Missing the Bus
What was it like when disco died? Everyone handed in their bell bottoms for parachute pants? Was it announced on the radio with flags at half mast? What about any other fad or hobby? Can we see the date when we are cleanly excised from "normal" for choosing to remain in the land of misbegotten fun? I have no fucking idea but I'm gonna write about this feeling a bit.
I am a child of the early 00's and as such videogames were the de facto hobby for me and my friends to bond over. We all played and bled in sports of course; the times when we licked our wounds or told the war stories from the trenches came later when hunched in the dark as we played Halo or Call of Duty (we were jocks, we had jock taste, I played CS and Morrowind at least!) and chatted away until dawn came. There was one summer where a group of around twenty of us would wake up, go to football practice, go home and then proceed to play Black Ops 1 until the next day then pass out to do it all over again. Screwing over lobbies in One in the Chamber, grinding ranks in Team Doubles, or getting REALLY mad at double barrel users in Gears was the back drop to many a "decompression".
Those moments of decompression where our real world lives would get retold to each other and we'd catch up--- oh man that was important. It offered us a way to be there for each other in our own little slice of (commercially owned) internet. In turn our heroics in the digital world would get relayed at team dinners or in class. The idle joys of being young and with time to waste. Video games are a profound waste of time; unless you choose to use them socially or accept the righteous answer that it's okay to waste time every now and again. (We have pioneered ways to waste time since forever). I was always between worlds though. I had my real world friends and my internet friends. And I used to think that you could treat them all the same and get the end result of strong communal ties between friends. Older and older, I have started to realize that there are some pretty stark differences between these groups.
I can't get into all the differences now though I will in future articles. Today I wanna look at how trends keep internet groups hostage. Common refrains in video game groups will be "Dead game" or "I'd get that but y'all will drop it in a few weeks". These are said so often that if you joined any group and asked them what games fell into these two categories for them they'd have their own unique answers for missed connections. And as much as these statements might annoy people they come from a viewpoint that is vindicated by simple fact that videogames are a for profit business and no one wants to be the sucker who gets a ticket just to miss out on all the fun. This speculative investment for "fun" creates a very strange dynamic wherein things that are popular or designed to keep people hooked get big airtime alongside experiences that are bombastic. Which again since videogames are all subservient to the almighty dollar this is a valid question for people to consider. Modern trends of GAAS and other systems that try to maximize player retention also create an invisible friction when trying to switch to a new experience. If someone has dumped so much time/money into an ecosystem they're gonna be hard pressed to want to go do something new. The tail wags the dog with online friends. So if you happen to be a refusenik who dislikes most modern design trends you wind up being on the outside looking in for a good portion of things.
Watching my hobby get farther and farther away from me has left me with some cold comfort though. I have started to understand myself better with what experiences I want. This has also coincided with an increase in hobbies that allow me to be independent. Not just by my lonesome, but not tied down to any servers, or whims of a developer, or the quicksilver attention span of folks. As much as I'd like the industry to appeal to my desires I have to admit I have found a comfortable lonely peak to watch this set of trends go by from. It's okay to grow out of a hobby. And it's probably better for you in the long run to understand your place in that scene more intimately.
There are some ways to staunch the pains of an online friend group but I think that's a post for another time.