Current Events > Is online gaming actually harder to do as you get older? Or am I just too busy?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Back in the glory days of Xbox live Glory days, circa 2009, me and my friends would play a shit ton of online games. As time went on, we stopped playing as much, as the next gen hit and we were all a bit older.
I haven't played with them in ages, and since then I got married, moved into an apartment, got a new job, etc...

Apparently they started playing on PC a lot in the past few years, and one of my close friends has been egging me on to play with them for the last year since I got a new computer.
I told him I could try downloading some free games but probably still wouldn't end up playing much with them cuz I mostly only play games at all like 10-11pm before bed, and it's almost always Switch in handheld mode, on the couch with my wife. He sounded disappointed, and I felt bad.

Help me out CE. Is this just the normal flow of adulthood? We're all in our 30s now. I'm the only one of that friends group who's in a relationship, but I never considered myself one of those people who goes OH SORRY I'M TOO BUSY TO DO STUFF WITH YOU. Do any of you with families/spouses play games online on a regular basis?

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Online gaming is hard for me to get into without addy >_>. I recommend not getting into that habit. Or the habit of mixing it with gaming in general.

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tl;Dr version

Friends and I all in our 30s, they're pressuring me into playing online games with them again like we're all 21 again, but i don't feel like devoting the couple of hours of free time I have at night to playing online games.
Am I being a douche, or are my friends slightly immature?

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LostForest posted...

tl;Dr version

Friends and I all in our 30s, they're pressuring me into playing online games with them again like we're all 21 again, but i don't feel like devoting the couple of hours of free time I have at night to playing online games.
Am I being a douche, or are my friends slightly immature?

Oooh, with actual friends is different. I kind of just started enjoying that. So it feels fresh to me at 30. But forcing it would be doing yourself a disservice. Especially if you're using that time to do something more productive instead. Sometimes if your friends don't support your growth, you gotta leave em behind. But if they are cool with adapting to you then they're good friends to keep around

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I jumped into call of duty and got wrecked repeatedly.

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seems normal to me, but my story is kinda similar so who knows

I don't think your friends are being immature, though, they just don't have a spouse so they have more free time

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LostForest posted...

tl;Dr version

Friends and I all in our 30s, they're pressuring me into playing online games with them again like we're all 21 again, but i don't feel like devoting the couple of hours of free time I have at night to playing online games.
Am I being a douche, or are my friends slightly immature?

Neither. Your lives just panned out differently and you grew appart. It happens.

Maybe they have fewer obligations or chilling together with a game is their way to unwind for the couple of hours of free time they have.

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Balrog0 posted...

they just don't have a spouse so they have more free time

This is me, but I respect and show the patience to my people who have wives/SOs and kids. I usually just conform to their schedules and wants because I know I have more free time to do whatever I want overall.

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I miss those late night gaming sessions when xbox live first came out and I was young enough to eat pizza and beer all night while owning noobs who thought they were good. Ah how times have changed. Wish I had the time.

Lost_All_Senses posted...

This is me, but I respect and show the patience to my people who have wives/SOs and kids. I usually just conform to their schedules and wants because I know I have more free time to do whatever I want overall.

yeah, I mean, I actually do still play video games. just not nightly online the way we used to. my friends come over at least a couple saturdays a month for board and vidya games. kind of lucky we all have the weekend off

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Your friends are slightly immature, or at the very least just a different life stage.

It's possible to set down time one night a week or something like that, maybe.
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I think the hangup I have over it is that I technically do have a ton of free time, I just fill it up with stuff. Like, life stuff.

Like, I get home from work by 4pm everyday. But my wife and I go to the gym most weekdays, cook diner every night, run errands, I've been working on an indie game for a year now, etc...
So I guess I feel like technically I could skip some of that stuff once in a while if I really wanted to, but honestly I don't really want to lol. But I think that makes me feel a little guilty.

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Balrog0 posted...

yeah, I mean, I actually do still play video games. just not nightly online the way we used to. my friends come over at least a couple saturdays a month for board and vidya games. kind of lucky we all have the weekend off

This 100% describes my life lol. Like, to a T.

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Depends on the genre. If its more twitchy, I suck, if I can play a bit smarter, Im fine.

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I think you're at the part of your life where you feel selfish. But your selfishness can be justified. Selflessness is just as dangerous to your mental state. I went through that, made it impossible for me to be happy until I found a good balance for me and others equal.

