I went to the Xbox Live Launch last Friday not to check out Xbox Live, but to meet with friends. Free cotton candy and beer was a bonus, definitely.

Anyway, kudos to Microsoft for trying to make gaming appeal to the general public. DJs for emcees, entertainment for the “in” crowd and entrance queues to rival that of clubs during peak periods. Not to forget another two queues, one to purchase the Xbox Live kit and another to redeem the free memory card that comes with it. Ah well, this is Singapore anyway, land of the queues. There was also a rather impressive show of pyrotechnics, which made the entire place seem on fire for a bit.

But that’s not what the main focus of this post is. It’s rather strange, yet somewhat common to meet fellow Singaporeans in an online game. What’s even startling is how you can play with a fellow Singaporean for ages and only know that he also hails from Singapore when you examine him and see a Singapore linkshell (Final Fantasy XI term for IRC chatroom) or when the entire party reveals their places of origin. Of course, when us pioneers pretty much arranged for most Singaporeans to congregate on either the Ragnarok or Seraph server, I guess it would be rather common. If either Snag or Squishy from Seraph are reading this, Kurashiire said hi.

But when you play a game with a rather small international community such as Chron X, you tend to not expect to meet Singaporeans much if at all. After all, such games have very limited appeal. But in my 6 years of playing (wow, that’s an awfully long time, isn’t it?), I’ve met um… two Singaporeans. Yeah, two. I wonder if those people will read this very post.

Keep a look out for Singaporeans in any online game you play. Organize communities and maybe even meet up once in a while in real life. Who knows what the outcome of such an outing would be?