We’re both in our 30s.
There is a competitive online game I play and have played on and off for a few years. For a long time, nobody else I knew played this game so I would just play by myself or with people I met in lobbies. I would occasionally talk about the game with my friends, but not super frequently as I knew nobody else was interested.
A couple weeks ago my friend Marco mentioned he’d be playing this same game with his friends Garret and Anthony. When I asked like how long he’d been playing and about his play style, he said he’d been playing for a couple weeks just casually with his other friends. I was stoked to play together sometime and said as much. We planned a day and played together last week.
The other day I’m online and I see Marco is online, and I mention that I had installed the game on PC so we could play ranked together (I had been on console, and when we tried we were unable to do cross-platform). He says we’ll have to play anther time because he has gaming planned with a Garret and Anthony. I thought maybe they had planned to play a different game and he was about to log off, but then I see he’s still there all night just playing unranked matches.
This hurt my feelings! Why wouldn’t he invite me to play with the group? I’m not friends with Marco and Anthony, but we’ve met before a few times and got along fine. I was really disappointed because I was looking forward to having another friend who plays this game.
I don’t know whether or not to bring it up. If he doesn’t want me as part of this gaming group, I don’t want to push the issue, but Marco and I have been friends for over ten years. He has always had a thing about not introducing his friends to his other friends due to anxiety, and usually I don’t really care but this is such an easy situation to just ask sometime to join the group. It’s not like there are major skill differences, when we played together things were going fine. And as far as I know there is no beef or tension between me and his other friends.
We’ve been friends for years, were roommates before for short periods of time, have gone on trips together. It just feels really bad, but bringing it up would feel like pathetic almost. Isn’t it normal to invite friends to join in when you know people have mutual interests? Especially something that takes no real effort like online gaming?
I’ve seen him playing a few other times since then too. I feel weird asking him to play because it seems like he doesn’t really want to, and that maybe it’s something I accidentally pressured him into. He didn’t bring up the game on his own, I had asked him about his plans and he brought it up. But it feels bad to think that he wouldn’t want to, as well.
Edit: for clarity, I am NOT good at this game. I play for a few months each year and then put it down. When we played together, he was slightly better than me.
Do you bring your ranked energy to casuals? I’ve been on the other side of this for League. Playing with someone who is going to get sweaty and intense in a game I am not great at is not fun.
No, that’s not what is happening. Unfortunately all the answers seem to be referencing the ranked thing. But I am not good at this game, and am barely competitive just as a person in general. The ranked games in this particular game are actually different from the casual ones, and I prefer how the game is structured in ranked, but it’s not a big deal for me to play either one.
If anything, I feel like I might be too low skill for him to want to play with.
If you are lower skill, why are you suggesting ranked? Maybe he feels pressure to perform and carry you?
It’s not that much of a skill difference, we were pretty similar. And I was suggesting ranked because in this game, the ranked games have a different format which I prefer.
Could be a situation where he gets your preference and assumes you wouldn’t want to play a different format. For example. If I have a friend who only plays competitive rules smash bros, then I might not think to see if they want to play casually with items.
To take it one step farther, if I have friends who I know do not like to play a game competitively, I might not invite a friend who does due to the former who made the plans with me not wanting that pressure.
In this last case it isnt a specific value judgement of my competitive friend, just me not thinking my friends with different styles would gel in this instance.
It could also be that he doesn’t feel comfortable adding others to that particular set of plans. Say for instance his buddy is going through something and they are playing the game as something to do while chatting about it.
One way to approach it without sounding needy would be to extend a offer. Simply stating that if people ever want to play at a future time you would be interested. From there you could have a possible avenue to express your desire to participate without coming across as hurt.
This is a long response, but I hope that regardless of how this plays out that you don’t take it too personally if he chooses not to include you in the future. From what it sounds like you two are close and maybe he just likes to keep his social groups separate.
I think you’re right, and he just keeps things more separate than most of my other friends would. Thanks for your thoughtful response.
Your energy level seems to be super high compared to his.
I don’t have much to base what I’m saying, but your mention of his avoiding anxiety vs your very large and intense description of what’s going on is not a match. I’m going to guess you do most of the talking when hanging with him. That’s ok as long as he is comfortable. Because if he’s not, you need to go out of your way to let him go out of his way to tell you so.
I wouldn’t say that’s true. He’s very eloquent and speaks at length on a lot of topics, and brings up lots of talking points, questions etc. He would be able to write a similarly wordy description of a social situation if prompted to do so, he often leaves long introspective messages in group chats.
That’s totally ok if he’s engaged in chat with someone similar. But not ok if he’s engaged with someone who has anxiety expressing their thoughts even with people they trust.
Not everyone feels welcome speaking or hearing at length. Extroverts are in general energized by these interactions, while introverts can feel drained. And I think this is at the heart of the issue.
No it’s really not, but thank you for your opinion anyway! We are both quite similar as far as introversion/extroversion go
I’m sorry to do this, but like almost always, have you tried simply telling him exactly what you told us here? Seems like the simplest solution that’ll likely result in your issue being resolved. He’ll answer you in some way and then you’ll just take it from there.
