In Memoriam: Heather Grote

NB: In case it wasn't obvious, this isn't a regular review post. 

My biggest influences when it came to videogames didn't come from the big names. Sure, Uetmasu got me into composing, I respected Miyamoto and I thought Tim Cain was a bit of a genius, but the real influences came far closer to home. Within that spectrum, none of them were bigger than Heather. 

Heather was my best mate's mum. She might as well have been my mum for the couple of months a year I spent at his place over the school holidays. She loved a story, really loved a cup of tea and, in what was quite strange for me growing up, she loved videogames. 

Some of my fondest memories of that house came from the N64 era — stacks of N64 Gamer magazines littering the house, a library of games that I'd later realise was comparatively tiny but felt enormous, rich and varied at the time. 

I think the first time I realised the extent of Heather's love for videogames was after the release of the much maligned Starcraft 64. I was a massive Warcraft II fan and wasn't too sure about this new direction Blizzard were taking with what was to me (the ever ambivalent on Diablo) their flagship franchise. The soundtrack of this spring was punctuated by plenty of cries of "ohh...you little shit!" from Heather while struggling with various missions in the campaign. 

Eventually I came around on Starcraft, which led to the first epiphany Heather taught me: I'm not very good at videogames. Heather had a way of humbling me like that. After a couple of wins with my latest genius strategy (it was just a Hydralisk rush) I was ready to take Heather on. After a couple of early skirmishes I decided to pull out the big guns, massing an obscene amount of Hydralisks to land a decisive blow that, surely, no opposition could prevent. It would have been a great idea if I'd even got within sight of the base — Heather saw I was playing as the zerg and had lined siege tanks around the perimiter of the single entrance to her base. The few Hydralisks who made it past the craterous hellzone the tanks created were quickly mopped up by marines with medics in tow. My base didn't take long to go after that. 

Heather wasn't blessed with spectacularly quick reflexes, but her patience and logic were legendary. She was always great and humble in victory too — although one of my favourite memories remains her glee when, after migrating to Starcraft on battle.net, she had stomped somebody in a ranked match who preceeded to lay down a torrent of swear words and threats against her mother (probably assuming Heather was a 15 year old boy). Heather couldn't have been more happy at the outcome — there was a real sense of pride at having caused somebody to ragequit. 

She also introduced me to a hell of a lot of the classics, especially some of the more underrated ones. Jet Force Gemini, Shadowman 64, Conker's Bad Fur Day and, perhaps most importantly for me, the eternally underrated Lufia II which led me on a decade long JRPG binge. Her willpower was legendary. Her patience allowed her to brute force her way through even the toughest challenges - I'm not kidding when I say that I never saw her quit on something once she set her mind to it. Some of the things she achieved in Tetris, Super Mario 64 and, later down the line, Pikmin boggled my mind. 

I wish I could say that she transferred that patience to me, but I'd be lying. What she did pass on was a deep appreciation for good game mechanics, a knowledge that pure skill and reflexes doesn't have to become the be all, end all for multiplayer gaming and an appreciation for genres like puzzle games, RPGs and platformers that I would never have achieved otherwise. She taught me that even as a person driven by story and dialogue I could find something in mechanics heavy games that were light on writing. She taught me that it's far better to swear relentlessly than to throw a controller.

I think games got Heather through a lot. As I get a bit older and the hobby evolves I can see how they'd do that. I find a lot of catharsis in certain games. Everyone who knew Heather would have something fond in particular they remember about her - for me she was the person who taught me to appreciate games beyond the surface level and be comfortable in my own skill (or lack thereof). 

We'll all miss her terribly.