This post is part of the A-Z Blogging Challenge.
I am not a gamer.
That is hard to say, when games have been such a massive part of my life… and my identity for so long. But here’s the truth: the last game I really played was Bioshock. I didn’t beat it. I made it about half way and then just… drifted away.
Not because the game was bad. The complete opposite in fact, Bioshock sucked me in and kept me playing after many other games had failed. The honest truth is, I am just not a gamer. Not anymore.
What happened?
I grew up hooked on games: I started with an ancient atari console and ended with a Playstation 3 and visited three different desktop computers on the way. I’m not going to name check the games I played – suffice to say, there were a lot.
I wrote video games. I even managed a (paid) job in the industry. I interviewed for a game writing job. But the truth was, by that point disillusionment had set in.
I love games. I will always love games.
But the truth is this: gamers are privileged. And gaming culture sucks. Let’s take a quick look at the reasons I quit:
1. It’s expensive
A Playstation 3 currently costs over £300. That’s a lot of money to sink into a console. And they are not reliable. My first PS3 I got second-hand. About six months later it died. With no warranty, I had to grit my teeth and get another one. That one I got new. A year later, that too died.
Then there’s the controllers: I’ve lost count of the number my spouse and I went through.
If you are a serious gamer; someone who wants to make a career out of it, who engages with the culture, one console isn’t really enough. You need to keep up-to-date. So you get two, or three. Maybe a DS. Maybe a wii. Maybe a high-end PC with a great graphics card.
Finally, of course, there are the games. £60-70 new. On average, I probably play around 10-15 hours on a game. Sure, some games I play for 100+ hours, but those are rare.
Of course you can keep the costs down. You can play old games, on ROMS. You can download stuff. You can stick to free-to-play. You can opt for second or third hand games and keep trading. You can use a library, or join Game Fly. But if you want to join in on the conversation, you need to be up to speed. That involves having beaten Tomb Raider, Bioshock: Infinite, maybe even having an opinion on the latest Sim City.
The truth is, I’m just too poor to keep up.
2. It’s time consuming
I used to love World of Warcraft. I played it a lot. But there came a point when I realised that if I had twenty minutes to spare, I literally could not accomplish anything. I might travel to where I needed to be, but that was it. After I left University and got my first full-time job, more than twenty minutes at a time was a luxury.
Did I mention I was poor? At one point I worked seven days a week: 50 hours Monday-Friday on my gaming job, and then a further 18 hours Sat-Sun at a supermarket. Combined, the two jobs just about gave me enough to live on. Somehow I was also meant to find the time to stay current with games. I’ll be honest – it didn’t happen. If you couldn’t play a game in satisfactory twenty minute chunks, I just could not scrape out enough time to play them.
Of course there are casual games. I’ll be honest: casual games are fun, but the reason I truly love games are because of the immersive, puzzle like storylines. I’m an explorer and a solver, not an adrenaline junkie. I still play Sonic the Hedgehog from time to time, but on the whole I’d rather be playing Fallout.
3. The culture sucks
Not all of it, I admit. But here’s the thing; when I started gaming, the internet was a lot smaller and a lot friendlier. Women seemed more welcome. Things weren’t so cliquey. When you met someone who liked the same game as you, it was a connection, something to celebrate. Multiplayer games worked by everyone sitting in the same room, around the same console.
Nowadays? Not so much. The hatred poured out towards everyone and everything is hideous. Depressing. I don’t want to play a game where I have to sit and listen to people calling each other foul names. I’ve got no intention of ‘manning up’. Casual racism and sexism is not okay. A competitive spirit I can deal with; having rape threats screamed at me? Not so much.
There are great bloggers out there, and interesting discussions going on. But time and time again the conversation devolved into attack and defence. I was tired of being outraged by the way women were treated, tired of the constant stream of negativity.
So… what next?
I’ve quit gaming. That’s saddening, in a lot of ways. But I still have many of the positives that gaming left me with: some fantastic friends, a problem solving mind, an obsession with manga-style artwork. And, somehow, letting go of the need to ‘keep up’ is liberating. Since I quit being a gamer, I’ve installed Super GSNES on my phone and discovered some old classics. I draw comfort from the fact I can always go back and play my old games if I feel the need. And I know that when I hit retirement, there will have been some awesome games that I will finally have time to play.
Are you a gamer? How do you make it work for you?
I’ve never been a game. The only one I ever played was Super Mario Bros.and that was my daughter’s game. I can totally see how they become addictive, though. I actually got sore thumbs from playing lol! It is sad that it degenerated so far, though 🙁
I wouldn’t say it’s degenerated, but there is something that has changed about it with the advent of online multiplayer. I guess it’s just the anonymous nature of it all, and the habit of trolling… and the fact that there is a section of teenage boys that feel entitled to games.
This is an interesting post, but as someone who’s passionate about videogames, I would have to disagree with some of your points..
“It’s expensive”
I’ve always thought gaming is one of the cheapest hobbies to have, since there isn’t necessarily ongoing costs. Sure, you have to buy a console (at least one), but I think these are only super expensive if you buy them on release. This may be important to some people, but I don’t think it’s necessary to be a “gamer”. It sucks that your PS3 broke down a lot – my main console of recent years has been my Xbox 360, and whilst it may have cost a couple of hundred pounds initially, that was almost three years ago now and it’s still going strong and serving me well. I’ve not had problems with other consoles breaking on me either – my wii, gamecube, even my Megadrive is still working.. and I’ve never had controllers break on me either. I only recently bought a PS3 so I can’t speak for that really, sounds like you had a lot of bad luck with yours 🙁 But if you just want to play some games, picking up an older console and some second-hand games shouldn’t set you back too much.
