On the Digital Generation

Chapter 2a: Curiosity through Maplestory

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This chapter discusses my past life in the digital world, and it’s filled with anecdotes in which that community has shaped me. When I was writing this chapter, I initially wanted to throw my whole digital life story into one post. However, once I saw that the post would become too long, I decided to split this chapter up into two separate parts. These stories are ones I hold super dearly, so I didn’t want to condense the stories too much, so I hope, the reader, are patient with me!

Through my stories, I want you to see how empowering, joyful, challenging and inspiring the digital world can be. And if it was that way for me, it certainly must have been that way for many others. When I hear the modern-day rhetoric of the digital community, I often hear that it is a dark place, lonely, unknown and even evil. But though it can be a place of such darkness, I want you to know that it was a place where I came in touch with my humanity.

If we, the Church, are to reach this community, we need to understand that many of its netizens don’t see this gap as evil. They, and I, see it as a home, a place of refuge, and a place where we can express ourselves and feel seen. And I hope that this post can help cultivate that same compassion for this community in you, the reader, so that we engage it in love and understanding, and not in fear or ignorance.

So if you are new to this, welcome! I hope these stories still resonate with you, and I commend and thank you for trying to learn more this foreign space that I hold so dearly.

Enter Maplestory

Maplestory

The nostalgia... Maplestory's login screen.

I didn’t have many friends in my neighborhood and I was living in a suburb without anything particularly interesting near my neighborhood. My family and church emphasized excellence in academics and music, so play was typically not prioritized much either. To be completely honest, outside of biking around my neighborhood, I actually don’t really know what I did with my spare time during my earlier years.

But, when I was in 5th grade, I saw a friend play Maplestory at one of our church potlucks. It had a vast world, filled with cute little creatures like mushrooms and pigs, and you as a character could wield magic, weapons, etc. More than just AIM, you could also make friends and train and travel with them as well! Far more interactive than just talking.

When I got home, I quickly installed Maplestory for myself and wanted to see what this whole thing was about. I was in love with the cute friendly aesthetics of green slimes and snails, and wanted to experience this world for myself.

Exploring the World of Maplestory

To this day, I believe that Maplestory has shaped my life more than any other game. It was almost like an extension into life; instead of exploring the (potentially unsafe) wilderness of the physical world, I was able to tap into the wondrous spirit of exploration by surveying all the different landscapes and “continents” in the Maple world.

Mapleworld

This doesn't even include Victoria Island's own map

We’ve got fields of grass, dark and gritty cities, lush forests, beaches, floating cities in the sky, a lego world, area 51, the list goes on and on. And every few months or so, a new area would be released! The exploration was endless, there were so many things to see! So many monsters to encounter and quests to take on! The sights! The sounds! The music! To 13 year old me, this was magic.

And the best part of it all was that you don’t have to tackle this world alone. Maplestory was an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game), and it was one of the first of it’s kind, so other’s felt this magic as well. While the goal of this game was to train your character to become stronger, we also had so many opportunities to just have conversations with strangers, training partners, and sometimes go on journeys together. Training with friends and exploration didn’t just span a few minutes, it could be hours and even days where we would plan our digital exploration just so we could experience this magical, digital world together.

Training

2017. I was chatting with others about their dreams while training. I am Fimbulvetr

And just like the real world, the world of Maplestory taught so many valuable lessons. I learned what it was like to have financial and achievement based goals for myself. I was able to plan my character’s “career” and development with expected my expected finances. I learned how to make friends all different kinds of people. I learned that it’s okay to take a break from the grind and to just relax. And I learned how exploration can cultivate a sense of wonder. The physical world taught me that be human is to work and excel. Maplestory taught me that to be human is to also experience joy.

In the church, we talk a lot about “doing life together”, and often it’s played out in these somewhat contrived experiences such as scheduled small groups, meetups and intentional discipleships. But don’t you see? During a large portion of my childhood, I was doing life together with so many of my friends, it was just done online! We had stories to tell, trials to overcome, and accomplishments to celebrate. And it didn’t need any of these contrived, scheduled examples (though they’re not inherently bad), moments of life naturally spawned as a result of simply wasting time together and playing.

Basilmarket: Kinship with Maplers

Mapleworld

Home page

Maplestory’s influence didn’t just stop at the game. It’s influence was so widespread that multiple communities were created as a result of it’s influence. One of these communities was basilmarket.com, a website that coordinated in-game transactions between parties. Consider it like Maplestory’s eBay; Maplers would put up auctions for items that they want to sell/buy, and other Maplers would bid to win these auctions and fulfill the transactions in game.

Interestingly enough, Basilmarket’s auction system wasn’t why I stayed! Instead, their forums actually ended up becoming extremely popular around 2011 or so and that’s what got me hooked. Around this time, Basilmarket became very much a Reddit-esque community of Maplers who wanted to just chat about anything in life. Many posts consisted of homework help, politics, discussions on religion and sexuality, and overall meaning of life. In a sense, it was where we Maplers gathered when we weren’t in-game. It was where we could process the real world together.

Since I wasn’t allowed to play games during the weekends, Basilmarket quickly became my second home. Most days after high school and middle school, I would quickly jump on Basilmarket just to see what everyone was talking about. It was through Basilmarket that I cultivated so many of my passions now; it was the basilers that introduced me to the indie game scene and instilled in my a desire for programming. It was the basilers that taught me about chip-tune music and got me into anime. It was also the basilers that got me to process my faith a lot more deeply. It may sound extreme, but had I not gotten plugged into that community, I may not be at my job today, and I may not be strong enough in faith to even write this post.

One night, while doing my homework, I decided to sneak onto Basil. I noticed a thread popped up called “Secrets”. The objective of this thread was to just lay out the deepest secrets that you held in your life, things you didn’t want anyone in your real life to know. They could be sad, happy, you name it. What laid out before me was the most human depiction of community I had ever seen. There were stories of abuse, hurt, and a deep longing of feeling seen. There was comfort and bearing burdens over one another, affirming each other’s humanity and above all, there was this kinship that developed amidst everyone in that thread.

I remember shedding tears that night. Maybe it was because there were stories that I wanted to finally tell, knowing I wouldn’t be shamed doing so? Maybe it was because there were hundreds like me wanting that avenue of vulnerability that they couldn’t get in their communities? Whatever it was, it shook me deeply in my core. This thread was the first time I had cried for people, let alone people online, because it was the first time I witnessed how brokenness can lead to beauty when a community has each other’s back.

What would it look like for the church to emulate something this beautiful? That despite all the bickering between ideologies and traditions, that we truly had this kinship deeply forged by bearing each other’s burdens and seeking the beauty of Christ together through our brokenness? When I was young, I anguished over why I felt more togetherness, more belonging online, in a thread of strangers, than at a church I spent hours in weekly? And how damaging and disheartening it must be to discount others like me, who have found this togetherness with their online peers, only to bring them into something that feels so cheap in comparison.

Thank You, Maplestory

MaplestoryTy

I could sit all day and recount all the many stories and explorations I’ve done in Maplestory and Basilmarket, but this blog would be way too long. Instead, I want to close this section honoring specific experiences and people I have come across during my journey throughout the Maple world. I’m sure there are many more individuals that I’m missing, but this is just a snippet of the experiences and people who have helped shaped me to become the man I am today.

I’ll be referring to some people by their IGNs (In Game Names), but I hope that you, the reader, still remember that behind these names are people with real stories and names too.

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