The funny thing, in retrospect, is that I was convinced I’d stop once the lockdowns ended for good. It was only a temporary hobby! Of course I’d leave it behind when life went back to normal! Oh, how little we know ourselves.
In fairness, it was a love story with a bleak beginning. On December 24, 2020, I walked down to the nearest CeX to collect my secondhand Switch Lite. The shop couldn’t be fully open so no browsing was allowed; instead, I queued outside, then was handed the cheap little video game console I’d previously bought online. Merry Christmas to me, eh?
I went home and immediately started playing a revamped version of a Rayman game I used to have as a teenager. It was the first game I bought because, quite frankly, I’d not touched a console in about 15 years, and had no idea what contemporary gaming was like. I thought I ought to test the waters first, ease myself back in.
I needn’t have worried. Within seconds, the bright, colourful screen started feeling like home again. Over the following 18 months, I ended up playing for hundreds and hundreds of hours. It is no exaggeration to say that gaming saved whatever remained of my mental health during the pandemic.
Still, it had never really occurred to me that I would keep playing afterwards. Didn’t I love my friends, my job and my life? The world opened up again in 2021, and the answer to that question seamlessly presented itself. I did love all these things, but gaming had, by then, become an essential part of my day.
I played silly games and serious ones; violent games and games clearly built with children in mind. I was really good at some of them and appalling at others. On more than one occasion I threw my Switch on the thankfully carpeted ground. I always picked it back up, eventually.
Despite all this, it took me until recently to really appreciate the extent to which it had become one of the load-bearing parts of my life. A few weeks ago, the election was called and my work diary went mad. I became busier than I had been in years, virtually overnight.
At the same time, some unpleasant events were unfolding back in France, and the first anniversary of the death of one of my closest friends was coming up. In short: I wasn’t doing so good. There was a point, about a fortnight ago, when I thought my brain would explode. I had an endless number of things to do and I just didn’t have the time and energy to do them all.
I didn’t know what to do, and it made me flail. After several days of constantly feeling on the verge of a panic attack, I picked up my Switch again, for the first time in a couple of months, and started playing.
I only looked up again about an hour later. In that time, I’d thought of nothing else. I was just a little guy trying to escape from a creepy dungeon, killing every enemy I could find, sometimes getting killed by one of them, then starting all over again.
It was like taking a deep breath of fresh air after being underwater for slightly too long. Since then, I have forced myself to make time for playing every single day, even if only for half an hour. I am no longer anywhere near as stressed I was a few weeks ago.
This is why I want to scream whenever I see people saying that video games are bad for children and teenagers, and they’d be better off reading books. I love reading books with all my heart, but gaming is what has saved my life and my sanity on more than one occasion.
You’ll pry my Switch out of my cold, dead hands.
