Making time for multiplayer video games with friends is important

These days, anyone who talks to me about video games hears a key phrase in my vocabulary. “Oh, I watched my friend play this game at Gamer Night.” “I have to install it in time for Gamer Night!” “I finally finished it during Gamer Night last night.” Since 2020, my Thursday night has been Gamer Night, and it has changed everything for me.

This isn’t just bragging about having friends, although I’m very grateful to have them. If you were an only child growing up, like me, you can probably relate to how surprised I am by having consistent friendships, let alone a years-long commitment to meeting (virtually) with the same group of people every week. Maybe you’re thinking, I don’t have any friends who want to do this. Or maybe you’re thinking, We’re all too busy for that.

I thought about all of these things too, and not long ago. Before it became ingrained in my life as a permanent weekly commitment (although any of us could miss it, since there were four of us, and Gamer Night is just as fun with three or two), the whole idea of ​​Gamer Night seemed unnecessary and perhaps even impossible, scheduling-wise. Before Gamer Night, I had a more freewheeling style of gaming. Every now and then, there would be a cool multiplayer game that I wanted to try, and I would occasionally manage to convince some friends to play it with me. This would always involve some annoying scheduling trickery, and it would never happen as much as any of us wanted. That was a great way to live. But I had no idea how much better maybe you can be.

Gamer Night in my life was born out of a group of gamers organizing a multiplayer game. It started in the fall of 2019, when two friends and I entered into a wonderful relationship Destiny 2, which contains a lot of cooperative activities for three players. This led to us experimenting with some raids, which are high-intensity co-op multiplayer activities Destiny 2 Which requires six people and thus a lot of scheduling coordination. In the end, it was too much of a push for all of us to maintain, but in the process, we got a weekly night out for the four of us who are very interested in the idea of ​​constantly getting together on a voice call and playing Discord games together. We chose to call it “Gamer Night” because it was funny. It’s stuck.

It didn’t take long for Gamer Night to evolve into a more perfect formula. It’s no longer a weekly multiplayer gaming event – ​​not necessarily, anyway. This is still a game night with friends, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we’re all playing the same game. We might be playing four completely different games. Maybe the two of us are playing a game Monitoring 2 Match together while another person watches the match and a fourth person plays Al-Din ring. Three of us might be watching a fourth person play Evil spiritsOr provide advice as needed, or just give free rein to our lives. We may all never play a game at all, and instead watch a live stream of the game on Twitch and talk about it. All of these activities are Gamer Night.

Perhaps the most important part about this is that Gamer Night is only two hours long, at least for me. I show up at 7:30pm and leave at 9:30pm (unfortunately, I’ve found that if I play a video game too late at night, I can’t sleep – hence the early checkout for the sake of my sleep hygiene.) Sometimes my friends start to Early or they finish later, and as I said before, sometimes neither of us can be there. But it almost always happens, because the results are rewarding. The goal was originally to have time to play games together, especially multiplayer games, without the hassle of scheduling — but it ended up being something that tied the four of us together even more than when we started, which is pretty impressive considering we all already liked each other Some very little.

So I leave you with this guidance: Schedule a weekly Gamer Night. It’s two hours long — starting when you finish dinner, and ending before you need to get ready for bed. You make time to play video games, which is fun, but you do it truly Make time to be with your friends, which is even better. you will not regret it.