What Gaming Means To Me

What Gaming Means To Me

I have been gaming for about 15 years now. I started playing my older brothers first gen Gameboy and Nes as well as the Sega or Snes with my uncle. One birthday I got a Gameboy pocket with a copy of Pokémon Red.  As I grew up I my tastes changed I found myself mainly on the family PC playing a lot of Diablo 2 or Unreal Tournament. I was never really a sporty kid. I played a lot basketball, but only at school, when I was home I was in front of a screen.

My life has completely changed since then. I find myself living in a different country, away from my family and closest friends. I work at a kid’s activity camp, where I spent 5 years taking kids around to different activities and the last 2 hang in a harness doing all sorts of stuff.

I see kids at work doing the same things I did and a lot of people class them as strange or geeky. Just because they don’t know the line-up of the next world cup or who’s playing who, doesn’t make them strange.  A lot of mates at work talk about the latest footie score and who’s injured during their downtime, I watch twitch plays Pokémon.

At first my wife used to get the shits with my need for gaming, now she sees how happy it makes me and how it can dissolve a shit week and help clear my head

I don’t smoke or do drugs, I don’t really drink much, so after a long day, when I am stressed and knackered I turn to gaming as a release from the real world.

But gaming for me isn’t just a stress reliever; it keeps me in touch with who I am and where I came from. I don’t get to see my mates in the UK much, so to share an interest in gaming from the other side of the world is amazing. But to share it with the masses like Scified and Youtube is unreal. I know we are only a small community at this stage but it’s incredible to be a part of.    

Last weekend I spent 4 hours cropping my next “Loz Plays Star Wars” video only to lose it to a crashed computer. I was so angry that I have to start over with just raw footage. But I find myself at my computer at 11:30pm working to get it cropped and uploaded, because to me, gaming is a way of life.

If I want to go around shooting shit or blowing up buildings or controlling mass armies, I can.

If I want to solve a succession or ridicules puzzles or launch balls of plasma into dying suns, I can.

There is no end to what lessons I have learnt from gaming. I got robbed on diablo, I get my ass handed to me by a kids 5 years younger on counter strike and I love every minute of it.

Gaming keeps me sane… It keeps me well adjusted… and apart from spending too much money on the steam sale it keeps me happy.

- Loz

@laurencehead1