How Metal Gear Solid and a Twitch Stream Helped Me Through the COVID Lockdown
2020 was a strange year for many, many reasons. The COVID-19 pandemic changed the world, requiring many to stay in their homes, stay away from their loved ones, and work from home.
For us, lockdown was fine, for the most part. We had enough space in our house at the time to not get under each other's feet, and thanks to the great weather that the UK had for most of 2020, we would usually have our daily walks at the nearest field or work in the garden. However, when that was all said and done, we would take part in virtual quizzes or watch-alongs. But for me, there was another aspect that helped — a name that, by the time July came around in 2020, my then-partner was sick of:
Richie Morgan. Richie bloody Morgan.
I came across Richie, a freelance videographer, via Owen O'Donnell's YouTube channel, The Infinite Review. One of O'Donnell's early videos was The Beast From The East, which showcased Richie's death multiple times due to the blizzard of January 2018, but also showcased his undying love for the movie, Ali G Indahouse.
After discovering a group he was part of that still creates several podcasts and YouTube channels, I had Gavin Spence on PAL KEYS in 2019, followed by Richie a few months later.
We kept in touch and, once Lockdown happened, Richie said he was going to stream on Twitch. This began with Metal Gear Solid, a masterpiece of a game, created by Hideo Kojima and his team at Konami, which spearheaded the stealth-action games for the original PlayStation console and beyond. What followed was countless hours of watching Richie mistake rooms for elevators, forget how to open doors, try to find a shotgun, and try to use ketchup.
Over five years since Lockdown, I've been rewatching the streams and was reminded of why Metal Gear streams were a big help during that year.
