As I sit down at my desk to write this article, I’m mere days away from turning 27. In this older, wiser, and potentially ancient state,I’ve come to realise that video games are just video games. There’s really not much more to it than that.
I don’t mean things like raging at a 13-year-old who’s better than me at a new game or getting angry at people on the internet for not doing what I think is right. I just mean that taking video games seriously all the time, on a personal level, will stop you from enjoying them a lot of the time.
Sure, you can lock in and get competitive in multiplayer games - that makes sense. Sure, you can get immersed in a dark, gritty single-player story and have it emotionally destroy you. But getting stuck in this mindset all the time can - and for me has - put a damper on how you enjoy games.
My options got a lot more varied once I stopped caring about the options, and I couldn’t be happier.
What’s The Point Of Restricting The Enjoyment Of Something Meant To Be Enjoyed?
I’m a stubborn person, so I’ve had plenty of internal debates where I convince myself that I’m having more fun doing things the way I do or have toreallyconvince myself to step out of my comfort zone of choices and branching paths.
This means I would stop myself from doing certain things, like withBaldur’s Gate 3. I would be overly cautious about my every move, wanting to make sure I played the game exactly as I wanted it to pan out, and anything I didn’t love would be met with a quickload. I don’t have a problem with reloading earlier saves, but I did spend a lot more time staring at those loading screens when I could have just been having fun instead.
Maybe my lack of adventurousness is the reason no one is interested in me.In Baldur’s Gate, that is.
It also meant I refused to enjoy or even look in the direction of a game like Fortnite. Why is a concert going down in a shooter where people are pairing up as Peter Griffin and Mariah Carey? “That seems a bit too much, right?”
No, past me, it’s not too much - it’s a video game, and people are having fun with it.
The Games Weren’t The Problem, It Was Me
I don’t know what changed. Maybe it was something on a personal level, or maybe it just happens when you get Really Old™, but I just stopped caring about things that I didn’t need to care about. In games, this means I can still play serious games and get everything I would want out of them, but I can also embrace the fact that we’re playing them to have fun, so I should have fun.
Playing multiplayer games helps too - playing Phasmophobia andRepo with friends was a great way for me to numb down the tension and seriousness. Instead, I get to enjoy making the most of the unintentional comedy from joking around with them. All hope is lost, and the monster is right there? I’m not going to stake it out; let’s see how quickly this thing can run.
I want video games to provide me with a good time. I’ll reload games if I want to, but I’m not going to fret about things to a level of detriment. I’ll jump into those sillier, bizarre games because that’s why we have them - let’s not pretend Fortnite is trying to market itself as anything serious. So why have I been frowning at it for being on my lawn?
Games are fun. I wasn’t being fun. But if you struggle with similar feelings, then trust me when I say it’s not that serious. Never has been.