“If you are a serious gamer; someone who wants to make a career out of it, who engages with the culture”
This seems confusing to me, are you referring to gaming as a hobby or as an actual “career”? I would argue that you can engage with the culture as much as you like, but a “gamer” isn’t a career unless it’s literally that – it’s your job to keep up with games and you’re making money from it.
If it’s not an *actual* career though, I don’t know who’s dictating that you should own all these different consoles, and you should buy games on release date. That’s surely a personal choice and dependent on what you enjoy? Even games that start off at £40 or something these days will often be on sale at half price only a couple of weeks later, so if you can wait a bit, it’s not that expensive. I understand you say you don’t spend long on the games, so an argument about how many games give you so many hours and replayability that I believe the cost you pay for them is a bargain, may not be worth bringing up.. 🙂
If you want to play anything that’s been out for a couple of months or more though, you can generally find it for £20 or less, and I don’t think that’s a lot for a game that can provide hours of entertainment.
“But if you want to join in on the conversation, you need to be up to speed. That involves having beaten Tomb Raider, Bioshock: Infinite, maybe even having an opinion on the latest Sim City”
I have to disagree with this too. What conversation? Particular conversations about the actual storyline of the aforementioned games, maybe. But I don’t think you have to buy/play those games to have an interest in what’s going on around them – that Tomb Raider is pretty good, that Bioshock: Infinite is generating discussion, or that people had issues playing the new Sim City. As someone who would describe their main interest as videogames, I don’t feel I need to rush out and buy these games on release date to have an idea of the latest things going on around them. And yes, spoilers can sometimes be an issue if you want to play the games later, but if you try a bit you can mostly avoid them.
Actually, I think it’s possible to join in a conversation about whichever game you’re interested at the time. There are forums, and friends to find on twitter. A good portion of my twitter feed are people identifying as “retro gamers”, talking and currently playing on old consoles – gamecubes, dreamcasts, gbas, snes, and discussing those games. Generally, even if games are “older” there are a lot of people still playing and enjoying them if you want to look for them and have a conversation 🙂 It may feel like you can’t join in with the very “latest” game conversation if you’re not spending all the money, but really, I don’t think you need to let that restrict your gaming.
I do understand that playing videogames can be time-consuming 🙂 These days I do find it much harder to find the time I used to spend on games, especially things like RPGs. However, here you seem to break videogames into “casual games” and “not casual games” with your example of Sonic and Fallout. Have you played Portal? It has an immersive, puzzle like storyline, and you can beat the first one in a day or two if you want to. Some games do require hours and can be a time-sink, but there are others that are shorter, and can still be as fun, puzzling, and challenging.
“The culture sucks”
Again it seems like you’ve had negative experiences which I’m sorry to hear about, and I know there are a hell of a lot of sides of the gaming world (and internet in general) with a bad attitude and bad culture. But equally there are a lot of good sides, accepting communities with a diversity of members, a mix of men and women. It just seems that to leave something you enjoy because of the culture is a shame, because you could add to the good of the culture by being part of the community 🙂
Anyway, I obviously respect your post and opinions, but it is just sad to me that you felt you had to outright “quit” gaming because of the above reasons. I guess I felt strongly to comment because as I said videogames are probably my *biggest* passion, but if someone told me “you can’t be a gamer if you don’t keep up” or any of the reasons you’ve said above, I probably would have been annoyed by that. I don’t see that being a “gamer” should be a label, and a thing to be or not be with standards to meet in order to call yourself one. If you want to enjoy games, whether old or new, I think there is the means and the community for you to feel free to. 🙂
Re ‘gaming as a career’ I phrased that badly – I meant a career in the game industry; I worked in PR/Marketing/Community Management — and there is (or was for me) an expectation that you’ll be representing the company in a certain way, that includes being up-to-date. I’ve also contributed to two gaming orientated blogs, and the pressure is on to produce a lot of material, and to be at least vaguely relevant in terms of what people are playing now. YMMV, and I hope there are people who work in community engagement without that pressure. I don’t think it’s necessarily a ‘bad thing’ — I would expect a book reviewer to read a lot of books, including new releases, I would expect someone who works in TV Marketing to watch a lot of TV, including the hot new shows. I think it’s a barrier though, with gaming, because there are so many systems and types of game. You can narrow it down to a subculture, but it depends where you end up.
Gaming as a ‘one of the cheapest’ hobbies? I can buy paperback books from a charity shop for 50p, or invest in a kindle and then download hundreds of great classics for free. I can go walking for free. I can invest £50 in a guitar and then have thousands of hours for free. There are expensive hobbies (TV Box sets, the cinema, sailing) that gaming compares favourably to, but I think it’s mainly people who have a certain amount fo disposable income that make that type of comparison. To someone with very little money, it might be a choice between paying for a weeks worth of groceries or buying a new title.
I don’t think (non indie) gaming can be cheaper (the end product is usually hundreds of hours of work by a large team of people). But I think there needs to be an acceptance of the fact that actually, gaming is not for everyone, in the same way that lots of people can’t afford going to the cinema.
Anyway, I definitely don’t want to discourage people from gaming. I do love games, I think they are brilliant, but I also think that, for me, they were part of my life when I had a lot of free time and money to spend. These days, the stress of trying to make gaming a part of my life outweighs the fun I have playing them. If my life changes, I’ll go back, but in the meantime it’s much easier for me to just say no–I’m done, and I’ll spend my free time on recharge activities like going for walks.