Yesterday I kind of realized that at some point playing games stopped feeling like a hobby and started feeling like a chore. Somehow playing games got super entangled in my social life in an unhealthy way and over the last several years I've gotten very caught up in "am I playing the right game" as a result. Which, if games are entertainment, is a particularly ludicrous question. The Right Game™ should always closely align with "whatever the hell sounds fun right now".
But if you are worried about what your friends might think of the games you play...
What the hell am I on about? Well, I just find the following considerations floating around in my head every time I look into playing a game.
- Does this game give me a sense of community by giving me a group of folks to play with and impress? Do I feel like I can be skilled in this game so I can be a good guild member and impress people with my vast wisdom regarding this game?
- Or will this game put me in groups with folks I don't get along with or don't identify with as a trans-femme (because lemme tell ya, there's definitely a correct way to be a trans-femme and we should all be super concerned about conforming to it /sarcasm. Yeah, this bullet point is a couple layers deep in nasty thought patterns.)
- Will this game give me something to talk with friends about and potentially impress them with. Ie., is it their favorite game? Will they like me more if I also like it?
- Will this game impress artists I may want to work with by "inadvertently" showing them how "in tune" I am with their whole thing. (I can assure you every artist I've ever worked with has never cared about this, and yet I worry 🙄).
Did you notice how not one of those was, "Is this game fun?" Heeeeeeeeehhhhh.....
Now, to be clear, being social with a game is a Good Things™ when it is in the proper context. If you simply love a game so much that you happen to end up in a community of fellow fans and you create social bonds that way, that is fantastic and you are to be commended. In fact, a couple of my friends essentially started their careers by being super fans of a particular game. If you love the game and let community follow, I think it is a fantastic thing!!
What is back asswards about my current approach is that I'm not even kind of doing that. Rather, I am letting the social factors drive the game. I'm not saying, "I love {x} game, ergo I will go find other players who also love it and hang out with them" instead I've been saying, "I want to hang out with {x} kinds of people, so what games should I be playing to fit in?"
This mixes with my ADHD in incredibly unhealthy ways. Firstly, it's easy for me to get hyped up about anything. So if I see my friends are playing a game and I think, "oh, friend is playing, I should play!" I can easily watch a trailer and hype myself the. hell. up!
And trust me, that hype will carry me through the first 5 hours of playing generally. And then the second part of ADHD rears it's ugly head... the boredom... the fact that if I'm disinterested in something I simply cannot get myself to keep doing it.
It's kind of a hard emotion to describe, but have you ever felt revolted by the mere idea of doing something? That's what being bored of, well, anything feels like to me. If I play a game for a few hours and I get bored I can't just keep going in order to feign interest for my friends. Nope, I will literally start the game up, look at the title screen and feel a sense of growing revulsion at the thought of playing. Like someone put rotten seaweed in front of you and asked you to eat it. I just...can't.
So, then I turn the game off.
Then I yell at myself for not liking this game my friend loves.
Then the guilt starts...
...
It's actually a pretty nasty cycle and I feel like I'm under selling it. I feel awful when I don't like the games my friends cherish and it's compounded by the fact that it's really really mentally rough for me to try and force my way through. It's like, this is my best friend and I can't get through one lousy 40 hours game for them? What in the hell is wrong with me?!?!
I essentially end up feeling trapped between the rock of my friends and the hard place of the ADHD/boredom conundrum.
It's....honestly super stressful.
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Anyway.
Even if I could naturally enjoy those games (and sometimes I can)... I'm not going to be able to with the looming social pressure to mask myself as a super fan of a game I'm really only trying to get into because one of my friend groups is into it.
Heh, did I mention that I have several friend groups who all like wildly different, highly time intensive games? So if I were to actually try to follow through on this misguided approach, I would literally have to spend all of my time becoming proficient enough to come across as a big fan (I did the math, there's literally not enough time in the day).
You know what the funniest part to me is? I don't think anyone I know even identifies me as a gamer 😆. Most folks see me as a musician who plays games! So a lot of this massive, stressful dilemma feels almost entirely self imposed.
I'm just starting to wonder these last few days... wouldn't my friends enjoy just chatting with me about music, you know? In fact I don't even have to ask this questions because I already know that all of my closest friends enjoy chatting about music. They also don't mind me going on about yuri it seems. And, of course, I'm always happy to hear from them about their own games and hobbies. It's fun to listen to someone be passionate about something!
Heh, when I started writing this I didn't think I had a lot of thoughts to share buuuuuut.... I guess I did 🤣. Hell, I may even have some conclusions in there, I dunno! For now I know I'm turning off Discords fun little feature of broadcasting my gameplay to all my friends, as well as Steams, I feel like I've been using that in an unhealthy way and, frankly, nobody needs to know what I'm playing. I assume we will still be friends regardless ☺️.
But if you feel you're playing games as a hobbiest, just make sure you're doing it for yourself.
Not to fit in.
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If you think you are one of these friends: I love you, don't worry about it, I want to be your friend because I like you and that hasn't changed.
