I enjoy a number of genres (extraction shooters, for one example) that my particular friend group just doesn’t seem to have any interest in. But I find that any desire to have a go-to group to play these games with is dwarfed by a lack of the emotional energy and time required to forge a new relationship from scratch.
I (and my wife as well, actually) have accepted sometime ago that perhaps we just do not have the bandwidth to expand our social group at this point. We have our established friends, and while we regularly encounter other adults and say “oh they’re really nice, we should invite them over/get to know them better”… we never actually do. Friendships are like plants, right? In order to grow and thrive they need attention, they need constant watering, especially at the beginning, or they shrivel and die. And… I don’t know where that attention is supposed to come from.
To use Tolkien’s perfect phrase, “like butter scraped over too much bread,” by the time I’ve given the people already in my life (wife, kids, existing friends, me) the attention they need, there’s nothing left.
So instead, I am content to play these games with my Tyler Durden ‘Single-Serving Friends,’ temporary and superficial acquaintances for a match or two. One-night stands without the commitment of a friend-listing.
You are not alone in this Tim. My bandwith is smallband. I can’t maintain more than 2 – 3 actual friends outside of my already huge family. Lucky for me, they understand me and don’t require me to meet up on a regular basis 😀
That’s really cold, Tim. He’d even gotten hand-engraved his & his controllers for the wedding. 🙁
I should add: for those of us matchmaking in European servers it’s pot luck if the person on the other end even speaks the same language as you. Making even less appealing (to me, at least).
using audio with strangers? Never!
That’s the most unrelatable part of this strip for me too, haha. Denying the friend quest, that part I can relate to.
I’ve found it is useful in co-op games as long as you have common language. There’s also the ‘are you an a$$h4t?’ as some seem, but in the right (fairly serious) servers tend to have better folks or they don’t stay long.
I’m the opposite: instant add if you send me a request. Doesn’t mean I’ll be around when you want to play, but I will always add
I did, and had good friends, but I still play the old games. The friends moved on. It’s one of the things I miss. That said, I have probably 500 friends and I can probably drop 300+ now. It’s just a low priority concern.
You could always accept and not give them any extra attention. Just because it’s called friends list doesn’t mean it’s a friends list, know what I mean? Play with them when the situation allows. And if they get needy, remove them. If they last, maybe you’ll get a new, low maintenance, actual friend. Maybe this behaviour is too sociopathic. I grew up in a small village where the choice was “play with this specific group of friends or be alone”. You’d only ever meet a certain set of people and if the relation between you got sour, well, enjoy random… Read more »
Accepting a friends request feels like a sort of implicit agreement to take the relationship to a next level. I put you on my friends list for this game, you can see when I play, and then maybe the next time I’m on you drop me an invite to party up. So now I decline and keep playing with randoms (why did I even add you then), or we jump into the game together, but now with this added layer of awareness/awkwardness that we are attempting to cultivate a friendship (of some degree). And yeah, that is basically the process… Read more »
I see your point. And I think this part is the crux of our different thinking: But even super casual, low-maintenance occasional gaming friendships need some level of attention to keep existing, right? I’ve had friends who I made in games who then went to play another game for 6+ months and the friendship just sort of… went quiet and vanished. Maybe because my friends circle changed often cause of moving (times were tough before fast world wide comms), but I got used to it. Over time I went from complete introvert to an introvert who treats everyone, even new… Read more »
You are overthinking it. People on the friend list can just be pre-screen randoms, that you know are not an idiot. If you need a third or whatever, you send them an invite and slot them in, otherwise you don’t have to talk to them. You don’t even have to remember who they are, just assume if they are on the friend list, they are not an idiot, thus you have a high chance of having a good game. You are not trying to cultivate a friendship, you are just acquaintances. Like the neighbor you say hi to if you… Read more »
Oh I’ll be the last one to argue that I don’t overthink anything and everything. Though in the early days of this comic, I would freely post my gamertags and accept every friend request from any fan/reader. I would often have a friends lists in the hundreds (or whatever the service max was), maybe 1% of whom I actually knew, and it meant constantly wading through PMs and notifications and names I didn’t recognize for the ones I did. So at some point I decided the friends list should be a little more sacred, and pared them down to legitimate… Read more »
I can see how you developed that view after that. You can definitely still end up with a large list of friends, if you add everyone you play with. However I don’t think you have to worry that much about being spammed with PMs and notifications and stuff. That almost certainly happened because you are ‘internet famous’ and people were trying to get your attention.
I’ve accepted the friend requests a few times but it always ends the same. I only end up playing with them like 1 to 2 times and then never see them again or they end up playing games I never play and so I remove them from my friends list after a month.
I think that is pretty standard. I think the main reason is because people don’t really play the same games for long periods of time anymore(or if they do they don’t play it regularly). Though if you are really into a game, I think it is worth it, since some other people might be really into it as well. In that case, it goes a lot better. Of course, there is also nothing wrong with playing a game with someone a few times and parting ways after. I think there is something nice about making a short term friend, that… Read more »
Ain’t there the option to just close the friend invite message?
As in, neither accepting, nor blocking?
Tim, I get where you are. I do recall, from a long time ago, you would call out people to join you on server X. In those days, I think you did add people fairly easily. But then life got more involved and we start to be a bit picky of how we spend the time we have and with whom. It feels lousy to eject people, but when you realize you haven’t played with you for 10 years, its only a small mental tweak. I do miss my FtF friends – one went to Tokyo, one went to Alberta… Read more »
I am the same way, plus I am also very introverted. So even when I do accept friend requests, I don’t ever end up playing with them again anyway. However, there was one person who’s friend request I did accept who was always on and always asking to play and I ended up playing with them more than twice and now they are one of my best friends. They are also the only person I have ever met online, who I then later met in person(which again is huge since I am an introvert). Most randos are strangers and that… Read more »
That, and the incipient paranoia in on-line life. Mind you, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that they aren’t out to get you.
