Grauniad [0]: the gulf between the quality of their journalism
and the rest of the market is gaping. I may not agree with all their views but
the world is a better place with their investigative push

2/ let's leverage the HN community: one of the constant messages I've seen in
my limited time on HN is how diverse and capable the community is. Surely we
can do this and more if we set our heart to it?

It may not be the most popular view at the moment but I do believe "The Arc of
the Moral Universe Is Long, But It Bends Toward Justice". But this doesn't
happen automatically; each of us need to push the pendulum, and a billion
pushes can outweigh quite a bit of unfairness...

~~~
krilly
Really? These days the guardian is known for its poor fact checking and
misleading headlines

~~~
vijayr02
Well you could argue they would do better with more resources.

Anyway: the Guardian is just one paper. Support independent journalism,
whether it's the NYT / WSJ / WaPo / FT / your favourite non-clickbait news
platform.

~~~
mncharity
I was thinking about this the other day, in the context of a local hacks-and-
hackers (journalists and programmers) group...

How can one best support journalism, if its brokenness is systemic?

Consider a supermarket-checkout tabloid of the "UFO aliens tattooed my baby!"
variety. It seems unlikely that any plausible level of resources will yield
high-quality journalism. But perhaps the BuzzFeed and BuzzFeed News pair is a
counterargument.

Consider the NYT, with its view of the world as a competition between ideas,
rather than between economic and political interests. More resources won't fix
that.

Also apropos the NYT, for decades I wished for better coverage of the role of
subculture group-think in governance failures. I excused that NYT's lack of it
as resource limitations, and hoped for reallocation someday. Then Trump, and
there was lots of coverage of group-think among his supporters, and still a
dearth of it about its role among elite. Resource limitations weren't the
bottleneck.

So yes, marginally better funding might yield marginally better journalism
from the the Guardian / NYT / WSJ / WaPo / FT / etc. More reporters, fact
checking, foreign bureaus, conferences, etc. But...

They still won't be tracking their failures, searching for root causes, and
pursuing continuous process improvement. It won't change journalism's culture
of obliviousness to decades of learning in other industries about how to
organize processes for consistently high quality.

Is there any journalistic platform that has a plausibly modern process story,
and just needs resources to flesh it out and grow? Regardless of focus - just,
is anyone doing this well, who can be funded and assisted as an exemplar? Is
there any journalism foundation attempting to encourage modern processes? Is
there any dinky little local paper that's made a commitment to consistently
record its failures in a google spreadsheet, and to follow up on what went
wrong and how their process might be improved? That I could see funding.

Marginal non-transformative improvement is nice too. With society and history
being chaotic, small deltas can have large consequences. But I find the
current product quality demotivating without some prospect for transformative
improvement.

