When I was in highschool I would hang out with friends pretty much every day. Most of them liked video games as well, but we didn't really sit and play video games much. But it being highscool, I had time for both. Now I'm pretty introverted and prefer to stay at home. But I'm married, so it isn't like I need to go out and pick up chicks to avoid the lonely nerd stereotype. Going to bars or clubs or whatever just never appealed to me at all. Like not even remotely.

It depends on the context and timing. Very late at night or early weekend days, gaming for me. Socializing is any other time in between.

My work puts me in contact with a lot of people in my day, so gaming on my spare time is a hobby that compensates well to get a bit of me-time.

I can't help it but have you ever thought of socializing as you game?

I prefer to mix it up, but tend towards the stay home and game side of things. My girlfriend of 6 years and I live together and game quite a bit together, we actually met playing everquest 2 together. We both do like getting people together and hanging out and playing games on the couch or something where you can trash talk your friends face to face.

I do have a weekly Dungeons and Dragons nights that sometimes dissolves into chatting and drinking, but we get together every Thursday night. I actually keep in touch with people through games instead of things like facebook (I still don't have a face book account).

I'm pretty much a shut-in. I get my fill of social interaction at work... I don't need any more of the drama that happens there. :p Also, I'm horrendously shy and very awkward, so I'm terrible company to most, anyway. xD

Personally I am off on Tuesdays and Wednesdays so in general I tend to spend much more time gaming because no one wants to go out on those days. I have to be at work by 6 am so during the actual weekend I am usually in bed fairly early. You kind of described my childhood. I spent much more time playing games than I did hanging out with my friends after school. I have a wife and son so I really don't need to spend a ton of time socializing anyway. In truth though I do like going out but I am perfectly content with only going out rarely and sitting home the rest of the time. I keep to myself most of the time and it after awhile most people get on my nerves anyway. I am starting to get a little older so I just don't feel the need to conform to what everyone thinks that I should be anymore. That's not to say that I don't have friends but I just like to do my own thing.

These two things have never really crossed my mind as "either/or." Some days I like to just sit around my apartment and play video games all day, and other days I just need to be out of the house with some friends. There are also plenty of times I gather friends so we can play games together. I think I have a healthy balance of both.

Now if you were to ask me if I would rather work/study or play video games... well, I think the answer would be pretty obvious there!

No doubt gaming or reading, I tend to mix between the two, I'm usually socially awkward, I always was more of an observer, there are many causes of that. I've said before Games are like therapy to me, or medication to others, I get real depressed if I don't keep my mind occupied, again due to a lot of things out of my control. In some ways I play games not due to wanting, but due to needing. Books work about the same but I find games to be more interactive and over all more enjoyable. I can get bored reading, but almost never when it comes to games.

I do like socializing don't get me wrong, but I prefer a few words in passing, or a maybe an hour at most, and then I feel any topic has been drained and there isn't much left worth saying. I grew up learning it is better to say nothing then to say a lot about nothing. It has been hard for me to break that mold.

I'm quite happy with the balance I achieved lately. Before usually my game time suffered. If I have to choose I would choose socializing because games can wait and you can't always hang out with your friends. I probably like hanging out with my friends more because they are really a bunch of very good persons and all have differnt views about common interests so it always interesting to disscuss varoius topics with them, usually in a pub over a beer. I'm happy to have them. My sister has bad friends and they hang out once a month, usually bad mouth whoever isn't there. If my friends were like that I would rather be home gaming.

Since I was young I had q fear of leaving the house so I never had a. Social life so I spend my whole time gaming

Why not both? I like to socialize while gaming. Also it depends on which game and who you socialize with..

Most of my life I've been very shy and extremely awkward. I've also always been a game enthusiast, but in recent years I've opened up quite a bit. The biggest change was probably studying abroad. I was thrown into a dorm (not to mention country) full of people I didn't know, but most of which were very friendly.
Clubs and outings were much more of the norm there than here, so I kind of got used to that too. I finally learned how to overcome that hump separating you from awkwardly not dancing, to having fun with friends and really not caring if you can dance or not.

The second thing that really changed this was work. I work with a lot of great, friendly people. Just like when I studied abroad I moved to state where I didn't know anyone, so it was basically the same thing. Work is relevant to games, and my fiancee also games. Many of the people I socialize with are also big gamers.

