It is 2023 and I am 25 years old. I have been playing video games for almost my entire life. I can’t imagine my life without them.

However, as I continue living and playing games, I’ve come to feel lonely. I love to play games, but I’ve found that the charm of playing games consistently has faded away as my friends list grows quieter year over year. People get older, their time becomes more valuable and the amount of free time they have decreases. When there is free time, people learn to spend it in more diverse ways as they grow. Interests change, responsibilities change, and people eventually move on from video games. So what happens when your friends stop playing games, but you don’t?

You log into the game you bought and planned to grind like you used to. The opening cutscenes play out like they always have. You land on a familiar menu screen, but you don’t invite anyone to a party. You might check your friends list to see who’s online or the last time someone was. You’d see a friend here or there that played in the last few days, but they never said anything because they wanted to play a few games alone and get off, or they played with someone else. You’d see a friend who hasn’t been online since the first week the game came out. You’d see a friend who hasn’t been online in over a year, maybe more. Maybe you’d see a friend online, playing a game with their primary group of friends. But nobody is online with you. You’re sitting in the menu of a game that used to be filled with the voices of your friends. Now it’s just you and the background music in your headphones. It’s quiet. Desolate. Empty.

Why did my friends stop playing games? It feels like I experienced these games differently; better; than the friends I used to play with. It’s as if I extracted more value from the games I’ve played in my life compared to the people I played with. Even though our tangible game experiences may have been similar (we got the same killstreaks, mined the same diamonds, and slayed the same dragons), the feelings we felt must have been different enough for me to keep playing all this time. It makes me feel sad. Was I supposed to stop enjoying games at some point? Why?

As I grow older I tend to remind myself that there is no right answer to most of life’s most difficult questions. There is no path clearer than the others that I know I should follow. In fact, there are no paths at all that stretch past the point where I am right now. The only path that exists is the path that stops where my feet currently stand. I am the creator of the only path my life has ever known. And I will always be the one to forge that path until the day I take my last breath. 

So my issue here is this – why do I keep playing games when most of my friends don’t? Why do I keep trying? Because in many ways, I still enjoy playing video games. I have a small handful of friends that still play and I try to play with them. There are friends who play privately and choose not to be social. People play games that I don’t play. The world of video games used to be simple because life was more simple than it is now. When we were young, middle school and high school were the biggest responsibilities in our lives. Everything else was secondary – sports and video games were the only other things we had to fill our time with. Video games were basically a default for so many kids, including myself. On days when I didn’t have a sports obligation, I spent my time playing games. When I turned on my console or computer, there were always other people doing the same thing. Where else would they be?

Adult life is different. We have jobs that stretch later into the afternoon than school used to, or even into the night. When people come home from work, sometimes they choose not to play a game. They might recall the wrong parts of the gaming experience: the frustration and anger from dying in Call of Duty or getting stuck in a Skyrim glitch when you haven’t saved in too long. Some people have significant others that don’t like games and they choose to spend free time doing something else. Maybe they just don’t think it’s fun anymore.

I’ve also found that modern gaming has separated my other gaming friends in some ways. The freedom of choice has never been greater and it grows with every game release. As we grow, we have more money to spend on games and systems that may differ from our friends. I have some friends that play Warzone, but I don’t like battle royale games. I have some friends that quietly play single-player RPGs by themselves. I have people that play the same games as me, but don’t have room for an extra player. (That one is rare, but it happens.)

I try to solve my loneliness in a few ways. I still ask my friends to play with me whenever I can. Most of the time I don’t get any response, but I will keep asking. I join my Discord server’s voice chat by myself, hoping that someone would notice me and join in. I try to explain my passion for games to the people around me in hopes that maybe I could recruit them into this hobby. It gets harder and harder to explain my passion for gaming as a key piece of that passion’s origin is eroding, but I will always love games and I strive to never be ashamed of the things I love.

The more desperate attempts are when I turn on my Twitch livestream or start a blog. The days when I feel most alone are the days when I turn to the internet and shout out into it, expecting something to come rescue me from this lonely feeling. Somehow the void of the internet would answer my prayers. I’ve always tried to remember that if I can’t find the sense of community I used to cherish, I’ll have to build it again myself.

That brings me here; to this blog. I don’t think anyone is reading this now, but maybe someone will come back here in the future. Maybe whoever reads this is someone who struggles with these feelings too. As long as there’s someone out there who understands, we really aren’t that lonely after all.