Do you have a gaming group of friends?

[TheCrapMaster]

I used to play alot of games with my IRL friends, we played all maner of crazy games, from RTS, rpg, Fps, adventure, we played everything. Then THE HORROR!!!

Me the idiot i was found a game called league of legends, we played that game pretty hardcore for 3-4months, then i grew tired of it as it was getting to serious and not much for fun. But my friends were hooked, our usual talk over skype to speak while we played turned into that i played something for myself while listening to them swear and curse. And then after a year and a half, they grew bored of it, and one friends was upp for trying ARMA 2, we both bought it, i dident like it one bit as i get to impatient and they wanted to play sniper teams and sit on hills for hours just to get one kill. So now they are playing that, and im still playing*starts singing* AAAALL BYYYY MY SEEEEHEHEHEEEEELF!!!.

 

[an annoyed writer]

Da, I have a few comrades to play a game with here and there. Some were old chums met through my early Halo 3 days, some are friends from real life, and others still are from various websites and whatnot.

 

[Yuno Gasai]

I do indeed.

I used to have a gaming group of friends from outside the Escapist, but we have conflicting schedules so I don't really get to play with them anymore.

Nowadays, I play with a handful of my Escapist buddies. <3

I kinda miss being part of a big guild/group-like environment, but I'm sure I'll get over it.

 

[jklinders]

I've got a very small group of friends that I game online with sometimes. Met them playing ME 3 multiplayer. Actually I met a lot of nice folks there (and one real obnoxious asshole who demanded that we shut our mics off) but only really hooked up with a couple.

Trying desperately to find another game we all like to get on before the ME 3 servers get shut down, I give it less than a year before that happens since Bioware has stopped adding content or really supporting it.

 

[MiriaJiyuu]

Yeah, we have a private Teamspeak server that about 10 people use every day with another 20 or so who drop in time to time. We're all PC gamers though so we play a lot of different games together, competitive or cooperative, the main one we all play is League of Legends though and is how most of us met. A good portion of us all live in southern Ontario though so we often meet up to go out for stuff together.

 

[wooty]

I prefer to do neither right now, the weathers nice and I want to go places.

My mate keeps pestering me to take my pc round to his with a few other people and play Borderlands 2 on a co-op. But I don't want to anymore!!

BL2 is growing very stale indeed and no room for advancement. The devs can kiss the fattest part of my arse if they think I'm paying money for a level cap increase. Plus, hauling my pc from house to house on a weekly basis is not my idea of a good relaxing time.

I just want to go out, have some drinks and play pool. Not drag my computer across town to sit in his mums dining room all day not speaking to each other. Give me a break

 

[Olas]

Nope, did once, one moved to Philadelphia, another started hanging out with different people, then we all graduated highschool and moved away.

 

[JemothSkarii]

Yes and no really...

When my girlfriend isn't busy with college and has a decent net connection, we'll generally play Civ 5 or Left 4 Dead 2 together. But that hasn't been able to happen lately.

My best friend moved overseas and lives with his wife and her parents (she's in school, he's waiting on that Green Card...fun). Their computer's not the best but he'll generally ask me to play AOEII or World of Tanks from time to time.

Apart from that I just play games on my PS3 in between bouts of frustration with any game on my PC, but I am going out to a mate's place for 4 days for D&D and LAN so it'll be just three of us. Still, don't really spend enough time with anyone.

 

[Ambitiousmould]

I much prefer multiplayer gaming, co-operative or versus or whatever, but I do like my RPGs too, but the two don't often cross. I have a smallish circle of friends who are all gamers, only about 4 of them I live near/know IRL, but the rest I only know over XBL, and are from all over the shop, but I talk to these pretty much daily and know them almost as well as any other.

Edit: I also seem to be really good (especially with this one friend) at making a few friends for a day while playing multiplayer. For example, we were once playing some Red Dead Redemption online and we ended up in a gang war with some guys, who were really sporting and that was fun, after that though, never saw them again.

