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