Gaming: Why It’s Not Just A Hobby

Welcome to XboxWorlds, the brand new Xbox fan blog!

There is absolutely no denying that gaming is a huge part of my life as it likely is for anyone reading this. I just wanted reflect on why and what gaming has brought me in life for a few minutes.

As I think back, my first memories of video games are back when my age was still in the single digits. My neighbors had just bought an N64 and there were a ton of at the time mind-blowing games like goldeneye and super smash bros. To be honest, I wasn’t very good at the games at the time, but what I do remember is all of good times I had laughing and competing with one another. Video gaming brought us closer together and I remember other kids from the neighborhood hanging out with us that had never done that before, it opened up our friendship circle. Quite simply gaming helped me make friends!

That’s a theme that seems to repeat itself over and over again so far in my life. The release of the Xbox and start of Lan parties to play Halo brought all my friends together and I met a ton of new people through those. Then when the Xbox 360 came out and online gaming started to gain popularity, it opened up a whole new world. I met people that weren’t at my school, some weren’t even in the same state, but we’d play online together all the time and got to know each other, it was crazy at the time. Today it’s common place and that amazing! Heck since I started this blog people from more than 35 countries have visited the site! It’s just amazing, there’s nothing else that seemingly brings people together like this from different cultures, ethnicities and time zones.

Gaming doesn’t just bring people together from different parts of the world though. It transports people to entirely new worlds! There’s a whole universe of game worlds to explore. New cool characters to talk to, environments to learn about, different fundamental rules that exist, challenges to face and stories to uncover. There’s things that can be experienced by gaming that I’ll never have a chance for in real life, like blasting off earth on a spacecraft and making first contact to saving the whole damn world.

These worlds provide an escape from reality when needed or a reprieve from the stresses that can come with everyday life. I know with all the chaos in the US these past couple of years gaming has been a way to de-stress and forget about some of the horrible injustices going on in reality for a bit. It’s also quite plainly allowed me to be immersed in worlds to the point I think it’s scratched some of my travel itch, which is great especially without being able to go anywhere during covid-19.

On a number of my gaming travels, I’ve run into a number of things that have positively impacted my life, helped learn more about myself and generally improve as a person. Gaming has taught me valuable lessons/skills such as working as a team, learning to examine multiple possibilities, developing plans but accepting the fact that flexibility is often required and so many others, but I won’t bore everyone.

Anyways, if you read this far, thanks for taking the time to hear me out on why gaming is so much more than a hobby and offers a lot to anyone willing to jump in. I’m really interested in hearing all your thoughts on gaming and the difference it has made in your life.

Published by xboxworlds

New blogger, passionate about gaming on xbox

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