 

[LAGG]

At weekends my friends bring their computers to my house so we can set up LAN and play Magicka and CSGO, or other multiplayer titles together.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

Yes. I have a couple of groups. One is a load of girls who I play Guild Wars 2 and the Sims with the other is my best friend and his friends.

I'm trying to make some rl gaming friends but its hard atm cos im so ill.

 

[Artemis923]

Seeing as how I program games, and everyone in my class does as well, we are all programming buddies and we all love games.

 

[Colour Scientist]

The only game I play with people is Halo 4.
I usually play with my boyfriend and other friends but Ifew days ago I actually had a game with Err the King.
I actually only started playing XBL in the last few months so I have all of 6 friends.

 

[Beffudled Sheep_v1legacy]

I have a couple of RL friends that I play with from time to time. One lives far away and the other works and goes to college like me so we rarely get to play together. And as for online I don't have any. My ps3 crapped out a few weeks back and I'm not paying for Live so I'm just soloing everything these days. And even when I had my ps3 I only played GTA IV online with my PSN friends, hell I met most of them on there, buuuuuut they all moved on to different games I had no interest in and GTA IV multiplayer turned into a crap fest so I kinda quit.

Oh well, back to my antisocial corner.

 

[Maximum Bert]

Well I go around to some friends house and they come round to mine occasionally and we play some games then, usually once every few months.

We occasionally used to play online together but we all have very different work schedules and gaming tastes so it is very rare even three of us are online at the same time and even rarer that we have the same game to play. Usually if a few of us are free we just go out for a few beers or something instead.

Once or twice a year we usually have a get together and play some games and drink beer and thats usually a fun time having a fighting game tournament with them in a few weeks time actually which should be good.

 

[Fappy]

My friends and I all play a lot of single player RPGs, but occasionally we'll all hop on the same multiplayer game. I have a PC group and a 360 group. Haven't play much 360 lately though.

 

[moggett88]

My IRL friends do play video games, but are all closet gamers - they make jokes about people who play games being graceless basement virgins, then go home and play games anyway.

This is pretty much the vibe with most of my friends in the music scene I used to hang with. They all play games...most probably play more than I do and spend more money on gaming hardware and such...but as soon as anyone tries to talk about it, it's snarky-hipster-o-clock and video games are uncool things for losers who aren't cool enough to do things like brew their own beer and suddenly get into things like boxing (for some reason, that's happened to like 3-4 of my friends in the past few years).

I think part of it is that they think they are hitting their twenties, and need to "grow up", and grown ups do things like watch boxing (yet have no idea whats happening) and go to casinos (and end up only playing slot machines). It doesnt matter that their grown up disguise is paper thin, just that they wear it.

 

[MindFragged]

Got 4 old housemates and one current housemate to game with, we all just pile into TF2, L4D2 or AoE2 HD atm. Didn't have any friends who gamed until I went to uni. I'm lucky in that I can usually find at least one of them online on any given night Games are one of the main ways I stay in touch with people nowadays.

 

[Caostotale]

I think part of it is that they think they are hitting their twenties, and need to "grow up", and grown ups do things like watch boxing (yet have no idea whats happening) and go to casinos (and end up only playing slot machines). It doesnt matter that their grown up disguise is paper thin, just that they wear it.

With the people I was talking about, I think it's just lame old masculine anxiety rearing its ugly head and manifesting itself as garden-variety bully crap. The whole 'growing up' act is more often a signal that they're still trapped in the subconscious high school behavior-pattern that drives along a 'if I prove myself cooler than so-and-so, more people will want to hang with me.' It's like that difference between fair-weather 'geeks' and true dyed-in-the-wool nerds, where the former is perpetually more preoccupied with social posturing while the latter unashamedly dives deep into his or her interests without worrying about such things.

 

[EHKOS]

Nope, I hate social interaction, had a nice reply on /b/ and just closed my browser because I had a panic attack.