Back Where it all began

During my time as a professional gamer and community leader, I noticed a lack of values that resonated with mine. Building gaming communities had often become a venue for mass hysteria. However, my Village was, and always will be, about accepting new members and offering hope. It also involved the challenge of showing them the way out.

Now, at 55, and by no means financially sufficient to escape not working for the rest of my life, retirement has forged a new concept for me. I am no longer working for anyone; I am working for myself. The financial challenges are real and ever-present, but they have also become a driving force in my quest. It is us that we have the power to change. It is through this hope that if I stay positive, hope will persist through my days. The quest is how to make the daily grind, just like leveling up or getting gear, a reality.

Through my new mission, "Quest for Optimism," I will draw others who stay focused on surviving beyond the day. I will use my experiences as a professional gamer and community builder to search for optimistic people who believe that their hopefulness can change the country. Through my video blog, I aim to document this journey, sharing stories of resilience, positivity, and the power of a hopeful mindset. I invite you to join me on this adventure, as we explore the magic of optimism and inspire a life filled with purpose, resilience, and joy.

The Catalyst to a Game-Driven Community

Bud's Village, was a community born from an enthusiasm for gaming and a desire to connect with others. My name is Darren, but most people call me Bud. As a retired professional gamer with over 55 years of experience, I've seen the transformative power of gaming firsthand. From the early days of Coleco Vision’s Pong to the expansive worlds of modern RPGs and survival games, gaming has always been a significant part of my life. Before the Coleco Vision console, there was the old Osterizer blender. I would press the buttons and fly my spaceship to “Warp Speed,” recreating the new series on television that captured me in infancy as mom sat me on her lap and guided me through each episode with Captain Kirk, Spock, Bones, and the crew of the Enterprise on Star Trek. It's hard to imagine humans having memories so early, but some of us do. We just don’t access them the way other memories are stored. Like the data-driven storage unit we are, something, like an event, triggers these memories. It is almost like an alarm to reach deep into the archives. Once you know how this process works, even a human can hack their memories by triggering such events. You have heard the expression, "my life flashed before me"? Discovering how to access these events is a blessing and a curse for some of us. If you had access to corrupted code in your system, would you like to correct it so that you could feel safe? This is why I learned to “hack” my memories. So, I can have access to issues that have corrupted my life and fix them.

For every action, there is an equal reaction. I had a troubled family life. The reaction to this seemed to be a strong desire to compete and prove I was a contender, or at least skilled enough to be noticed. Bud's Village started as a social hangout and gaming community where people could come together to play games, share experiences, and enjoy each other's company. My background in Recreation Therapy, with a professional traing in the field, has always driven me to help individuals find joy and connection through play. I believe that our core values and social beliefs are often reflected in how we play, whether alone or with others.

Bud’s Village started long before the video gaming evolution or the first PC was anything more than a monochrome green screen with a 5.25-inch floppy drive (my first PC, the Apple II). My home became the place for most staging points for neighborhood activities. Forts were constructed for assembly, planning, escaping from the world’s troubles, and role-playing activities like defending the base. The guild hall was built years before we had to level up the guild to gain access to the feature to subscribe to instances where our guild, clan, or tribe could do the same in-game. By the time I began electronic gaming on a PC, my primary goal was to recreate this.

I started in gaming as an 8-year-old boy walking into a hobby shop and discovering the Dungeons & Dragons paper and dice classic role-playing game. At the same time, handheld electronic puzzle challenge games appeared in toy stores that offered colored lights that needed arranging under timed conditions. A few years later, my family bought one of the first mass-produced PCs, an Apple II. That basic computer changed my life. Years later, I finished my degree in Therapeutic Recreation as I felt driven to help individuals challenged with connecting to playtime activities. As cyberspace developed, I witnessed the sprawling complexities of online gaming and the evolution of video game communities to help support their connectivity to the games.

I walked into this hobby store to buy a plastic model replica of some World War II vehicle made in Taiwan that had no English instructions, so I would need to assemble hundreds of parts using numbers alone. Instead, I saw the display of the full collection of Dungeons and Dragons books sprawled across the entrance of the store. From flipping through the pages, I could see they were providing a structured format for a timeless activity: role-playing. As I began exploring the manuals, I soon found it difficult to let go of the rich fantasy world TSR was developing with the D&D series. This would go on to become one of the founding issues and part of the new direction Bud’s Village would take.

An undefinable end to the story, game, or book just leaves a vacuum in life that seems irreplaceable compared to the dream set in the fantasy world. Compared to the harshness and cruelty of life outside of the game, who wouldn’t want to “stay indoors” if the weather was bad outside? Fear of what I must face and the desire to stay in this safe space we create is why the game needs to have a conclusion. Life needs to exist beyond the game. Life outside will perish, and the retreat to a more acceptable, manageable world in-game soon replaces it