Non-gaming Friends

[Dan]

Non-gaming people and awkardness

So recently I was watching an episode of the clueless gamer, needless to say it was funny. My grandfather thought it was a load of **** and said "Conan o'brians humor should be as dead as me at this age".
[video=youtube;_1hkSUGgPC8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1hkSUGgPC8#t=275[/video]

As I watched this episode of the clueless gamer, those little rascals the pixels were up to their no good shenanigans and were secretly drugging me with bi-curiosity, which got me thinking do you have any non gaming friends, do you find it awkward to talk about something from a video game from them?

Edit: I don't mean actually going into a conversation with friends that don't play games, I was referring to perhaps times you have been caught playing a game and a friend or person isn't familiar with the game and asks what on earth you are doing. Perhaps you are watching TV, a game advertisement comes up and your friend or family member or dog asks "huh Madonna is starring in her own game", and then you may reply "No that's actually Lara croft she's a fictional character, the reason her boobs are pyramids are dual to the low polygon count and to reflect on the games theme of ancient civilizations".
Perhaps that has never happened to you, but it has happened to me a few times where I'll be explaining a game to someone that has never touched a video game and they will look at me like I'm on drugs.(They do that anyway, but more so than normal) ;p

 

[Turo602]

Why would anyone talk games with someone who doesn't like, understand, or care for video games? If you can't find anything better to talk about with your non-gamer friends, then that's a really big problem. Anyway, yes I have non-gaming friends and no it's never awkward because I never bring up video games to them. However, I do have lame-gamer friends who only play what's "in," so in other words, Call of Duty types. These friends think they know about games so we usually talk about them and get into disagreements that always end with me schooling them.

 

[misskitten]

Most of my friends have some kind of relationship with games, so I don't really encounter much problem. I've even gotten my mom curious about gaming (outside of ipad games and table top games, which she already enjoys). But honestly, there are so many interesting things out there, so if you do have friends who aren't interested in one thing, like video games, they are probably interested in something else you like, so you'll just talk about that instead. I mostly stick to shared interests when I'm with friends.

 

[kokirion]

It used to be the other way around, but most of my friends are non-gaming friends. We never play video games together. Usually, we play darts or things like that.
I think it's also due to the fact that we all have different video game interests. My favorite games are story-driven RPG's like zfinal Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts and the legend of Zelda. Most of my friends prefer first person shooting games, soccer games or things like that. But i guess the majority of my friends don't really play lots of video games anymore nowadays. So we rarely get together to play a video game together or even talk about it.

 

[Mamono101]

Many years ago, I was the non-gaming friend that you speak of. My friends never used to alter conversations and I found myself listening rather awkwardly and disinterestedly to their many conversations about Battlefield 1942 and Battlefield Vietnam. They did try to engage me with the conversation but since I had no point of reference for the conversation, I was unable to relate to the content of the discussion. Including the use of gaming terms that are now in common usage as colloquialisms. To top it all off, when I did start playing games, I had a preference for console gaming and games in genres that my friends would never play so the conversations were still slightly awkward.

Now that the internet is a much more common feature of my life and I am aware of the top selling franchises, even playing a few myself, conversations go a lot more smoothly when it comes to talking about gaming and the jargon associated with it.

 

[Dan]

Why would anyone talk games with someone who doesn't like, understand, or care for video games? If you can't find anything better to talk about with your non-gamer friends, then that's a really big problem. Anyway, yes I have non-gaming friends and no it's never awkward because I never bring up video games to them. However, I do have lame-gamer friends who only play what's "in," so in other words, Call of Duty types. These friends think they know about games so we usually talk about them and get into disagreements that always end with me schooling them.

My Bad, I didn't explain correctly in the original post.

I don't mean actually going into a conversation with friends that don't play games, I was referring to perhaps times you have been caught playing a game and a friend or person isn't familiar with the game and asks what on earth you are doing. Perhaps you are watching TV, a game advertisement comes up and your friend or family member or dog asks "huh Madonna is starring in her own game", and then you may reply "No that's actually Lara croft she's a fictional character, the reason her boobs are pyramids are dual to the low polygon count and to reflect on the games theme of ancient civilizations".
Perhaps that has never happened to you, but it has happened to me a few times where I'll be explaining a game to someone that has never touched a video game and they will look at me like I'm on drugs.(They do that anyway, but more so than normal) ;p

 

[misskitten]

My Bad, I didn't explain correctly in the original post.

