Steel yourself for death: Watch this old guy say goodbye to a 17-year-old online game
Look, we all have to say goodbye at some point. Even beloved relationships we never thought we’d have to let go come to an end. It’s difficult, but it is part of life.
This video of a grandfather—perhaps not your grandfather, but certainly an able placeholder for your grandfather, or any older person, or perhaps yourself—is a helpful reminder that death comes to us all. Watch as he smiles grimly to the camera, bearing the tough news that the end is here. Watch as he pleasantly clicks around in the decrepit massively multiplayer online game Asheron’s Call for one last time, enjoying his one final day in the sun, eyes glazing over as he embraces the shuttering of the long-running MMO game. It was announced December 20 that the game would shut down on January 31.
Reflect on the end that awaits us all, particularly if we are digital avatars raiding for high-level gear in a 17-year-old video game. A metaphor for humanity, he takes some solace in the richness of his life. “I’ve got friends from England, New York, all over the states,” he says wistfully. “I’ve had a lot of fun.”
Toward the end, he is asked what he is going to miss the most, ostensibly about the fantasy game Asheron’s Call but also presumably about the brief time he or any of us have spent breathing upon this Earth. “A time to call my own,” he says, smiling one last time in the blue light of his low-res life. “It’s a great time, when I had it.” The video fades to black, as it must.