Little Things

A few weeks back, Vampy and Velvet invited a group of RCM staffers for a special episode of their Saturday afternoon game stream Chaos Will Ensue. As I stated in my last post, some of RCM’s cultural values center around responsibility, hard work, a willingness to be helpful whenever possible, and giving back to our communities. It all ties into a philosophy I refer to as RivalCares, and it manifests itself in different ways. In this particular case, the ladies proposed a wager among friends: each of us came with a charity we support and pledged $5 into the pot, with the idea being that at the end of the game, the money would be donated to the charity of the winner’s choice. Our charities were David’s House, Defending the Blue Line, SpecialEffect.org, Operation Supply Drop, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, and my choice, The Good People Fund. It was a simple enough idea that also happened to dovetail nicely with the RivalCares mindset – small gestures can make a big impact.

The internet community as a whole, and gamers in particular, generally get bad raps in the kindness department. This isn’t entirely unjustified – a brief glance at the argument (excuse me, ‘comments’) feed on any news website or the global chat of any major game server gives plenty of evidence supporting the notion that everyone on the web is a twelve-year-old bully with a serious lack of social skills. But what’s talked about much less frequently are the positive gestures communities make. Major communities like those run by EVO and Penny Arcade offer yearly scholarships for college-bound gamers as well as run charities to bring games to sick children. On a smaller scale, independent streamers like the members of IlluminateXP raise money for the charity ExtraLife4Kids. Drops in a bucket, perhaps, but again, when they work together over time, those drops add up.

But positive gestures don’t have to be limited to financial obligations to make a difference. Sometimes, just basic, caring human interaction sets a positive course. For example, one of the weird little habits I have is that when I encounter something I really like, I try to reach out to the persons responsible to tell them. In my experience, the tiniest bits of encouragement are sometimes the difference between whether a project succeeds or fails – that little bit of something that keeps one from giving up at a crucial point. Having been on the receiving end of this encouragement, I know the impact those tiny acts can have firsthand, especially among people who always work hard but rarely receive the kindness they deserve. It’s the reason our postmaster helps me ship out cookies on a regular basis, the reason complete strangers get tweets of appreciation, and the reason our office building doesn’t have generic receptionists and delivery guys, but instead Tims, Chads, Ruths, and Sandys.

Think about it: the last time you ran an errand to Target, or Walmart, or Sainsburys, did you make eye contact with the clerk? Do you fill out customer service surveys only when you’re pissed off, or do you take a moment to thank your server or whomever is helping you? We teach our children to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ as a matter of course, then negate those manners in our own day to day interactions with the excuse of ‘well, that’s their job.’ And then, how different does it feel on those occasions where a customer or client pulls you aside at work to give you a positive comment as opposed to a negative? Of course, this isn’t to say criticism doesn’t have its place – constructive criticism is an important part of improving ourselves and the world around us, so glad-handing everything is counterproductive. But the key in that last sentence is the word constructive – make sure whatever you’re doling out has a reason and purpose.

But back to our game night: there’s a reason the show is called Chaos. By the end of the game, there was no clear ‘winner,’ so we split our donations among the six charities. And per my custom, the next morning I sent a little note of thanks and encouragement along with my donation. I didn’t think much of it, and had completely forgotten about it by the time I got home that Monday night.

It had been a hell of a day. Everything that could have gone wrong did, from server issues to schedule deletions to crazy persons yelling at me. I was exhausted and all but broken from the trials of the day, and still there was so much yet to do – tech team was still up trying to fix issues and there were fires to be put out and articles to be written and contracts to be negotiated. It was one of those days when you look at all there is yet to do and wonder if all the work will really be worth it in the end, if anything you’ve given your heart and soul to really matters at all.

The following is what, in that state of mind, I found in my inbox from the director of the Good People Fund:

Hi Jen,
What a lovely note to find as I just logged in to my computer!

Keep playing those games!

I was still crying when I logged back to check in with the guys, but that note – that tiny little spark from a complete stranger – was what I needed.

Sometimes, those little things make all the difference.