Lately, anyone who talks to me about video games hears key phrases in my vocabulary: “Oh, I saw my friends playing it at gamer night,” “I need to install it in time for gamer night!”, “I finally finished it last night at gamer night.” Since 2020, my Thursday nights have become gamer nights, and it has changed everything for me.
This isn't just me bragging about having friends; I'm so grateful for them. If you had the same lonely childhood as me, you can probably understand how surprised I am that I had any consistent friendships, let alone kept a long-held commitment to meet (virtually) with the same group of people every week. None of my friends want that. Or maybe you're thinking this. We're all too busy for that.
I used to think that too. That wasn’t that long ago, either. Before gamer nights became a weekly commitment in my life (we’re four people, so anyone can miss, but gamer nights are just as fun with three or two people), the very idea of a gamer night seemed unnecessary, even impossible to schedule. Before gamer nights, I gamed more freely. Every once in a while, there would be a cool multiplayer game I wanted to try, and sometimes I’d convince a few friends to play with me. That always involved frustrating scheduling arrangements, and it didn’t happen as often as anyone would like. It was a perfectly fine way of life. But I didn’t realize just how much it meant. Better Maybe.
Gamer Night was born in my own life as a result of organizing a group of multiplayer gamers. It started in the fall of 2019 with two friends and me getting really into it. Destiny 2There are plenty of 3-player cooperative activities in the game, so we decided to try out the Raid, which is one of the more intense cooperative multiplayer activities. Destiny 2 It took six people and a lot of scheduling. Eventually it became too much for all of us to maintain, but along the way, the four of us who most valued the idea of meeting up regularly over a Discord voice call and playing games together decided on a weekly night. We called it “Gamer Night” because it sounded fun, and it stuck.
It didn't take long for gamer night to evolve into an even more idealistic format. It's no longer a weekly event for multiplayer gaming. At least, not necessarily. It's still a night to play games with friends, but you don't necessarily all play the same game. You might play four completely different games. Two people might play the same game. Overwatch 2 Play the game together while someone else watches the game and a fourth person plays Elden RingThree players watch a fourth player play Dark SoulsWe give advice when needed or just chat about our lives. None of us play games at all. We watch gaming streams on Twitch and rant about it. All of these activities make up Gamer Night.
Perhaps the most important thing about this event is that Gamer Night, at least for me, is only two hours long. I show up at 7:30pm and leave at 9:30pm (sadly, I've found that playing video games late into the night keeps me from falling asleep, so I finish early for sleep hygiene). Sometimes our friends show up early or late, and as I mentioned before, sometimes one of us can't make it. But it almost always does, because the results pay off. While the original intent was to have time to play games together (especially multiplayer games) without the hassle of schedules, it ended up bonding the four of us even more than we did at the start, which is great, considering we all already liked each other pretty well.
So I leave you with this instruction: Schedule a gamer night every week. It's two hours long. It starts when you finish dinner and ends before you get ready for bed. Making time to play video games is fun, but… Really Even better, make time to spend it with friends – you won't regret it.
