If you’re someone who loves to game, then finding ways to fuel your love for gaming can be a vital way to ensure that you fall out or burn out of the hobby. However, there are a lot of changes in the modern gaming landscape that can sometimes feel like they can really drag the whole experience down. Here, we’re going to look at some of them, as well as what you can do to get around them.
Toxic Online Spaces
A lot of developers are doing a lot more to moderate and manage their online spaces, but toxic gamers have always been a serious problem in online gaming. Whether it’s people who grief you to ruin your game, raging gamers who bring down the vibe, or misogynists who target anyone with a female voice, there’s no denying this toxicity can wear you down. Aside from being very active on the mute and report buttons, the best way to deal with this is simply to disable any online communication tools until you’re able to find people who are much more chill to game with. Otherwise, it’s just rarely worth the effort of engaging.
The Lack Of Connection
In the past, it was relatively easy to pick up a couch co-op game and find some friends or family members to jump into a game together. However, nowadays, even with willing friends, the distance between us as adults and time constraints can make it difficult to enjoy that same communal experience. As such, one of the most valuable ways to fuel your love for gaming is to make gaming friends, whether it’s through going to gaming conventions, joining online communities, or otherwise. Finding the people you can trust you can have a good time with allows you to share in the joys of gaming, rather than just enjoying them privately. This is even possible for single-player games if, for instance, you get into streaming. It also offers an alternative to public online gaming, which offers a chance for the negativity mentioned above to manifest.
Grind-Heavy Gaming
Grinding has always been a thing in games to some degree, as any fan of RPGs can tell you. Some people love the grind. But many have noticed grinding becoming much more prevalent in genres where it isn’t exactly necessary, like in online shooters. For instance, in the latest Call of Duty games, to unlock all the load-outs and aesthetics available, you often have to play for hours and hours at a time. Nowadays, there are those helpful souls helping you skip the grind by, for instance, allowing you to buy an account with the Dark Matter Camo BO6 already unlocked. For some people, it’s a very small price to pay to not have to be online for hours at a time, to simply be able to play how they want to from the get-go without being tied down to a progression system.
Pay-To-Win Gaming
While spending a little money to skip the grind can certainly be helpful, you have to be mindful of the games where getting you to spend money is the entire point. In-game purchases and microtransactions are a part of gaming that don’t seem they be going away at any point, with more and more models like season passes being introduced to try and get you on the hook. Make sure that you always do your research to see how egregious monetization is in a game before you buy it, as well as whether or not the balance of the game is heavily swayed in favor of “pay-to-win” tactics.
Buggy Launches
It’s a double-edged reality that games rarely release in their finished state nowadays. While it does give plenty of games the chance to improve dramatically as time goes on, it also means that games often launch in buggy or rushed states that simply aren’t good to play. Nowadays, the best tactic is to rarely buy a game on launch and never preorder a game if you can help them. Take the time to see how people react to the game on launch, whether there are any patches coming, and be mindful of system requirements if you want to make sure the game will run well for you.
From developer choices that make the game more frustrating and difficult to get into, to the more toxic parts of online gaming communities, there are plenty of obstacles that can get in the way of your simple desire to game. With the tips above, hopefully, you can enjoy the hobby as simply and freely as you ought to.
