Thread by @JonnyGabriel

I've seen a few #ThanksToVideoGames posts today, so here's my thanks to them - a thank you to them for bringing me close to my brother, and a thank you to them for helping deal with his death.

We didn't have a Mega Drive or a SNES growing up, we had Simon's old Atari ST which was a bit outdated but he let me play Noddy's Playtime on it.

We also had a game called North & South that was based around the American Civil War, to this day I do not know how that game was played and I doubt Simon did either, but I'd try to play it pretty much every day.

But my favourite moment, one I still look back on with fondness to this day, is when he sat down with me and taught me how to play Championship Manager '93. It took three floppy disks to load it, he could have been out at the pub but he guided me through.

As an aside, I broke his Atari ST when I played the Italia '90 game and the metal part of the disk got stuck inside the drive. I was heartbroken, I'd cheated my way into signing Alan Shearer for Division Two Newcastle United and it was all in tatters.

Like I say, we didn't really have new consoles but one day I came home from school and from our living room I could hear the voice of Murray Walker. Simon had bought a PlayStation and Formula 1 '97, the graphics blew my mind - much better than the ones in Noddy's Playtime.

We played Formula 1 '97 loads, and FIFA: Road to World Cup '98. Simon even bought Grand Theft Auto, and I would play it when he wasn't in the house. It was an 18 certificate after all.

But I'd always make sure to put the maps and manual back exactly how I found them, and put the case back how it was. I really doubt he'd have cared if he knew. He probably knew.

Simon pretty much stopped gaming in his twenties after he moved out from our parents' house, that was until Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was released. Me, him, a bunch of his friends, and a bunch of my friends would play online every night.

I loved getting a text from Simon telling me what time to be online, putting my headset on and chatting away as he complained Americans had better internet connections and that's why they saw him before he saw them. Truth is he was just a bit crap.

Just another quick aside, he even invested in surround sound at one point because he thought it would help hear people creeping up on him. Safe to say it didn't.

My parents moved to Cornwall a few years ago, and so I moved back in with Simon for six months when I was looking for my own place to live. Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops were released around the same time.

Once or twice a week, Simon would let me bring my XBox and my TV down from the bedroom, put them on a cardboard box next to his TV and we would sit together and play Call of Duty for hours. Only now he'd blame us both being on the same connection for his poor kill:death ratios.

About three years after that, now living in Salford, I loaded up Football Manager 2013 and started a game with Dynamo Dresden, before moving on to Brighton and then Hearts before finally landing the Celtic job. There I signed a player called Ivica Strok.

I played that game a lot, hours each and every night, for months on end. I was playing it on the evening of 20th December 2014. On the morning of 21st December 2014, Simon took his own life. He was 36 years old.

In the aftermath of Simon's suicide, I turned to Football Manager as an escape from the world around me. Twenty years earlier, sat in our bedroom on his Atari ST, he showed me the ins and outs of the game. Those lessons were invaluable now.

I found solace in the game, in the escapism, in being the best manager in the world. Then I realised I could use the game to help others, by using it to help promote @theCALMzone.

thecalmzone.net/2017/07/ivica-…

So that's what I did, and still do as and when I can, and through Football Manager we have raised thousands of pounds for @theCALMzone. But, maybe more importantly, we've helped to direct young men going through hard and challenging times to their services.

A few days ago, somebody posted this on the Football Manager subreddit. I'm so happy this person found @theCALMzone, and that they found it helpful.

So #ThanksToVideoGames; thank you for bringing me closer to Simon, thank you for helping me grieve, thank you for helping others.