I’m not sure how much this applies to other hobbies, but with gaming it sometimes feels like something that must be done rather than something to enjoy at your leisure. This shouldn’t be the case since video games are inherently a pastime activity, yet it persists all the same and comes from a variety of places. There’s the pressure to keep up so you can be part of the conversation. There’s the pressure of the backlog and actually playing all the games you’ve bought.

There’s the ever-present need to progress in always-online multiplayer, and then there’s the pressure from friends who want you to “get the heck online already” and hang out. None of these are necessarily bad things on their own, but together they inevitably lead to burnout and gaming just not being as much fun anymore. So, what to do about it? How do we deal with the constant presssure to game?

I pose the question as though I know wat the answer is, but honestly all I’ve got are ideas. Like, it’d be easy to say something like “just g comfortable with not being current” in regard to the constant pressure to keep up in this hobby, yet there’s a very good reason why that pressure exists in the first place. While there are always conversations going on online about older stuff, that doesn’t help when talking within one’s own gaming circle.

All the old stuff has been discussed already and is no longer interesting, so it’s alwasy going to be new stuff going on that dominates. If you’re not playing anything made in the last six months or so, then you’re effectively out of the loop. So, the only option is, seemingly, to keep up with the latest and greatest to some extent. Nevermind wanting a gaming break, how about that new Halo/CoD/Silent Hill/whatever game?!??

As for the backlog, I suppose the best course is the simplest: stop buying games. It should be easy enough considering how expensive new ones can be these days, but the pressure to keep up definitely complicates things. Sales muddy it even more. Like, yeah, you weren’t planning on playing The Chant anytime soon, but it’s only $5 right now! You’d have to be an idiot to let this opportunity slip by, right? We all know better of course. We all know that the next big sale is always right around corner and that there’s no real rush to get in on the deal yet it still gets us all the same and so the backlog continues to grow. Perhaps it’s better to just not even look at the sales at all and just play that backlog down gradually. Just be strong, right?

As for anything that has seasonal rewards or progression, I think the best course is to just not get involved. Games like Apex Legends/Destiny 2/CoD and so on are all just so insidiously designed these days, weaponizing FOMO to keep you playing even long after you’ve burned out on a game. You might want to take a break, but then that would mean possibly missing out on the cool seasonal skins, currency or login rewards, and you don’t want that, right?

In my case, I feel fortunate to have gotten off of Destiny 2 altogether (thanks mostly to my raid team just kinda disappearing), because now it’s just insane. They really want you to think of it as something you have to do, and it absolutely is if you want to continue playing with your group. Even games with relatively light versions of this like Yu-Gi-Oh Master Duel apply a bit of this pressure. The very existence of limited-time events/rewards ensures it. Seriously, stay away from this stuff if you can. It’s insidious.

Then there’s gaming friends. Gaming friends are great…up until you find yourself in a place where you don’t wanna game for a bit. I mean, what do you do when the whole thing is gaming? Certainly you can just hang out online, but then if you’re not playing something in the background and can’t watch stuff while talking…then what?

There’s nothing to be done there. I suppose I’m just rambling at this point since I don’t really have any solutions to offer here, so I’ll just wrap it up. This is all to say that the gaming hobby can apply a lot of pressures depending on how you engage with it, and it can definitely get exhausting after a while. I supppose I just wish it were easier to take a step back from it and have a bit of a rest, you know?

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Anyway, what’s your experience with gaming like? Do you feel any of these pressures? Do you find it hard to take breaks from it? How do you deal with gaming fatigue?

Image is the official Banjo-Kazooie cover art