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RACINE — Frank Malvasio uses video games to make friends and stay connected just about 365 days a year. In the uncharted, isolating territory of shelter-in-place orders and self-quarantining, video games can become a lifeline.

“When you have access to the internet, you’re never too isolated. The fact that you can get a hold of your friends at really any time is so great,” said Malvasio, a 25-year-old Cree employee.

Games have long provided interpersonal connectivity, especially since the advent of the internet and online play.

“For people who don’t have a social community, gaming is their community,” said Ian Ballantyne, owner of Not Your Parents Gaming Lounge, 410 Main St., in Downtown Racine.

The necessity of that sense of community is becoming more important as Wisconsin’s Safer at Home order sets in and socializing with others face-to-face is discouraged.

“This is hard,” Andrea Palm, the secretary-designee for the Department of Health Services, said while talking about social distancing Wednesday. “Humans are social beings. We’re not wired this way.”

Right now, as millions of Americans hunker down and avoid contact with others because of the COVID-19 epidemic, video games can become a tether — connecting gamers with one another across the globe.

For Malvasio and his gamer friends, their lives feel less interrupted. He’s still playing League of Legends and Call of Duty: Warzone like normal and still talking with the same friends as he usually does, some of whom live in Canada and Mexico.

Staying connected

Malvasio talked about being randomly paired with someone in a match, then getting to chatting over their headsets, getting along, “and all of a sudden we’re playing three games together.”

Despite their reputation, video games don’t detriment young boys’ social skills, according to a study published in 2019 by the Society for Research in Child Development.

“Playing in times of isolation and connecting with each other is very important. With gaming, you’ll still have social interaction with each other. You’re still bonding over a game, even if you’re not in the same space,” said Dan Padilla, co-owner of Twin Dragon Games LLC, a tabletop gaming store and community that recently moved to 440 Main St.

With the new location’s grand opening pushed back due to the pandemic, Padilla and his wife, Christine, will be livestreaming informational deckbuilding sessions and uploading other videos to Twin Dragon’s Facebook page.

Not Your Parents Basement Gaming Lounge is trying to keep its gaming patrons together through online play while they aren’t able to come into the gaming lounge for the next month at least.

“Games can distract them from it (the isolation). Games can help their minds on straight and distract them from everything that’s going on.”

Staff members have taken to livestreaming games they are playing on the Twitch.tv, the pre-eminent video game streaming website, to stay connected with customers. A lot of the time, NYPB’s Twitch is occupied with Jackbox, a party game that can host unlimited players “so that people from home can play together,” Ballantyne said.

This weekend, the gaming lounge has started hosting its first online-only tournaments, where players can sign in from home, compete with one another, and talk to each other through NYPB’s dedicated chat server, hosted via Discord.gg, which has more than 490 members.

Ballantyne said that his business is “lucky and fortunate enough” to be “able to weather a storm like this.” If NYPB has to stay closed to guests for a few months, he doesn’t think it will have to close. But, he added that “if for some reason … we’re stuck six months or longer, we would be able to transition fully into a full online tournament organizer,” an industry that has been quickly growing over the past decade.

“For people who don’t have a social community, gaming is their community.” Ian Ballantyne, owner of Not Your

Parents Gaming Lounge

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