I've realized I've lost touch with the real world. My coworkers like to go to sports games, watch serials on TV, etc... -- and I've realized those things never were part of my life. Socializing has its quirks. You need to know something about how real people interact with the real world, and this unfortunately means some surface-level knowledge of sports, TV serials, celebrities, and so on.

Bringing things to the topic of gaming, it's amazing how games sell millions of copies these days yet in many places they've never lost the "nerdy" stigma. Where I live, there are Bioshock Infinite ads plastered around the subway stations. But I'm sure if for some reason Bioshock got brought up at work, less than a third of everyone would know what it is (and probably will know it in a "yeah, my brother played that!" kind of way).

So socializing can be tricky. I've seen it as about finding common experiences with people, probably since I started college. Alas, if you're given a small subset of people, gaming probably isn't such an experience. Given small enough of a set, what's the odds that you can leverage your set of experiences to find some common one? I think it's pretty small. I guess I'll keep playing games.

Originally Posted by: aleclair

Bringing things to the topic of gaming, it's amazing how games sell millions of copies these days yet in many places they've never lost the "nerdy" stigma. Where I live, there are Bioshock Infinite ads plastered around the subway stations. But I'm sure if for some reason Bioshock got brought up at work, less than a third of everyone would know what it is (and probably will know it in a "yeah, my brother played that!" kind of way).

Even if someone plays games, that doesn't mean they keep up on what games are out there. The Bioshock Infinite devs, when defending the cover art, said they went around to random frat houses and found that Call of Duty was popular, but basically nobody had any idea what Bioshock was. I keep up on gaming news, but a lot of people really don't, even if they play games, they'll just buy whatever they see ads for (that is why they exist) or on the shelf (which is why so much effort goes into attention catching cover art).

But yeah, there is way more of a stigma about video games than anything else. Not nearly as much as there used to be, but it is OK to watch hours of Real Housewives (god I hate that garbage) but playing video games is considered anti-social or immature.

On the other hand, how many dozens/hundreds of TV channels are there, and how many hundreds of movies come out every year? Most people wouldn't recognize the names of most TV shows or most movies if you mentioned them either. They sure wouldn't know about most books that come out either, even ones that sell or are reviewed by mainstream critics particularly well.

It may also to some extent depend on where you are and the kind of people you associate with. I'm in a city with a very large student population because of all the schools, I've pretty much always done tech-related stuff of some sort, and a lot of the people I know or have worked with have similar backgrounds or are well-educated, so someone mentioning games is not weird at all. Well, one person at one place was called weird for LARPing on the weekends, but I've had video game-related stuff help me get a job before, and usually I can do something like say I'm busy and can't go out because it's online game night or that I'm spending all weekend playing Twilight Imperium (speaking of socializing while gaming) without getting any funny looks.

Life's too short to spend it with people who give you crap about stuff like that. If you don't have a choice in the matter, it's still too short to be bothered what they think about it. Heh.

Since we are on a topic about socializing and gaming do you guys miss LAN parties? 10 or something years ago my friends and I would bring our PCs to one guys place and played for the whole weekend, more in summer breaks. It was awesome, now high speed internet has killed LAN parties and I miss them. Online gaming is a lot of fun, but it just doesn't feel the same. There was something special about getting togather, having all day gaming sessions, eating cheestos, joking around... Nowdays nobody wants to go through the hassle of moving your PC for the weekend when you can play from home, also we're older now and have responsibilities and it's hard to sync up for online let alone to organize a LAN party. But I sure miss those old days.

Originally Posted by: gss89

Since we are on a topic about socializing and gaming do you guys miss LAN parties? 10 or something years ago my friends and I would bring our PCs to one guys place and played for the whole weekend, more in summer breaks. It was awesome, now high speed internet has killed LAN parties and I miss them. Online gaming is a lot of fun, but it just doesn't feel the same. There was something special about getting togather, having all day gaming sessions, eating cheestos, joking around... Nowdays nobody wants to go through the hassle of moving your PC for the weekend when you can play from home, also we're older now and have responsibilities and it's hard to sync up for online let alone to organize a LAN party. But I sure miss those old days.

I remember when the original first person Duke Nukem came out. i had a computer electronic class at vocational school and that is all we did was play deathmatches on the LAN. It was awesome. I was never any good (not much has changed because I am not any good at COD either) but it was awesome. Then Unreal came out later that same year I think and we switched to that. I preferred Duke but both were a ton of fun. We really didn't learn much but at least we were well entertained.

