Just pick a time to play video games with your friends

These days, anyone who talks to me about video games hears a key phrase in my lexicon. "Oh, I saw my friend play it at Gamer Night." "I have to install it in time for Gamer Night!" "I finally finished it during Gamer Night last night." Since 2020, my Thursday night has been Gamer Night, and it has changed everything for me.

This isn't just me bragging about having friends, even though I'm very grateful to have them. If you were a lonely kid growing up, like I was, you can probably relate to how amazed I feel to have consistent friendships, let alone a year-long constant commitment to seeing (practically) the same group of people every week . You might be thinking, I don't have any friends who would want to do that. Or you might be thinking, we're all too busy for that.

I thought about all these things too, and not too long ago. Before it was written into my life as a constant weekly commitment (albeit one that any of us could miss, since there are four of us, and Gamer Night is just as fun with three or two), the whole idea of Gamer Night seemed unnecessary and perhaps even with impossible, schedule-wise. Before Gamer Night, I was more of a freewheeler to play games. Every now and then there would be a cool multiplayer game that I wanted to try, and sometimes I would manage to convince some friends to play it with me. It was always going to involve some annoying scheduling quirks, and it was almost never going to happen as often as either of us wanted it to. It was a perfect way to live. But I had no idea how much better it could get.