GORE BAY—Manitoulin Secondary School Grade 11 student Zack Dallaire enjoys playing the “sandbox” game Garry’s Mod online and he has made a lot of friends all across the globe, but Zack was recently faced with a dilemma that is becoming all too familiar these days. Talking to one of his online friends in a gaming chat room he realized his friend was in crisis, talking about going to his school with a gun and taking everyone with him.
Zack immediately recognized the seriousness of what he was hearing. Faced with a crisis with which he is ill-equipped to deal, Zack took his concerns to the authorities at his school. They in turn contacted the Espanola-Manitoulin OPP, who set in motion an international intervention which saw police in Gdansk, Poland investigating the concerns.
“I knew my friend had been depressed for a couple of weeks,” said Zack, “and I knew he had access to guns at home.”
This wasn’t a hypothetical problem Zack was facing. In these days of hyper-interconnection through the World Wide Web, massively multiplayer online games (an online game with large numbers of players, typically from hundreds to thousands, on the same server) and chatrooms that connect players from all around the world school shootings have often been heralded by just such comments. In fact, Zack has lost online friends to shootings in the United States.
For those who are not initiated in the genres, a sandbox is a style of game in which minimal character limitations are placed on the gamer, allowing the gamer to roam and change a virtual world at will. In contrast to a progression-style game, a sandbox game emphasizes roaming and allows a gamer to select tasks rather than to follow some pre-ordained script.
Players often form strong bonds and lasting friendships, even though they may not ever meet face-to-face. They may be known by their alter egos or pen names online rather than their “real” names, friends share a lot with each other that they might not, in fact probably not, share with their parents or other guardians. Such has been true since long before the Internet and will probably be the case long after the next big thing in connectivity comes along. Those feelings shared are just taking place across vast distances and in time frames a generation past could not even begin to fathom.
But Zack’s parents, June and Dan, couldn’t be prouder of their son.
“We are very proud of him for sure,” said Ms. Dallaire as she and her husband beamed outside their well appointed Gore Bay home and the family’s uber-friendly dogs sought to bond with the newest visitor. “He really did the right thing,” said Mr. Dallaire. “He did it all on his own. We didn’t even know about it until later when he called us about it.”
Zack appears remarkably unfazed by his experience. But there might be a good reason for that, and his quick and appropriate actions when he realized his friend was in crisis. “We get training at the grocery store on how to handle situations,” said Zack. The Grade 11 student works at Dean’s Valumart in Gore Bay and has had a little more than the usual interaction with challenging situations than most young people his age. “I also have had CPR training.”
Unlike the popularly image held by some older folks of young gamers, that of an immature teen lurking in anti-social dark basements divorced from the world of green plants and fresh air, Zack’s other great passions include kayaking on Manitoulin waterways and enjoying the outdoors. Zack’s quick and appropriate reaction was anything but immature, and as for that anti-social thing, Zack’s actions when faced with a call for help from a friend in crisis, and that the call itself was made, should lay that popular trope firmly to rest.