We used to play in the computer class when the professor wasn't looking. We played Unreal 2004 in elementary when it came out, which was in our last year and then we had to revert to Unreal Tournament (1999) because they had crapy computers in our highschool. But 1999 was great so we didn't complained much.

Originally Posted by: gss89

Nowdays nobody wants to go through the hassle of moving your PC for the weekend when you can play from home, also we're older now and have responsibilities and it's hard to sync up for online let alone to organize a LAN party. But I sure miss those old days.

LAN parties were great when people had the time and could be bothered to go through all the effort. Like you say, it's hard enough getting people together online when everyone has jobs and kids and stuff. If I do get a chance to play games with people in person, it's generally board games or something that absolutely can't be reproduced online, but the scheduling can be a pain sometimes. Every now and then people talk about getting together for something like Artemis Bridge Simulator that would only work with people in the same room though. Something like that might be what finally does it.

Originally Posted by: gss89

We used to play in the computer class when the professor wasn't looking. We played Unreal 2004 in elementary when it came out, which was in our last year and then we had to revert to Unreal Tournament (1999) because they had crapy computers in our highschool. But 1999 was great so we didn't complained much.

Jebus, way to make me feel ancient. UT2k4 in elementary school? That's when we were playing the latest hits like Montezuma's Revenge. I would've been thrilled if we'd had UT99. That was indeed a great game.

Jebus, way to make me feel ancient. UT2k4 in elementary school? That's when we were playing the latest hits like Montezuma's Revenge. I would've been thrilled if we'd had UT99. That was indeed a great game.

haha, it was just in our last few months in the 8th grade when the game came out, we were 14 at the time. For me UT99 was a better game in the time when it came out then UT2004 was in it's time, but both were great. 2004 had tanks and stuff and the Onslaught game mode was awesome for playing teams. In UT99 we mostly played deathmatches, i kinda liked team play more.

Originally Posted by: gss89

Jebus, way to make me feel ancient. UT2k4 in elementary school? That's when we were playing the latest hits like Montezuma's Revenge. I would've been thrilled if we'd had UT99. That was indeed a great game.

haha, it was just in our last few months in the 8th grade when the game came out, we were 14 at the time. For me UT99 was a better game in the time when it came out then UT2004 was in it's time, but both were great. 2004 had tanks and stuff and the Onslaught game mode was awesome for playing teams. In UT99 we mostly played deathmatches, i kinda liked team play more.

Yeah, I liked both of them a lot too. I just never got a chance to play the later one with people as much. The new stuff they added was fun and different but still felt like it belonged, unlike UT3, which was kind of meh.

A couple friends and I still get together 3-4 times a year for Lan parties. Granted it is only for a day instead of the whole weekend but it is still a ton of fun.

Sometimes if I am feeling lazy I just bring my laptop which can play most games pretty well as well, but prefer my desktop.

Another group of friends (My dungeons and dragons group) we get together about once a year and play consoles both new and old, the newer ones we use system link with a couple TVs, the older ones we do good old split screen.

I remember how hard it was to find a system link cable for the original playstation... the only game we ever used it for was C&C Red Alert Retaliation, but it was worth it.

The group I system link with, we all met while we worked at gamestop, so we got all that kind of stuff when we worked there and snagged soon as they showed up in the store.

Originally Posted by: pongsifu

I remember how hard it was to find a system link cable for the original playstation...

I didn't even realize such a thing existed. I do remember how much of a pain it could be to find the GC ones though...and how little of a point there was to them outside of Double Dash, but how worth it it was just for that.

I'm not really big on socialising with new people. But I also like a good party. Or heavy metal concert. Or just good company. Everything depends on the mood of the situation and people you're spending time with. Sometimes it works, other times it doesn't. Most of the time I prefer spending time alone (regardless of what I'm doing, not necessarily playing videogames) because that's just who I am and I don't give a damn if someone will call me a "recluse" or "no-life" or whatever. I am a recluse and I'm pretty comfortable with that. Not really antisocial, because I don't have trouble meeting new people and also I'm required to lead a team at work. I'm happy to spend time with someone I trust but more often than not I'm chillin' at home because I find solace in isolation, that's all.

To quote that one guy from that one videogame: "do not care what others think, do what you must".