Back in November, I went through an exercise where I planned out my blog topics for the entirety of 2020. It was actually really fun; the idea was that you pick themes for each month of the year, and then come up with posts related to each theme.
I do plan on sharing how I did that later on, for those of you who are interested.
Naturally, being the romantic-slash-total-dork that I am, I wanted February’s theme to be about love.
But I didn’t want it to be like love stories, or fairy tales, or anything that you’d see on a Hallmark card. I did think about it, especially when I realized I could use that to talk about powerful love stories like Tidus and Yuna from Final Fantasy X.
No, I wanted it to be about something much bigger: The love we have for games.
The perception of games as just a hobby
When I went through my blog planning exercise, all I wrote down for this week was Chasing your passion/why gaming isn’t “just a hobby”. I’m sure at the time I was confident I’d remember what it was I wanted to talk about, but I had no idea when I started writing.
At first, I thought I’d been talking about people who stream, and the folks who chase their passions and manage to turn gaming into full-time eSports careers. I have a massive amount of respect for the people who can do that.
Then, I thought of how so many people who aren’t involved in the community see games as just a hobby.
I couldn’t help but laugh when that reminded me of the time I told my grandmother about how I’d started a blog about gaming. I had to explain what a blog was first, which got a bit of enthusiasm, and then I had to explain what I meant by gaming—which got exasperation and a quick topic change.
Which, to be fair, was the reaction most things got. But still.
Games are so much more than a hobby.
For many of us, video games are much more than a hobby. We don’t just pick away at them when we have a little extra time.
We become invested in them in the most emotional way.
We fall in love with the characters, the stories, the fun adventures we have. They become a part of our lives, and I’m sure I don’t just speak for myself when I say that sometimes we even build our lives around it when we find a game we really love.
I mean, hell. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to go home from somewhere just so I could check on my plants in FFXIV. I even timed them carefully when we went away over Christmas so they wouldn’t wilt while I was gone.
Which leads me to my question for you.
What’s the first game you truly fell in love with?
