How social media ruins your fun in gaming

If you are like me then you don't just love gaming but you also love to talk about games. It is exciting to share your opinions on games and sometimes it even can give you different perspectives. However lately social media and gaming media in general becomes more toxic and more black and white and actively kills my enjoyment of games.

Every day a new hype train

Before we talk about how toxic social media became, let's start with the problem of hype trains. When I was young gaming was very different. Firstly, most of us had a very limited amount of money as a kid, which meant if you got a new game you had to give it a real shot and play it for some time. Gaming in general was slower with less releases per week which also gave you more time to enjoy each game you got.

Nowadays we pretty much have at least one exciting game that gets released every week. The next big indie roguelike game you have never heard before, the next free 2 play gacha game, a big AAA game that was in the works for 8 years. If you are like me and you enjoy many different genres you will find a new and exciting game every week.

On the one hand, it is amazing. We have more quality game releases than ever before, but this results very easily in the fear of missing out. The older we get the less time we have to play. In my case this often makes me overthink what I play. Should i really play another two hours of Battlefield 6 just for fun or should i rather check out the next indie hit The Séance of Blake Manor? The question I often ask myself in my head is what is the most effective thing I could do? How do I maximize my fun? Just having a good time and enjoying a game often isn't enough anymore as it was as a kid.

But those thoughts don't just occur before gaming they also happen during gaming. If I play Trails in the Sky for example and I reach a slower point in the game I can't help but think. Would I have more fun playing Mario Galaxy 2 right now? All of this isn't just because of many game releases though. It's all also connected to social media.

If a game is a week old most people stop talking about it. It shifts very fast to the next hype game. So if you are like me and want to engage with other communities you get constantly reminded that the next game is the best ever! So why do you still play the game from last week? It's a toxic cycle that can make it very hard to focus on something you play right now instead of already thinking about the next game.

Only black and white?

The worst part of gaming social media for me however isn't just how fast the hype shifts, or how many opinions there are. It's the fact that most people only go to the extremes. Game XYZ is either the worst game ever made or the best game of the generation.

Just in the last few weeks there have been many examples of this again. Let's take Battlefield 6. When the game was released for a week all you could read online was hype. The best Battlefield in years and amazing multiplayer fun. Since then, the game has had to handle multiple shitstorms. From Skins that have “too much” color, over bugs that make the game “unplayable”. Now don't get me wrong, it is fine to complain if you don't like something. But it depends how you do it.

I played Battlefield 6 now for 80 hours, and honestly, for the most part, I enjoy the game a lot! Sure some bugs can be annoying, but it's just wrong when people tell you the game is “unplayable” because of XYZ. Same goes about the skins. It's fine to say “I don't like that they add brighter skins”, but it's just plain wrong if you act like the game is suddenly terrible just because some players have a bit of bright orange on their jacket.

Another example of a game I love that gets constantly attacked by very toxic elements of the community is Infinity Nikki. It's such a cute and relaxing game. But parts of the community really actively try to nitpick every single element they can find to shit on the game. It's very toxic and benefits no one.

I often wonder why social media turned so hostile. Is it really that people forgot how to talk to each other? I think there are multiple reasons for this. The first thing comes again down to the point of too many games. It's very easy to get turned off by little things if you can easily move on to the next hype train.

The second, and in my mind biggest reason however is that it's simply how social media works. We already know that people rather click on extreme headlines and clickbaits than on actually realistic takes. Saying something is unplayable, for example, makes people engage much more with your post than if you write a realistic take on the subject.

I feel like years of social media trained us to think only in extremes. The same we see with content creators who follow the same trend simply to get more clicks and make a living out of it. If you want to be successful, you have to play the social media game and that sadly also reflects back onto all of us.

Losing Your Own Voice

All of this leads to us losing our own voices. If you look over Youtube more and more videos pop up about how people don't enjoy gaming anymore. Often followed by videos about how modern gaming is so bad and how going back to old games brings the fun back. Now the whole topic of modern gaming, season passes, DLC and so on would be a whole separate article and surely plays a role but I think it's not the only reason for this.

A very big reason for this trend of enjoying old games more is that you automatically avoid all of those toxic aspects I mentioned above. If you go back and play Golden Sun on the GBA right now you won't be reading online how bad the game is because of xyz and you also won't read it's the best JRPG of all time.

You will also not engage with FOMO as you will probably be in a circle of like minded retro players who aren't chasing the next big release every week. In many ways playing older games is a way of enjoying games again like you did as a kid.

Engaging with modern games makes it easy to lose your own voice and lose the ability to know what YOU enjoy. Reading over and over again online that the game you enjoy right now is actually bad and has all of these flaws will affect your enjoyment in some way. Same goes for reading how hype the game is that just came out and that you're really missing out by not playing it.

How to get your fun back!

Now, honestly this is something I'm still figuring out for myself. As I established with my article, I want to engage with gaming social media, but at the same time I do know how it affects me in a negative way from time to time.

I think the easiest recommendation I can give is to limit your social media time. It's fine to use Twitter and check what people you are following are up to but know when to stop scrolling. Another thing that really worked wonders for me is blocking people. I know it sounds harsh but it's about your mental health. If you read something on your Twitter timeline that puts you in a bad mood, block the person. Over time it will make your social media time more healthy and fun.

Maybe the biggest, and in some ways hardest advice I can give is finding your own voice. If you are excited for a new game and you know you want to play it, don't watch too many reviews or videos in general about it. Give the game the chance to surprise you and explore it at your own pace. Don't google the best 10 Tips for the game or what's the meta build. Give yourself at least some time alone with the game to create your own thoughts before you go out and read other people's opinions.

This last advice is obviously hard to follow. If a game is new and hyped, I do want to talk about it. But doing so puts you at risk of all the issues I described above. Some of my best gaming memories of the past few years only happened because I didn't engage too much with social media while I was playing the game. It also can help to find smaller Discord groups of people with more positive mindsets to engage with. For the German market at least I can vouch for the Hooked FM community. But I'm sure there are many other small communities out there that feel the same way you do after reading this.

Last but not least. Let's never forget gaming is supposed to be fun. There is no point in "optimising" your fun. As you can see with my text I often struggle with this myself but if you have fun with what you're playing right now then enjoy it. Don't let other people tell you it's bad or that you should play something else right now. Simply enjoy your time.