Hanging Out by Staying In
Stretching her arms and legs from a long day, she gazes over to her phone to see a message from an old friend display the following message: “Hey, I’m logging in. Are you free to do some roulettes?” With some thought, she texted back, “Yeah, I’ll be there in a minute.”
Her name is Marie. She was attending at the campus of Carnegie Mellon University, but due to the pandemic, she could not stay in the dorms and was sent home to attend to her classes virtually. With the quarantine granting an immense amount of free time, the most obvious place to spend that extra time is on her laptop. The Internet is quite literally the connection to both old and new friends alike, and can be a place to hang out in times where it’s too dangerous to meet up in public spaces.
Ved (Elora) and Xir (Marie) posing together. Each character was customized to our own preferences--the cat-like race Miqo’te and the dragon-like race the Au Ra. Screenshot. © SQUARE ENIX CO., LTD. All Rights Reserved.
Marie boots up her laptop and opens the app titled Final Fantasy XIV Online, an MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) with thousands of active players. After logging in, Marie would no longer be a college student; she would become Xir the adventurer. She would explore a fantasy world filled with monsters and treasure with her companion by her side. Xir woke up inside the housing district to see an old friend, Ved, welcoming her back.
The truth is, I am that old friend. I had been concerned about Marie because I knew that she was an only child, living again with her parents since the start of the pandemic. I wondered about her social life suddenly being cut off, but she seems to be doing fine.
“I think, compared to other friends who I only talk to, don’t really play with, we’re probably closer,” Marie said in reference to our friendship. “Also the people you talk to and don’t play with, you slowly stop talking to over time.”
Somebody may think that any game that we have in common could work as long as there was an online component to the game, but Final Fantasy XIV Online provided more than just the goal of fighting monsters together; there is a social aspect that could be replicated in real life. The avatars can express themselves through the use of the in-game chat and emotes. If I wanted to react to a joke, I could make my character physically laugh in-game, as if it actually happened in real life.
It was in the final minutes of October 9th. The moment the clock struck midnight, we celebrated my birthday in-game. By using emotes, Xir shows off by singing happy birthday while Ved shrugs in embarrassment. In the real world, we laughed it off and had lots of fun. Screenshot. © SQUARE ENIX CO., LTD. All Rights Reserved.
After graduating from high school, we could never hang out just by seeing each other every day. Hanging out with friends online, even for just a few minutes, has been enjoyable since it replicates that time of just chatting about different topics. The extra time used to commute between classes can be used to hang out. “Normally, I would just not be doing this [playing games] in the middle of the day, I would just play on weekends,” Marie commented on her free time. “Now we can do it whenever, so we can kind of, in a way, hang out more than usual.”
It’s as easy as texting a message to see if someone was free to log in that specific time. There’s no need to plan the day out, no need to check which days are available for both parties, no need to prepare and travel. Of course, we miss hanging out in the real world, but virtual meet-ups are the next best thing, and it’s certainly better than not interacting with each other at all.
One of the last times we hung out together before the pandemic. The paintings are based on creatures found in Final Fantasy XIV Online.
During a Zoom call, we found the pottery paintings. The paintings are the only reminders of our ongoing friendship.