Something I’ve come to accept as I continue to age is that I always stray back into the interests I had growing up.
There are moments when it’s just for pockets of time like listening to the best playlists of emo/scene music from the early 2000s. Anyone else have a golden playlist like that?
Or it can be like my recent anime obsession that has not only taken up my viewing time but expanded into reading manga, collecting figurines/plushes/keychains/pins/you name it, and having more anime merch to wear than days in the week.
Honestly not a bad problem to have IMO tho 😇 There are a ton of fire anime merch companies out there!
A hobby that came back into my life with such force that I didn’t expect tho was gaming.
Gaming in my childhood
I had grown up as a wee gamer, being introduced to the classics when going over to family events. Mario Kart and Mortal Kombat were the two staples growing up at any gathering.
We’d eat dinner then us cousins would huddle around the TV, taking turns for our moment of glory! I don’t think I ever saw my moment because we didn’t have video games at home so these family events were the one time I’d get my hands on a controller until I was a pre-teen.
My parents were not into gaming, not in the slightest, so we didn’t have any gaming consoles in the home until I got my first GameBoy Color in the early 2000s. It was a Christmas gift along with Pokémon Silver, still one of my prized possessions to this day!
Side note: I also got my first CD player that year with Millennium by the Backstreet Boys and a matching oversized t-shirt. I don’t want to say that was my *peak cool girl* era but it very well
may have been.
From there my gamer girl journey continued.
My sister and I pooled our savings for a really good Black Friday sale and bought a GameCube together. We played so much Kirby Air Ride and Smash Brothers you’d think I would be good at at least one of them. To this day I still cannot stay on a stage/course to save my life 😂
Eventually I picked up Tony Hawk Pro Skater and tortured my sister with hours of Ring of Fire by Johnny Cash on repeat while we skated around Barcelona and New Orleans. That game really hit all of my interests as a budding teen. (Skating, good music, & traveling! What more could you want?)
We got our first family computer soon after and with that came hand me down games like Carmaggedon (which is not child friendly but we loved it lol) and multiple hunting simulation games that were there to pass the time on a boring day.
I eventually picked up games that I became obsessed with including Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and The Sims. It was pretty much game over for anything after I got The Sims. I’m positive the hours I wasted away on that game after school and during breaks is unspeakable.
Through high school I still carried around my GameBoy Color and the one game I owned, Pokémon Silver. Family gatherings definitely had Mario Kart on the agenda but added in endless hours of Guitar Hero, Rock Band, and DDR.
Unfortunately it wasn’t long past graduation that gaming started fading for me as a casual hobby.
I tried a few times to get back into it with the Wii, 2DS, Wii U, and even at one point trying to learn League of Legends on my college laptop (mostly to avoid homework lol).
Nothing ever really stuck like The Sims did and I was okay with it being a fond memory. I had a lot going on between school then work, family, friends, and life as a twenty something year old.
Why I got back into gaming
2020 brought a lot of change for me as it did the whole world. I’m aware my story isn’t in the slightest unique but I’d still like to share it for anyone who want to continue reading 🙂
With the world shutting down, my husband and I also took a leap of change. We decided to make a huge change and relocate to another state.
This was a difficult transition for me as we were leaving behind my whole support system and way of life I knew. I had to leave behind my family, friends, my job and start over at a new company in a new state where I had no any connections.
Not to mention, we moved during the pandemic and the way to be social/day to day living had completely changed.
So much change happened rapidly and I was just rolling with it. I’m the type to bottle it all up and *shove down* how I’m feeling to focus on supporting those around me.
I’ve always put the well being + comfort of my friends and family first. Sometimes I even prioritized it over my own well being which is something I learned by suddenly distancing myself for the first time in my life.
We were alone in a new state, a new city, and I only had my husband and our dog.
Even during the start of the pandemic, I still had some kind of social connection. With social distancing we would drive by a family member’s house to do a quick food exchange or chat on the front lawn from the car with my friends.
For the first time in a long time there was truly time to be alone.
I guess it’s easy to see these beautiful vlogs and clips that romanticize moving away from your life and starting over but I gotta be honest, the loneliness was unbearable at times. There were days I would work then go back to bed and cry. I think my husband and I kind of anticipated this but I didn’t anticipate *how long* it would actually hurt.
Not to mention just all the things going on in the world. I had developed new fears and phobias about leaving the house or being alone out in public. It really was a difficult time and some of these things I’m still learning to get past.
Since we were home so often and my husband is an avid gamer, I started to backseat watch a lot. He got very into Dead By Daylight which btw when you watch it with no sound on is a lot different from when you put that headset on (and don’t know how to adjust the volume!) for the first time 😆
That’s how it started though! DBD just looked like a unique fun game and I was ready to do something fun in a world that was full of fear and so unpredictable.
Through some trial & error of trying a few games and realizing I needed a proper PC to game I found my way to my kind of gaming in the fall of 2020.