Well, you see, I am like this also. I was playing Deceit game. A gal invited me. I declined. We matched again. She didn’t recognize me, but invited me again. I had a crush on her. Then I married our common friend. Now I don’t care and am in love with my wife. So actually accepting those requests might benefit you in a long run in a very unexpected way.
I like that your username is a Monty python reference
Well, its the opposite for me. As an european, I often end up playing with russians. I don’t understand a word they are saying and they end up kicking me or leaving the lobby if they have the slightest hint I don’t understand them. Then, I get people with always mic on, the silent ones, those who are snaking while the mic is on, the screamers, kids, names callers, girls (who get instantly rushed by the whole lobby), bad mics, “music” blasters, etc. I had one person with whom I had a blast playing and friended them. They didn’t connect… Read more »
As someone who’s been enjoying GG Strive lately, I can say that I’m perfectly fine with pitting my skills against total strangers with no strings attached. This doesn’t prevent me from having a good laugh when either of us does something really stupid while panicking. I’m not a particularly good player btw, so that’s a fairly common occurrence. I particularly enjoy mirror matches, especially when me and my opponent spontaneously decide to share the one remaining brain cell and do the exact same move on the exact same frame and hit each other. Bonus points if this happens on round… Read more »
just need to remember a friend is different then an acquaintance.
I’ll be your friend! I have an entire shrine dedicated to you!
As me and my girlfriend say ‘EW PEOPLE!’ or ‘EW SOCIAL ACTIVITY!’ 😀
Huh, playing online with ppl. That seems like a weird concept. Almost… heretical.
BURN THE WITCH!!!
I’d argue this is overthinking it a bit. Pretty much all my “friends” in games are really just people I worked well with together and am not against getting paired up again. So when I do play that game I would be able to just randomly join them and vice-versa, exchange a nod of approval and get going. The gaming equivalent of recognizing somebody you encounter on the street, waving and moving on. This is mostly cause very few would think about forging a friendship within a game these days. If you want to do that you purposefully join a… Read more »
I extra feel this as a parent. “Oh they’re nice we should hang out” then never do. Even if they happen to share interests… Like I don’t have the extra bandwidth.
Achievement Unlocked.
Perfectly understandable pre-emptive block, Disco Elysium fanboys can be pretty annoying. (I should know, I’m one of them.)
HAHAHAHA! The profile pic is from Banner Saga! Love it!
I’m very similar, though if I happen to notice a player and I have crossed paths multiple times and they are good I’ll send them a request.
I have my friends, but I also have what I call ‘dependables’, players I have played alongside enough to know they are good and who can fill in if someone in my group can’t make it or if I have time to play while nobody else is online.
I always accept those kinds of friend requests, but then neither of us ever follow up or play together again. I have a big friends list in warframe of awesome players I’ve randomly gone to level cap in casade with that I have only played with that one random time.
The only online multiplayer games that I agree to play are Battlefield-series games and I always just disable both text and audio chat as the first thing. The vast, vast, VAST majority of gamers are horribly toxic people I don’t want in my life.
Love the banner saga avatar
“I wish some of my friends…”
Haha I don’t have friends 😀
Maybe a game will come out one day that will have this in mind and term it something else. An “Eh… ok” list instead of a “Friend” list.
Also – possibly an unpopular opinion – what if you treated the Friend List like advanced NPCs? I know it’s weird, because there’s this implicit knowledge that there’s a person on the other end, but they aren’t part of your life beyond the game. Honestly, no online player has any more bearing on your life than an NPC unless you allow them to…
I miss the old Hunt UI…
I’ve played with some people that friend request me after a match and even accepted the friend request a few times now and then. It always ends the same, I play with them maybe two times at the most, and then never see them again or they end up playing different games than me.
Warcraft and others have an answer to this. Not guilds, but Communities. A pool of like minded people across various servers accomplishing a specific thing. No responsibilities or obligations just, as an example, ‘raiding this guy, who wants to come?’ *invites
What is this “friend” that everyone keeps referring to?
@Tim Too true. We used to be in the same Guild in WoW and used to talk a fair bit, but after you and Brit moved on (plus I ended up giving up WoW), we basically lost contact. I think it was around the time that FailDruid passed away.
I tried following what you said, and watering my friends.
They got annoyed and told me to knock it off.
Leave ’em out in the sunlight all day. They’ll be begging for water.
Nice detail to your ingame name. Monty Python!
this is one of the few things I like about some Gacha games is that having a lot of incentive to join a clan/guild helps break that “never talk to anyone ever” wall.
I don’t recognize anything on that screen except the Healer from The Banner Saga. That was a cool thing to see.
I’ll sometimes accept a request with someone I had fun playing with, just in the off chance we’re playing the same game at the same time again. I don’t try to cultivate any friendships or anything, but in the off chance they’re on at the same time as me again, I’ll shoot them a message in case they want to join me again. Just because they’re on something called a ‘friends list’ doesn’t mean they can’t just be ‘that one person I have fun playing with that one time’. If a friendship grows from that? Awesome. If not, well we… Read more »
It’s not easy to find a game buddy in Helldivers 2 that will consistently react to your actions, not constantly blow you up, or just scamper away right across the map with zero regard to team play, so on the rare occasion one does appear, I do add them.