Coming into Gaming Late — My Experience

Although I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t gaming — as I spent a lot of my early life playing games from Heroes of Might & Magic and delved heavily into one of the most common entry-level consoles, the Wii — I wouldn’t really say I was a gamer. Now, to clarify — this isn’t me gatekeeping gaming. Whether you like hardcore titles or are a mobile-only gamer, I am of the mind that you are allowed to label yourself as such so long as you like games; this is a hobby I think everyone should partake in. But for me, and the level of gaming that I have delved into, this was not only entry-level but bordering non-existent. Despite playing The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess way too many times to count because I loved the final boss fight, I wouldn’t classify myself as a gamer until 2018.

Before then, there were a couple of titles I definitely delved into and got obsessed with. From World of Warcraft to League of Legends and even the age-old Grand Chase in its original Steam release. I was a trend follower because I had a lot of friends I wanted to spend time with, and it was my way of connecting to people from across the seas. From family members to crushes and even best friends, I would go into any and every game that meant I could play with them, and for a long time, I was a multiplayer-only gamer.

The first AAA title I bought myself was actually a spur-of-the-moment purchase of Fallout 4 back in 2015 when it first released because… well, it looked better than anything else I’d played at the time, and I didn’t really know better. The graphics were jaw-dropping for someone that had spent all too long playing World of Warcraft and levelling up her fifth gnome to maximum level across several expansions. Being able to jump into a new world and try it out sounded intriguing, and from there, you’d think I’d continue playing forever. But I didn’t, because I went back to my multiplayer games, to my various friends scattered across various universes, and I became obsessed with The Elder Scrolls Online, because — you guessed it — someone was playing it. Even though Fallout 4 became my first-ever single-player purchase on Steam, I didn’t really play it straight away. In fact, like a strange phenomenon, I kind of forgot about it.

This was a rut I don’t think I would have gotten out of if it wasn’t because of God of War (2018). I’m not going to pretend I knew what I was doing back then, but when I first heard of the story of Kratos and being able to kill through the Norse mythology, I really, really wanted to. That day, I went out of my way to buy a PlayStation 4 console alongside 2018’s Game of the Year (yet to earn that title at the time) to experience the game… and I was hooked.

I was an innocent child unaware of the many complexities of the gaming world at the time, and I sold my soul to Sony by joining their side on the “console wars” I did not know I was partaking in. I didn’t understand the idea of picking a side or exclusivity, I just knew that I wanted to play that one game, and once I did, I wanted to play even more. This is what, eventually, got me to playing (and finishing!) Fallout 4, and only shortly after that, I experienced my very first Steam Sale.

Here’s an interesting thing for those who started gaming a long time ago — I didn’t know there were more games than just AAA titles. In fact, I didn’t come to grasp Steam’s full potential until the time I saw the sale and sifted through the catalogue only to realise that… there are a lot of games. As I scrolled through my list of games I bought back in 2018, I found that on my very first Steam Sale, I bought a whopping 31 titles to play, of which only eight I've actually launched (oops), and many others that have become my all-time favourites, like Hollow Knight. I didn’t discriminate between turn-based RPG, LEGO, metroidvanias, or even 3D titles; I just wanted to play games. Something, anything, that would keep the fire burning after the exhilaration of finishing God of War (2018).

 

Now, it’s been five years since that fateful date when God of War (2018) got me into gaming, and I’m writing articles about them and spending every waking moment just devouring them. What’s interesting is that it feels like I need to catch up to all of the years of gaming that I not only missed (because I was spending my time rewatching Supernatural for the 28th time or trying desperately to make it past the entirety of Naruto at the time) but also was not able to experience. While everyone speaks fondly of Red Dead Redemption 2 and The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt, I’m still trying to play old classics and stay up-to-date with new ones.

The thing that is very easy to forget — something even I forgot — is that getting into gaming is bordering impossible. There are gaming niches that I didn’t quite catch at the time, I didn’t have the knowledge to make proper decisions when purchasing games, I didn’t know what genres I would like, what games I missed out on that were classics… the list goes on. From multiplayer to single-player, narrative- and gameplay-focused, and even indie to AAA, we’ve all learned to speak the unique language of our hobby, and it’s not something easily done by outsiders, especially those that are coming from not knowing anything.

 

Our industry is complex in ways that others simply aren’t. Not only do we have different publishers and developers, but we also have different levels of expertise, genres, games, themes, consoles, storefronts, DRMs, classics, modes… unlike other hobbies, gaming demands that we learn our favourite genres, narratives, and even niches from a selection of a few hundred at the least.

If my experience with miraculously getting into gaming has taught me anything, it’s that it is beyond complicated to join our ever-changing industry. Over the years, we’ve evolved from 8-bit generations to 4 to 8k resolutions with visuals that boggle the mind. From flat-screen displays to 3D environments in the form of VR. My life would be a shadow of its former self without gaming. Which is why I bring it up, and I will die on this hill — from the most hardcore players to the mobile-only fans — I will never gatekeep someone that is trying to get into a hobby that has brought so many of us together.