‘Gaming’ as a hobby has become weird: it’s mainstream enough that finding other people who ‘play games’ is not rare, but still niche enough that there’s a glimpse of recognition when you find a Fellow Gamer - only for them to ask you if you’ve played that new Call of Duty and you realize you’re very different people.
So I went to AGDQ (i.e. Awesome Games Done Quick) in person this year. If you don’t know what that is: it is a week-long marathon stream (24h a day!) for charity, where people mostly speedrun games (i.e. try to complete them as fast as possible) and raise money for charity. That can be a straightforward “one person starts and completes a game fast”, or a race between two people, or something a bit more out-of-left-field (like Wes playing through Super Mario Bros. Wii while playing the piano).
In addition to the main stage, where the game-of-the-hour was being played and streamed live, there were many other spaces available to attendees: a huge practice room with plenty of computers, monitors and a kiosk where you could borrow old consoles and games (for free!); a massive board game room with plenty of games you could borrow (for free!); an arcade with pinball machines and a bunch other games you could play (for free!); private practice rooms for folks who were going to be on stream; a quiet room (which I appreciated a lot); a room for meet-ups; panels, game tournaments, and other social occasions. I spent maybe 20-30% of my time actually watching the main stage, and the bulk of my time playing games and attending other things.
I’m a 38-year old man, and I was attending GDQ for the first time. I knew (i.e. had talked to on the internet) a few people attending, and that was it. I am sure everyone is aware of how hard it is to meet people and make friends as you get older, and this hit me pretty hard. I’m definitely way less socially awkward and anxious than I was 10 years ago, but I definitely felt like An Old. It’s a generally younger audience and, while I had lovely conversations and met a bunch of new people, I did not feel like I made friends with people I didn’t know already. But, honestly, that is okay - I still felt like I was at a place where I could be myself, and that was great.
The one thing that immediately struck me was how different the vibes are from most other video game events. While these will often center around corporate presence (game companies, indie developers, merch vendors), there was essentially none of that at GDQ. (there was ONE merch booth for one of their sponsors, and a booth for the Prevent Cancer Foundation, the charity we were raising money for.) It was an event organized, staffed, and ran by a community, for that community, which was incredibly refreshing. With that, comes the fact that there’s a significant presence of marginalized folks as a whole (in particular: so many trans people!), and, while I have witnessed a couple of missteps from individual people (I’m looking at you, commentator who kept de-gendering a trans woman), everyone is truly welcome and embraced in a way I have not seen before in other gaming-related spaces.
And that got me thinking a lot about “gamer culture”, and how far GDQ felt from the stuff you see online day-to-day. And about how useless “gaming” as a hobby descriptor has become. There is so little in common between random-person-who-plays-GTA-Online and a GDQ attendee; why do we keep trying to think of both things as the same hobby, with a common culture? There’s no value judgment here, to be clear - neither of those is better or worse per se, but they are VERY different. While I hate comparing games to other media, we don’t think of romance fans and sci-fi sickos as having a similar “book culture”. MCU superfans and horror movie people are not both “moviers”. Gamer culture doesn’t mean anything. No such thing.
Overall, it was a wonderful (if tiring) time that thoroughly wrecked my sleep schedule. It felt very much like dipping a toe into a pool I do want to dive into. I will be back, GDQ.
