Last week I was talking to one of my co-workers about Baldur’s Gate 3. He’d picked the game up ahead of its launch, and spent the bulk of the recent long weekend digging through the opening act. Knowing I intended to pick it up later, he was mercifully light on details, but the different stories he shared got me really excited for the game.
That’s when it hit me – this was my first interaction with anyone that was excited for, and actively playing Baldur’s Gate 3. That’s weird. At least, it was for me.
Lesser known fact, I stopped actively using Twitter back in April of this year. I wasn’t finding it particularly useful for promoting the blog, which is why I originally signed up to the platform. It also just made me miserable most of the time. If you want a more involved explanation you can read that here.
While I’ve greatly enjoyed the increased mental bandwidth that I’ve had over the past several months, it only just dawned on me how disconnected I’ve become from the gaming conversation. Obviously I’m still a participant – I do blog here quite regularly. In addition, I read quite a few different articles across the internet both professionally, and casually written. But that’s not really the same as being on social media. There’s a greater…I don’t know…immediacy to the discourse on social media. Things happen. You don’t just read about something after it happens – you’re there while it happens. You’re an active participant. It’s just a whole different dynamic to engaging with other people who are interested in video games – one that isn’t quite replicated by the written word, or videos on the same subjects.
No – the closest experience I’ve had to using social media to talk about games with people in the last 4.5 months was talking with my co-worker about Baldur’s Gate 3. A game that is so big, and so popular that everyone, and their damn dog is playing it.
And you want to know the best part? I really enjoyed chatting with him about the game. It didn’t leave me feeling drained in the same way that social media always did. It was nice. Seeing his excited expression as he delved into the different experiences he had made me feel the same excitement. Or…second-hand excitement? I don’t know – feelings are complicated!
It is odd though. That whole conversation got me thinking about how little of the gaming discourse I’ve been aware of this year. For example, I don’t really know what people thought of Tears of the Kingdom. I know people thought it was good, but from my perspective the response to the game was a lot more muted compared to the thunderous applause, and endless barrage of tweets from people about Breath of the Wild. Outside of a handful of videos, and a few blog posts I really didn’t get much window into what the wider audience of gaming thought about it.
Having only just now realized this, I’m not sure how I feel about all of this. I mean, I guess it’s good? I had a lovely conversation with my co-worker over a shared interest, and my mental everything has been better since cutting social media out. I can’t shake the feeling that I’m missing out a little bit though. It’s not like I play everything, but I always liked having that pulse on the wider landscape of things. Just because.
Well, if you made it this far then thank you for reading. I’ll see you in the next one.
Frostilyte Writes 
I think it’s another example of how social media and the internet is not as much a reflection of the real world as it would have us believe. Once you’re out of that (frankly often unhealthy) ecochamber, I personally think it’s easier to keep things in perspective.
Way too many people yelling back and forth on Twitter about stuff. You’re wise to just focus on playing the games. 🙂
You did miss some incredible Tears of the Kingdom clips though. People holding Korok crucifixions, for example. WILD stuff, haha.
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Funny thing about that last point – I actually had a buddy send me a clip of one of those. As well as a giant wooden robot that had an enormous laser penis. I snorted heavily at both.
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For me, I’m a people leader at work so I have a limited peer group as to discuss things with. I learned a while ago it is hard to play games with my peers at work since we are responsible for teams, budgets, projects, etc. Too easy for us to get ourselves into the wrong conversations inbetween gaming moments.
So I spend my time rounding blogs, Reddit, and now Mastodon (gamepad.club). I need to talk to folks about games! It is part of my soul.
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Totally understandable. I think I’d also struggle were I in the same position as you. Being a leader doesn’t always allow you to socialize with the employees you manage. At least not in as in-depth as one might want to when it comes to matters such as gaming.
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As someone who gets filled in on the discourse in various ways…you’re not really missing out. That personal interaction with your co-worker was probably more valuable for a lot of reasons, not least of which is that your co-worker was genuinely sharing his experience, and not trying to play up any part of it for internet points. Not to mention that he didn’t have to constrain his discussion to 280 characters…
There are bits and pieces of the discourse I still like. I enjoy now and then when devs share stories about production processes or their struggles with particular problems. But the Main Characters of the discourse who have to share dumb opinions and launch multi-day discussions make the whole thing exhausting.
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There are ways to get more discourse besides hanging out on Twitter. I don’t particularly like participating myself, but I find it interesting to pop into reddit threads discussing different games and see what all the different takes are (though Reddit can be just as bad as Twitter in some ways too). YouTube videos and discords can be useful too.
Though, like you’ve touched on here, talking about games is most fun with real acquaintances.
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