Folk-country legend Mr. John Denver was a complicated man.  He was every bit as complicated as the probable internet feuds about his legacy—100-retweet tumblr screeds where the lines of indentation collapse into impossible geometries of infohazard hell—a legacy that was tainted by domestic violence and self-destructive behavior.

John died in a plane crash in 1997, the same year Ultima Online released.  In their review of the accident, the National Transportation Safety Board suggested that the reason the plane went down was its eccentric fuel-tank switching mechanism.  After a morning of touch-and-go’s, ascending and descending like the high breezes rolling over the Rockies, his primary tank was barren.  He needed to swap to a full one.  He couldn’t.  

Fire and rain, and all that.

The man John Denver and the myth, or tall tale, of him differ, as is the case with many musicians from that era, and every era now and in any conceivable future.  Much has been made about his anger, and with good reason:  this dude literally cut his marital bed apart with a chainsaw in a property dispute with his ex-wife.  

My buddy once destroyed a table because of League of Legends.  His rage (and fists) split it right in half.  

Anger issues are a big mood for me. That same friend will attest that—on one of the occasions where he unselfishly braved the swamp gas and night fog to do a wellness check on me—I’ve given my face, hands, and 1970s wall paneling a good thrashing, if anything done at the cusp of full mental breakdown can be considered “good.”  The ghosts in my room are looking at me shaking their heads.  

Anyway.

Multiplayer video games often have a glow surrounding them, one not-unlike Denver’s surface sheen.  People love cowboys.  They love “standing for something.”  They adore displays of skill.  But do they love Red Dead Redemption’s multiplayer mode?  The answer is complicated, but basically, yeah—they just have different ways of showing their love (and their hate).  

And those ways often clash with other players’ personal values.  

And those ways often piss people off.  

A lot.

But what does a dead cultural icon think of the player vs. player machine-gun shuffle that is modern multiplayer gaming?  

I channeled the gentle, bespectacled soul of Mr. John Denver to find out, and ranked multiplayer game mechanics based on how angry I felt they would make him.  

Killing Other Players (Various Games)

Denver’s lyrics from “Paradise” (“…and we’d shoot with our pistols / But empty pop bottles was all we would kill”) suggests an almost Buddhist view of directed violence that comes from a life spent largely among nature.  What would such a man say about the wanton destruction of virtual life, with all of its game-related consequences—many measured in time spent, time wasted—and the shadow such a thing casts on the very real human moodscape occupied by players. 

Since he was no stranger to nights spent drinking alone (or drinking alone, with everyone else present, at 45 MPH), I have a hard time believing that the ability to kill a virtual self (even one belonging to someone else) would’ve phased John much.  Those old bottles, after all, are just toys, hollow targets for sharpening a skill, and I feel like he would’ve seen game avatars the same way.  Ultima Online’s virtual-yous were even known as “paperdolls.”  Whether you’re dressed in black robes with a halberd, or dressed in neon with a cute mask, it’s all just a costume for a plaything.  

Do you wound the soul when you do pretend violence to a grainy sprite?  Does the juicy hand-eye hoodoo of energy bolt and explosion landing on an enemy player act like pins jammed into an enchanted effigy representing a flesh and blood foe?

It’s my belief John would say “No,” to both questions, then quickly follow with “but I’d rather blow holes in an old pop bottle because it’s more satisfying, and I ain’t no Lord, or British, I’m just a son of a country son.”

ANGER RATING: One-quarter of a Tank of Fuel Spent Raging

The Ability to Chat Globally (Various Games)

Chat functionality has infamously been the place in many games where the mask of player civility starts to slip.  League of Legends, a competitive romp notorious for its horrific community, even considered banning cross-team chat in games until, presumably, they realized that removing the main source of toxicity would kill the only thing people found compelling about their game.  

League uses the “free with in-game purchases” economic model that’s become popular with free to play games, allowing people to purchase cosmetics like “skins” that change how your character looks.  I’m not saying there’s an overlap between obsession with skins and a penchant for hurling insults that target skin-color, but maybe Riot Games—the makers of League—feared killing the chat because of the backlash it would get from its biggest purchasers.  Totally not saying that players who purchase skins in League are more toxic than average.  Once again, I am not saying that people who purchase skins, like the one that gives Lucian vitiligo (allegedly) are toxic or call people “feeder niggers.”

But regardless, I wanted to see what one of the greatest bards of the 1960s thought about the ability to communicate remotely, semi-anonymously, over the now-ubiquitous network of pipes—or some damn devilry—that run above or underneath those country roads he sang so much about.

I asked ACorridorFullOfJews, a self-described “casually competitive” League player to interview the ghost of John Denver, which the Estate’s conjurers may or may not have had success in summoning (he didn’t say anything, but his presence, his mojo, was definitely felt).

ACorridorFullOfJews (Yasuo): hey faggot

Mr John Denver (Bard): 

ACorridorFullOfJews (Yasuo): hey i’m talking to u

Mr John Denver (Bard): 

ACorridorFullOfJews (Yasuo): you gonna leave the pad fuckwit?

Mr John Denver (Bard): 

ACorridorFullOfJews (Yasuo): fucking faggot, worse bard NA lmao

Mr John Denver (Bard): 

ANGER RATING: ???? of a Tank of Fuel Spent Raging

Game Invasion (Dark Souls Trilogy, Elden Ring, FROM Software 2010-2022)

Imagine you’re playing a game, and someone just appears and slaps your face.  That’s a little bit like what games with “player invasion” mechanics, such as FROM Soft’s charmingly difficult Dark Souls series, allow for.