The return of the millennial gamer girl
My husband recommended Stardew Valley and I was instantly hooked!
I would play from the time my shift ended at 5PM to 1AM. I’d spend hours on hours stalking characters *I mean*… learning about them. I’d plan out my whole week/season in the game and just lose myself in farming and getting to know the villagers as the hours rolled by.
It really gave me a sense of comfort that I had been missing.
Not too long after that my cousin recommended I check out Animal Crossing. I played pocket camp and somehow… Nintendo got me 😅
I have never been so hooked to a mobile game. I even got my best friend into it!
By New Years we both had a copy of Animal Crossing New Horizon’s and were ready to start life on our islands. My bestie even got a Nintendo Switch just to play this 😂
We started visiting each other every day, checking out the stalks and using apps to predict the week’s big payout, sharing what was in our store that day, and running like our life depended on it to get to both islands before the stores closed for the day (we didn’t time travel then lol).
It was a whole production + obsession that lasted for months!
As the world slowly started to reopen in summer 2021, our obsession with ACNH started to fade. We weren’t visiting each other religiously every evening, we cared a little less about the stalks, and somehow our last visit had become the final one without us knowing it.
And that’s okay as all things eventually come to an end.
I however fell back into it after a short break. I still enjoyed the building aspect and wanted to connect with others still in the grind! That’s when I started my gaming profile on Instagram which I’ll save for another post as Instagram/social media is it’s own whole thing 😅.
Fast forward to today and I’ve grown so much as a gamer since the first time I played Stardew Valley two years ago. I still love farming simulators and play Stardew Valley at least once a week live on stream on a co-op farm with one of my internet besties Cleo (aka PinkMatterGames)!
I’ve really branched out since I first started gaming. I have tried so many kinds of games from fighting, racing, open world rpgs, jrpg, otomes, and my newest obsession ghost hunting. If any of this sounds like alphabet soup, don’t worry I’ll be writing about them in future posts!
Gaming has become a staple in my daily routine.
I definitely look forward to my time to disconnect from the world and jump into another world to farm or go ghost hunting with friends.
For me, gaming provides an escape and has become my preferred form of self care. It gives my brain a rest from work stress and anything else going on in the world.
It’s temporary, I know that, and it’s definitely not a band aid for things I have to work through but it’s nice to have moments of rest.
A place I know I can go to escape for a bit.
Also I just gotta say that being a part of the online gaming community for me has been so fun! Anticipating releases, learning about games in development, and keeping up with gaming news in general are things I never thought I’d be so into.
And with all this I’m really happy to have found a kind community to chat about our shared interests. I know gaming *can have* a toxic rep depending but I promise, there are kind souls out there who genuinely want to connect and chat about the video games we love!
Sharing my journey
I wanted to share my story of how I got back into gaming because I feel like there may be others who are kind of looking for a similar escape or have the same kind of background and want to get back into gaming after taking a long break like I did.
I think the thing I like about Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing is that it put me in control of the narrative and I could choose what I wanted to do for the day, what tasks I wanted to complete,
what I wanted to do to disconnect.
It definitely gave me a sense of responsibility, routine, and a social outlet in a way.
All things I was lacking in this weird time of limbo of existing in the world.
When I started getting interested in gaming I remember I looked at what was popular and knew it wasn’t for me at the time. Video games like Dead by Daylight, League of Legends, Fortnight, and Call of Duty – all great games in their own genre but these weren’t for me and honestly still aren’t for the most part.
I hadn’t realized there was such a variety of games out there and genres I had never heard of.
Just from starting Stardew Valley two years ago I have a library stacked with farming simulators alone – each game different and special in its own way.
Something I’m hoping to achieve with this blog is to create a series to help millennials like me who are interested in gaming/want to become a gamer, however that looks for them!
There are so many different types of games that give different vibes and moods. I’m sure with the variety of games out there that there’s a genre and gameplay style that will be a perfect match!
Honestly if it hadn’t been for my husband I probably wouldn’t have found Stardew Valley or it would have taken me that much longer.
I don’t know why it was so hard for me to just find a gaming guide for millennials (especially women similar to me) to get back into gaming. But it was and maybe I’m just really bad at Google?
Honestly it’s probably just me being bad at Google 😂 It’s always user error 😅
But even so, I hope I can create a welcoming environment for you to learn about gaming from a wider lens than the popular perception that I could find via a *basic* Google search.
I look forward to sharing about my journey and what I’ve learned so far as well as hearing from fellow gamers! I love to connect and chat with other gamers in the community.
Where are you in your gaming journey? Are you just starting out or are you a gaming veteran? I’d love to hear about your story and what gaming means to you.
Good luck on your quest!
Momo
Hi, I’m Momo! I’m a gamer, streamer, and digital creator. I love chatting about video games, anime, and manga. If you liked this blog go check out other spots I lurk on the interwebz!
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