July 2007

After more than a year of playing together, it went a stage further. Two guild members who lived relatively close to each other - Rugal in Brighton and Brodos in Weymouth - agreed to meet up to watch a rubbish film called Transformers: The Movie. A number of other guild members, some of whom lived in Weymouth, decided to tag along too and, as the date approached, more than 20 had showed an interest. Once it emerged that our organisational skills were too lacklustre to book 20 hotel places in Brighton, the venue changed to Weymouth, courtesy of the very tolerant parents of a young man named Exelos.

Dubbed Brucecon, this event attracted people from across Britain and further - including Theta from Ireland, Aakarp from Sweden and Marfu from Norway. It was a profoundly unsettling experience to meet a pack of people of whom you knew some aspects extremely well and some not at all. Watching a familiar disembodied voice emerge from a genuine human head is odd, at first, but it wasn’t long before it stopped being strange and started feeling normal and, with that barrier overcome, a lot of people had a great deal of fun. By the end, a few days seemed like barely enough and with a cluster of new numbers firmly embedded in our phones, we returned home to our everyday lives, tied together a little more strongly for having finally put faces to names.

Brucecon 2 came a few months later in Reading, courtesy of Xynthia and Henchick. A slightly different and slightly larger group - again including visitors from elsewhere in Europe, like Morani and Moodok from Sweden - convened for another spate of eating, drinking and geekery. It was one of the best parties I have ever been to. Not only was everyone present already familiar to some degree, I already knew I liked them and we all shared the same hobby.

“I have never encountered so many genuine and friendly people at the same time,” said Silverwave after his return home to Scotland. I felt the same. The journey home, four hours alone on trains playing darts on my Nintendo DS, was a bit of a comedown.

It was pretty clear after this that online socialising wasn’t quite the half measure it was cracked up to be. It’s sad to think that a lot of people you like live too far away to drive to in one night, and it’s easy to let your brain fall into the trap of thinking that internet interaction can replace proper contact. But it’s also amazing to think it takes me three clicks and a button press to chat to my a friend on the other side of Europe. I couldn’t have imagined that ten years ago.