I don't mean actually going into a conversation with friends that don't play games, I was referring to perhaps times you have been caught playing a game and a friend or person isn't familiar with the game and asks what on earth you are doing. Perhaps you are watching TV, a game advertisement comes up and your friend or family member or dog asks "huh Madonna is starring in her own game", and then you may reply "No that's actually Lara croft she's a fictional character, the reason her boobs are pyramids are dual to the low polygon count and to reflect on the games theme of ancient civilizations".
Perhaps that has never happened to you, but it has happened to me a few times where I'll be explaining a game to someone that has never touched a video game and they will look at me like I'm on drugs.(They do that anyway, but more so than normal) ;p

Well, with my family, I'm used to being the weirdo, the one who was constantly asked if I wasn't "too old for" this or that. But I have a cousin who really gets it, who share a lot of my interests, like fandom and gaming, and my mom has actually become more and more open minded about these things, and even realized that she actually enjoys a lot of the things I do. Currently she's watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer (we started watching it together, but she decided she couldn't wait until I got home before she could continue since it's all right there on Netflix, lol) and playing table top apps on her ipad (like Ticket to Ride, Settlers of Catan, Stone Age, and Lords of Waterdeep - which I just introduced her to). It's really just video gaming that I haven't properly introduced her to yet, apart from demonstrating things, like Disney Infinity for her. She does play several social games, but apart from trying out Tetris, she hasn't actually played any proper video games, yet.

 

[Sir Quaffler]

Pretty much all of my friends that I haven't met online have been non-gaming friends, or play games or use systems that I don't touch for one reason or another. Every once in a blue moon we may find ourselves popping in a game and playing together, but that's a rare exception. We usually go out for a night on the town, or we hang back at their apartments and shoot the breeze just talking to each other for hours on end.

In fact, my two closest friends who I consider blood brothers, I have never once seen them even so much as pick up a controller. We share so much in common otherwise that I don't even mention gaming to them, not that I'm avoiding it so much as it just never comes up.

 

[Fig]

It's very rare for me, especially in my society, to know someone who doesn't play video games. I guess it is in our culture that we enjoy technology and anything that could potentially make life easier or more enjoyable. That said, whenever I do know someone who doesn't play video games and notices me playing one of my very own, I don't see it as a big issue as they are simply curious on what how I was playing. It's the same if I watched someone played a sport I'm not too familiar with. It's just natural how I see it.

I have been asked what video game that I was playing at the moment and I was more than happy to help them understand the mechanics and features that my game had to offer. At the the time, I was playing Super Smash Bros. Melee at my university's Student Center (basically a rotunda and cafeteria combined) when a fellow student asked me asking what I was playing. I simply stated that it is a fighting game and that the point is to knock your opponent off the stage using combos and techniques of your character. While I didn't go in full detail, I did provided him the basics of how to play the game. Interesting enough, he was able to understand what I was saying and seemed interested in the game but since he had class in a few minutes he said he will try the game another time. So all in all, I don't mind it when people who don't play video games ask me what I'm doing whenever I'm caught playing video games because everyone has their different interests. Some people like video games while others might prefer movies, books, etc. That said, there's nothing wrong with being curious in seeing what interests a person so long as you respect them for doing so.

 

[CynicalSquid]

I only think I have 1 or 2 non gaming friends, and even then I only discuss gaming with a few of them. Usually when I'm with my online friends I do talk about gaming a lot, because I met all of them on DGN, but I have only have talked about games with 2 friends in person. I have only discussed Pokemon with those two friends though, and we never really talked about anything else when it came to video games. I mostly talk about music with my friends in person, because all of my friends at school like the same music that I do.

I don't really see the point of talking about games with people that don't play video games. That's like trying to discuss a book, or a movie, or even a song with someone who has never experienced it. It's really hard to explain or have a conversation about, and I feel like it's really redundant anyways,

 

[Curmudgeon]

Friend: What are you doing?
Me: I push buttons. Things happen on the screen. It's fun.

 

[Sydney]

Quite a few of my real life friends either hardly play or don't play, and I respect that entirely. I've noticed that they tend to be very busy, so putting time into video games is generally not an option. I do have a decent amount of real life friends who do play video games, and it's nice having something to talk about with them. Whether someone plays video games or not does not impact my relationship with them, because we usually have other common interests that brings us together; therefore I hardly talk about games with my non-gaming friends.