The Patch

I just finished rebuilding The CybrThugs website, and somewhere in the middle of all that it got me thinking about the last 30 years.

When Hypnotitron and I started The CybrThugs it was about a gaming clan. Back then, we were damn good at Quake. If we'd made different choices, there's a chance we could have been counted among the best. But we're in our 50s now. We still have the swagger. We probably don't have the reflexes. And that's okay, because somewhere along the way being a CybrThug stopped being about the game and started being about each other.

Gaming brought us together. The patch is what keeps us together. We've spent too many years growing up, getting older, building lives, starting over, winning, losing and going through shit we never saw coming. MagicWookiee can call me on my bullshit. Hypnotitron can be a dumbass. KhaoticRage or LegoLand can do something amazing. Smitten or Ghost Reaper can cry on my shoulder. The good AND the bad, they're my family. Not because we share blood, but because day after day, year after year, we've chosen each other.

That's what the patch means after all these years. It's not about being the best anymore. It's about who stands beside you when you're not. We screw up. We fall down. Sometimes we have nothing left to give. But we celebrate each other's wins, call each other on our bullshit and pick each other up when we fall. Sometimes I'm doing the picking up. Sometimes I need it. No man left behind wasn't just something we said in a game. It was about us.

We are The CybrThugs.

Whatever comes next, we don't face it alone.

We thought we were building a Quake clan, but really, we were building a family.

Turns out Quake was just where we started.