Hey kids! Do ya like the vid-ja games?? I’m so down with the pac-man and the Fork Night! Just kidding I fuckn hate people like that, who look you eye to eye, like a goat, trying to relate to you as though you were some kid (who would still think that person is an idiot). Most people rock a game or two, and for those who are more leisurely than I am, I really won’t judge and give a very basic rundown. An NPC is a Non-Playable Character. So, say, the princess from Super Mario Bros. (Game Genie, I know, I know), or say Deckard Cain from Diablo 3. They give quests, or advice, they sell you shit or sometimes just stand there forever acting or not acting busy.

I know a lot of people like to torture NPCs if they can, you can find players raiding villages in Skyrim or spending hours cruising GTA and striking out waves of pedestrians, and hey, to each their own. Personally, I tend to leave them alone, since I’m a leveller, and will be back for them later once I’m all jacked up on endgame content, and because most often they offer little in xp gains and loot. They’re part of the background to me, until they just happen to be in the way, well then, all bets are off, little data-person!

Clearly this art can impressively imitate life, and in a lot of ways, there’s methods in that art to deal with the everyday madness of life. I consider my inner circle a party roster of sorts, where the meta changes depending on which members are present at the time. Too many healers is a bad thing in a game, you need some black mages, a fighter and maybe a thief in there to mix things up. IRL, having too many of the dour members around at once can drag your morale down, but balancing the company you keep with great thinkers and even greater fools (which can sometimes reside in the same person) keeps things even and offers up more latent party buffs, also known as a ‘fucking good time’.

The difference in both cases is that you can shut a console off and sleep at night after making a string of shitty decisions just to see how dark the developers had the foresight to make a certain dialogue tree. As well, you can revert your save state and go back to how things were before you decided to buck the narrative out of intrigue or for a vindictive laugh. Here in the real world, or at least the realest world we’ve got, obviously it gets a little more complicated. A more thrilling aspect of this hi-res MMO we call life is when a potential new party member draws near… command? More often than not these random encounters lead to conflict, end with a resolution, and if you’re smart… yield experience. That potential partner you liked mislead you to cross you off their ‘fuck-it’ list? That shady friend now suddenly dating your ex? Open your bestiary, and update the notes on Succubus and Goblin, so next time you run into their kind, you know the weak points and can end it with a one-shot critical before it can drag on any further. Demote then. To NPC. You know the type. In game or not, they stand in the same place, wearing the same clothes, saying the same old shit no matter how many times you click the ‘interact’ function.

I know, ‘fuck, Bob, that’s a lot of mental gymnastics to just let shit go’, and I’d agree with you, I DO agree with you wholeheartedly. But I’m cursed with a good memory and a low bar for what I my brain considers worth saving. I’m also blessed with having a great job that reminds me every day that time is finite, and wasting it on grinding low-level encounters (more literal than I wanna admit…) is just not worth it anymore. The quest line is over, there’s no yellow exclamation point over their head signifying any reason to do anything more than work on that endgame loot, and before you know it, you’ll forget what slice of the grander experience they were a part of. And in fairness, you in their version – while maintaining primary concern on your own game!

Finally, I know the gaming lingo got a little thick, I got lit up half way through writing this, and most importantly, I know it’s Fortnite, not Fork Nike or wtv I said up top!