Built It and They Will Come

Day 4,014, 08:48 • Published in Greece Greece • by Asterios C

There’s hell of a lot to remember. Lots more than a simple browser game should have been able to etch into memory. Besides, how could I forget? There are plenty of artifacts of my humble presence in here, should anyone care to look for them. You see, I have the annoying habit of writing. And writing kind of persists anyway. I could therefore retell events down to a tee thanks to my notes, but I won’t. I will instead talk about people. People that shaped my gaming experience by intersecting some of my individual sensibilities. They are not, of course, the only ones, they are however the exemplars.

Just having started the game, there was this player around that spoke no Greek, but had already done more for the Greek community, and the New World in general, in terms of infrastructure, coordination and liveliness than few others did before -or after him ever since turns out. One that had actually earned fairly and totally deserved his Community Builder medals. All 155 of them by the time he was out! It was Buck Roger. I got my very first gold translating texts for this true legend. He’s been my role-model for the game right from the start and although I couldn’t possibly claim to have attained even a smidge of his stature, I’m glad I’m walking down the trail he blazed.

Then there was this other guy, headfast and outspoken. You wouldn’t believe the sass and the grit on this one. Anything he would set his mind to, he would eventually achieve, no matter how long-winded the effort. And what a busy mind that was. How obnoxiously peculiar. I should know, I got caught in its twirl. Initially I hadn’t noticed him registering, but I did watch him rise meteorically from obscurity to almost notoriety. Among other things, I helped him establish and maintain the largest network for private messaging eGreece had seen to date. That was ypourgos, he understood the power of communication all too well. An attitude engraved onto me as well.

Finally, and after I had abandoned all hope for quite some time, rarely logging in and even then only hopelessly scrolling, what do you know: one more fellow, evidently cut out of the same cloth as the previous two, appeared out of nowhere and regalvanized me. Cheerful and easygoing but with a get-things-done mentality I hadn’t seen for a while, he effortlessly convinced me to come onboard and assist with ‘Project Icarus’. From then on, we’ve been at it together and I feel Ι‘m back doing what I genuinely enjoy, community building. That’s milano13, the fresh prince of belle air. If I still play it’s because he reminded me of a purpose I had almost forgotten in the meantime.

It’s not the journey either. It’s the people.
This article is written as a submission to the Day 4000 Media Contest, Category 2: ‘Best Memories from the New World’ by the Plato Foundation