Rodney Pare · @TalbadarSP
3rd Jul 2020 from TwitLonger
My best friend, Byron
Today, I woke up to heart wrenching grief for victims of sexual predators in the gaming community. I couldn't believe what was going on behind the scenes and often by some of the community's most influential members. And horribly, just an hour later I lost my best friend to a battle with mental illness that he suffered his whole life.
I met Byron in 2010 as a rival in competitive WoW. His team didn't like mine on the principal of us being the new guys, so we exchanged our fair share of trash talk. We all got over this eventually and I became friends with several players in their group. It just so happened that a Shadow Priest and a Rogue made the perfect team in the next expansion, so we made a team together and showed the world how dominant we were with his video, Reckful 3. I remember sitting there for hours with him debating what clips to use, recommending music, and telling him to write text on the screen so lesser experienced players could follow the tactics we were using.
But our friendship existed far beyond WoW. We had friendly competition in games we weren't good at for the fun of it. We had our own lingo for everything and everyone knows this is Pookz's fault. We spent hours outside of games just talking about life. At this point our friendship was still entirely online, but in 2013 we moved in together and lived in the same household for 3 years. Streaming together, hosting parties, meeting new friends, feeding talb... some of my fondest memories were from this time.
We always helped each other in areas of life we struggled in. Byron was like a roller coaster that brought me out of my comfort zone and made sure every moment was exciting. I was solid and optimistic, showing him the bright side of things and keeping him grounded in critical moments. We always joked that we needed to find a female version of me out there for him to date.
Byron and several of my friends confirmed they were depressed as we played together during the WoW era. I've always felt the need to help, but critically could never put myself in the shoes of someone who sees no hope in their situation. I feel like this is a barrier that prevented me from truly helping him even though I'd been committed to keeping him away from harm through the years.
Everland. Byron's project that he started on a whim that he later discovered was a way for him to provide a place of belonging for people that struggle with depression and tragedy. At the time of its inception, I was in my 2nd year at blizzard as QA and nothing could have made me happier. I declined his offer to become a designer for the game because I knew Byron and if he lost interest one day the whole thing would've gone up in flames and my job at blizzard was reliable and exciting for me.
One year later, Byron was still going forward with the project and this proved to me he was serious and dedicated. We discussed me joining the project as lead designer. Byron always had unwavering faith in me, but I still could not believe he trusted me enough to give me this role which I ended up taking very seriously. At this point, I am both the project manager and lead designer. I wanted nothing more than to see this project finish because I believed in our idea and above that, I wanted to see my friend find happiness in life.
Byron had been under a lot of stress recently due to us soon needing more funds for the project and being girlfriend-less during these isolating times of COVID. I had thought the funding was weighing on him the most, but just yesterday we made huge progress in that area so I felt like we were on a path towards decreasing his stress. This has been a recurring theme throughout our lives that one day he might have a really dark moment and decide it was time.
I have a strong will and I will come out of this with my head up. As a community, we have so much to improve on and it makes me feel less terrible to see movements across the gaming scene against hateful comments and sexual predators. If there's anything to learn here, it's empathy.