These games connect players to the internet when they start, but then proceed as a mostly solo experience where you fight in a duel of wits against monsters and your own inability to learn from your mistakes.  

Dark Souls keeps players on their toes through encounters with challenging, but fathomable enemies and occasionally throws a curveball in the form of another player barging in on this rote struggle to completely fuck everything up. 

Having been invaded several times, I can say that the experience is jarring.  Watching an enemy that moves like you—with all the hesitation, cautiousness and crass opportunism of a conscious being—is a weird thing when you’ve been fighting AI-controlled bad guys for hours.   

For me, a social retard IRL who is primarily pegged by Bartle as a “Socializer” and “Killer”, a lot of this game feels like the second verse in “Prisoners”—a diligent fight against loneliness, immersed in fantasy, awaiting signs of others that appear too infrequently.

But I can’t help wondering what Denver, a world class performer known for his love of his fellow man, would’ve thought of the social aspects of Dark Souls.  It’s hard to think that the idea of invaders (red-colored, in a coincidental reversal of his “Wooden Indian” lyrics) being beaten into submission by a host and their spirit allies (white, again by coincidence) wouldn’t warm his heart a little bit.

Then again, the home—at least the idea of it—was seemingly a sacred place to him. Just the concept of being allowed to transgress the sanctity of privacy (even for fun) might piss him off.  I can picture John imbibing a little too much “Estus,” sensing some mortal threat to Annie or the children (a big part of his life, because as he put it: “I’ll tell you the best thing about me. I’m some guy’s dad; I’m some little gal’s dad.”), then turning his fully upgraded scythe from ‘farmin’ tool’ to ‘Castle Doctrine enforcer’ in heartbeat.  

ANGER RATING: About half of a Tank of Fuel Spent Raging

Tails’ Ability to Carry Sonic (Sonic the Hedgehog 3, SEGA 1994) 

Here’s how socially retarded I am:  I can’t help but turn pro-social game mechanics on their head, and can’t understand why people get pissed when I do this.  

Ask anyone who will admit to playing Dungeons & Dragons with me (if you can find them).  Ask the administrators of a Starseige: Tribes server running the mod where certain weapons kill people even with team damage set to off (you definitely won’t be able to find them).  Ask my therapist Waylon (you can probably find him, but please don’t do this or I’ll have to answer hard questions like “Do you think you’re still grieving for your dad?”, “What feelings are behind the anger?” or “Why the fuck would you give out my name in an article you wrote for a real estate website?”).

Long story short.  The popular platformer Sonic the Hedgehog 3 was a two player game.  It allowed one person to play as Sonic, and one to play Tails.  Tails could fly and swim.  

Tails could pick Sonic up and carry him to help (!) him with his platforming activities (getting to a higher place, traveling over lava, etc).  

Tails could also be a complete fucking piece of shit—and I must’ve been raised in a barn, just not in the good Colorado subsistence farming way because this is how I did it—by moving Sonic into obstacles that could kill him, or at least make him lose his precious rings.  

Regarding his marriage to actress Cassandra Delaney, John Denver once said, “…she managed to make a fool of me from one end of the valley to the other.”  

I was going to say that I did that with Tails—slamming my friends into spike traps, treading water just above them so they couldn’t complete a tenuous underwater jump while their breath ran out, or treating them like I was Mohammad Atta and they were just along for the deathride in the boss battle where Sonic has no choice but to be carried by Tails—but I won’t.

I won’t, because I was actually the fool.  The autist, really.  I’m the fucking moron who didn’t get that when you fuck with people (fuck with them until they pull your controller out in frustration), they’ll be unlikely to play with you in the future.  

I’m still that fool.  

What nice things could John Denver, a charitable, rightways man who did a benefit concert for the victims of Chernobyl, say about me?

I’m a social recluse, a shy-away-from-work NEET who makes things for an outsider arts website.  I’m a game designer whose work-life balance philosophy is like a dark version of the narrator in “Thank God I’m a Country Boy” who plays Sally good (?) and all fucking day and doesn’t give a fuck about The Lord or his wife.  

If anything, John would be angry at me.  He wouldn’t blame the Sonic Team devs and that’s fine, since, frankly, they’re blamed for every fucking other thing.  

He would start revving up in my room, freshly gassed and ready to do tons of damage, like a damn freak.  The fact that my bed is a mattress on the floor might hinder his cutting it up (especially if he stops to give me life lessons in his gentle, mid-western tone).  He would do a double take at my walls.  “Why are these already destroyed?” is what I imagine him saying, as he stands there mumbling about the vaguely-maroon stains and battered sheetrock.  He would run through the house kicking imaginary doors off of their hinges, which, like in Schindler’s List, would amount to a “small pile,” maybe, depending on the state of disrepair my home is currently in.  He might trip on a sideways plant (marijuana reference, or just more filth?).  

But being a decent, honest, and compassionate guy (at least with strangers who gave him adoration), Mr. John Denver would probably become more sad than frustrated, then go outside and use his chainsaw to cut some timber.

“Wood, for the winter,” is what he’d say as he pointed to the fruits of his labor, “And please, clean up your gosh darn life, if you can.”

ANGER RATING: A Full Tank of Fuel Spent Raging and Cutting Lumber