Battle Passes And Video Game Grind Stole 15 Years Of My Life

thegamer.com:

I've been playing video games for almost three decades. I can't pinpoint the first time I picked up a controller and knew what I was doing or looked up at a TV screen and became captivated by a game, but I know by the age of four, I was mildly obsessed with my Mega Drive. Like everything I enjoyed as a kid, gaming was something you were made to believe you would grow out of. Thankfully I never did, and even better, the stigma of adults playing games has melted away somewhat since the mid-'90s, though unfortunately it isn't gone entirely.

While it never went away, much like the industry itself, my love of games evolved and changed over time. New consoles and better-looking games came into my life. I fell in love with football and discovered FIFA. The same can be said for music and I stumbled upon games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band. However, somewhere along the way, I stopped having fun, and it took me until relatively recently, more than 15 years later, to realize that.

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The realization that I wasn't necessarily playing games to have fun anymore first started to sink in when people around me would discuss games that I hadn't played. Games that everyone else in the room had played and loved, but I had never touched. I would see viral tweets asking questions along the lines of “which major series have you never played and why?” Others would speak of their shame due to never playing a Zelda game, or having never taken Sonic for a spin. I would scroll through answers and realize I had simply missed out on entire series almost everyone else had played, and I had no idea why.

I had been playing games my whole life, never taking a break. Then it dawned on me. I