The Syndicate Turns 22


The Syndicate turned 22 years old in February 2018. I love any opportunity to talk about my team :) but this really isn't an email about us. Rather, I wanted to take a moment to say THANK YOU to all the game developers, gaming hardware manufacturers and gaming news organizations. One of the reasons our community is strong is because there are worlds out there that we can come together in and build shared experiences and grow our friendships. Those worlds don't exist without a number of key pillars (Games, Hardware to run them on, and information about them from news sources).

The Syndicate is full of people from all over the world... all walks of life... all education levels... widely varying political and religious views etc.. Without the online gaming world, most of us would never have had a chance to even cross paths... much less to have crossed paths in a way that afforded us a chance to move past the typical 'barriers' to building friendships that just happen in the real world without us even being conscious of it.

When we are all on our computers, playing on the hardware you created, everyone is equal. Everyone is diverse. Everyone starts on an equal footing. And you end up meeting the person themselves and not judging what you perceive the person to be before you ever truly get to know them. So when people talk about things like diversity and about bringing 2 sides of an argument together to try to find common ground, I tend to think about the worlds that exist within gaming. That 'problem' was solved decades ago and the amazing diversity of thought, experience and everything else comes together in a mash-up of ideas and innovation and community that simply doesn't exist anywhere else that I am aware of.

So, as I reflect back on 22 years of online gaming (and many more than that gaming with friends) and I think about the estimated 90-100 million communities that have been created over that time, the impact of the work you and the rest of the greater gaming community team do every day is probably hard to overstate. Its an amazing 'thing' you have been a part of creating and growing and it has afforded my slice of that 'thing' a chance to grow and thrive and overcome the prejudices of the real world.

Thank you to all the game developers, news organizations and hardware manufacturers for making those possible. Without your efforts and those of your team, most of my members would never have met each other... countless lives that I can point too, would not have been positively affected by the relationships forged using the computers... and connecting to the worlds that run on your computers... to have those shared experiences that they provide.