I just don’t want to seem needy, especially if it ends up being that he doesn’t really want to invite me to the group hang out and just does it out of obligation … probably not a good reason to avoid talking but that is what is going through my mind.
You could tell him “I don’t want to be needy, I especially do not want you to invite me only out of obligation”
Sorry again xD but yes most of the time simply telling the other what you’re worried of or what your intentions are is the best course of action.
That is a good idea!
Maybe it’s ranked?
I like hell drivers, but I barley want to play it because of how toxic experienced players can be. And that’s not even ranked.
Maybe, but we had been playing casual games and I was totally fine to play that too. My feeling is he could have said “not playing ranked right now but want to join us for casual?” But that could have been a source of confusion.
I’m going to throw this idea into the mix. It’s how I’d handle the situation and it’s generally worked pretty well for me. Ideally you’d send a message like this when your friend is online and playing but it really doesn’t matter when you send it.
“Hey mate, just noticed you and x and y are online. Mind if I jump in for a bit? Be great to have a game or two”
Nice and relaxed, no pressure, no coming off as needy. There’s the possibility he’ll say it’s not the right time or they’re working on something together - that’s fine too, at least you know why. If you join in just play a game or two unless you really feel your gelling with them. Whether you stick around or drop out follow it up with.
“Good game guys, thanks for letting me drop in.”
The next time they’re online it’ll be easier for them to include you or you to ask to be in again.
This hurt my feelings! Why wouldn’t he invite me to play with the group? I’m not friends with Marco and Anthony
…and…
He has always had a thing about not introducing his friends to his other friends due to anxiety,
I’m not certain, but I think you answered you own question. He wanted to play with his other friends casually. Whether they have inside jokes, rough humor, shared political views, perhaps very deep emotional conversations they don’t share with folks they don’t know, there could be many reasons. He’s made it clear he doesn’t like mixing friend groups. Why do you want to cross his stated comfort boundary?
You mentioned you play this game ranked, so he also knows you’re a serious player, while he’s just started playing 2 weeks ago and is very casual. Perhaps he’s concerned you’re too far above him and doesn’t want to be carried or make mistakes in the game in front of you.
Instead of trying to insert yourself into his other friend group, you could try to establish a rapport with him in game first. Find a way to play the game where you two are on on equal footing, perhaps a character or class you’ve never played that you find difficult or something. Make it know to him that you’re interested in this de-powered experience and that you’re not trying to accomplish anything with the game play but have casual fun. You can draw the distinction out too “yeah I play ranked, but that comes with its own headaches. Sometimes I just want to play casual and playing character X that I’ve never played will probably get that for me. You interested?”
Marco has also stated that he’d like to get better at introducing friends to each other. I don’t want to push his boundaries, but isn’t it weird to specifically leave someone out of an activity? Especially when we have been friends for so long?
This isn’t really a matter of me being too serious I think, he is actually better than me at the game despite being new. He’s a much more serious gamer than me overall.
but isn’t it weird to specifically leave someone out of an activity? Especially when we have been friends for so long?
Not particularly no. None of us are not entitled to every aspect of the lives of our friends. We’re allowed to have what they give us in a relationship. That also means we’re allowed to have parts of our own lives we don’t want to share with others.
I’m not saying I’m entitled to anything, just that it’s unusual. I feel like usually my friends would invite me to join in on shared interests, like my friend and I always invite each other to our climbing groups, even if we don’t know anyone else in the group.
I had a friend that I never liked playing games with. He was extremely competitive and always had to win at everything. When I’m playing a game I’m very good at with someone less experienced, I take it easy and don’t try too hard so that everyone is having a fun time. This guy was just incapable of thinking about games like this. For him he would always do his very best to win no matter what, even if he had just won against his friend (me) like 20 times in a row. For example, our friend group really casually plays DOTA, we don’t know any competitive builds, we don’t keep up with the meta, we just do comp stomps occasionally for fun. This guy will sometimes jump in when he sees us playing on steam and we all sort of groan because we know he’s 1) going to destroy us all 20/0 with a high skill competitive build and 2) he’s going to spend the whole time telling us that we should be using our characters differently or it would be better to buy this item to get this combo. But we don’t want to play competitively. We have fun just dinking around trying silly builds.
Maybe it’s something like that? This is why I stopped playing games with him. If you’ve been playing this game ranked for years, your skill level may be so high above someone who plays unranked for a few weeks that it’s just not fun to play with you. Do you try really hard in every game? Do you tell them ways they could be playing better? Maybe you could try using a very uncompetitive build/character/car when you play with them, to lean into the messing around vibe instead of the serious competitive player vibe. Try to enjoy goofing around instead of being a high level competitive player.
Another possible explanation is that this is time for him to catch up with these friends. I play e every week with my friends, it’s a time to catch up as well as play games. When new people we don’t know join in it can be fun but it also disrupts our time when we’re asking about each other’s jobs and families and such. It’s kind of like planning to get a drink with your good friends, then someone only one of you knows joins in, and you can’t really talk about the good old days or how so and so’s kids are doing because this new person doesn’t know any of these details and you have to make small talk instead, which is kind of the opposite of catching up.
He’s actually better than me at the game! He games way more than I do. I’m in bronze. But I was playing support and we were having a good time.
