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.
…and…
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.
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.