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Theyre in a different stage in life and nothing wrong with that, just yall be adults about it and if you have shit to do they gotta respect it. Theyre probably gonna bust your balls a little bit and thats totally okay. Now if theyre hounding you then they need to grow up a bit.

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I fell out with one my favorite people ever when I stopped drinking. Cause 80% of our relationship revolved around drinking and partying. And I stopped very suddenly. We haven't talked in like 2 years. But he's my cousin, so we'll link up again and I'll talk to him about how we can get on the mutual level without it being about drinking.

Wait, I lied. I seen him at Grandma's death bed and memorial. But that's hard to count.

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this happened to me & my friends i used to play games with. we are all late 20s, i am married & another friend is in a serious long term relationship. back in the day we were gaming all the time together, now we are lucky to play together for maybe 30 minutes once a month before someone is like "alright i have to get up early tomorrow, i'm logging off".

just part of growing up, in our mid 20s we all got pretty busy with relationships, work, social lives, chores, etc. i get your friend being disappointed but i think subconsciously what bums him out is that this is kind of the end of an era, you're moving into a different stage in life and he's just not there yet. this is illustrated through one of your rituals changing. so personally yes i find his reaction maybe a little immature but it's also difficult to deal with life changes like this.

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To answer the title, if all you have is an hour before you go to sleep then you're too busy. Gaming doesn't get harder as you get older, but finding time to do it when life is eating your waking hours is certainly a thing.

For the second question
LostForest posted...

tl;Dr version
Am I being a douche, or are my friends slightly immature?

Depends on the context. If you're blowing off plans to play or treating them like a chore then yea thats douchy. If they are pestering you knowing you are busy then they are being immature.

My gaming hours have been reduced. I went from 4 - 5 hrs down to 1-2 hrs. My eyes start straining and my butt gets tired.

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Unsugarized_Foo posted...

Depends on the genre. If its more twitchy, I suck, if I can play a bit smarter, Im fine.

He doesn't mean skill, he's talking about having less time to play. Same for me though, I'm not as good as I used to be, but I'm a much smarter player now that I'm older.

I never got too into online gaming but I tried with some success before having a kid and also when I was single and living alone. Now having a family home with a partner and a stepkid + my daughter sometimes I just can't get on with games I can't pause mid fight.

Solid_Seb posted...

He doesn't mean skill, he's talking about having less time to play. Same for me though, I'm not as good as I used to be, but I'm a much smarter player now that I'm older.

Ah, yeah. They kinda go hand-in-hand for me though. If I had more time, Id still be able to twitchy twitch, but Im kinda liking this smarter not harder approach

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Here is my cent, since the government took the other cent.

The same thing happened to me TC, and the thing for me, is the realization that I will never be younger or have that much time to give toward gaming or have such a large appetite for gaming as my friends still do.

As I have gotten older, I don't give two shits about gaming, that means.

One, that if anything is going on in life I do that instead of spending time playing online or even with a game; more so since I became a husband and a father. Secondly, gaming to me is always on the back burner so if I have free time with nothing going on then I will play but not before that. I don't waste time playing late at night or wake up early thirsty to play the game I just bought. It doesn't mean much to me as I rather spend my time with my family or friends doing real life things with a rare occasion of gaming online with one of my friends who I don't see very often but that's how we keep in touch. Lastly, I "grew up" a long time ago, and realized that my gaming habit made me depressed, fat, lonely, unmotivated, no goals, and ultimately unhappy(long story short: The more you do the same thing expecting different results the more it will make you go mad.) because I would always turn to it to make me happy since that's what games are for right? Well, I was wrong and ended up learning that gaming is fun when you don't do it all the and when its not a priority.

TL:DR = As we get older we change and start to do things that are more important to our lives than playing games. Its not to say we cannot play, but the same effort won't be applied to it when we try to play with our current mindset as we rather be doing something else.

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Solid_Seb posted...

Depends on the context. If you're blowing off plans to play or treating them like a chore then yea thats douchy. If they are pestering you knowing you are busy then they are being immature.

Well basically what it ends up being is every month or two, my friend will say "Me and blah were playing Borderlands on PC the other day. It's a lot of fun dude, you should try it out." And I'll say "Oh yeah? That's cool. It looks pretty good, but I'm not sure if I have time to sink into PC games though." And he'll say "Damn. Yeah I miss it too."

And like I said, I technically could blow off going to the gym, cooking dinner, going out with my wife, etc... but I don't really want to, if it's for playing games I'm not really interested in anymore. So it makes me feel a little bad, even though I know those are all normal life priorities lol.

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