How do I explain gaming to my non-gamer friends and family?

Lovely ladies Z and Cinder are doing a blog challenge anyone can join! This weeks topic is “How do you explain gaming/raiding to your non-gamer friends and family?” You can find other people’s thoughts on their website.

I’ve been gaming for a few years now and it’s my main hobby.

My older brother is a gamer too (he was the one who introduced me to WoW) so that helps when I’m explaining gaming to our parents. Mum thinks I should spend more time with “real people” (because apparently unless you see someone, they’re not real) and I should have more “adult” hobbies. I’ve never really understood what that means.. Dad doesn’t care as long as it makes me happy and he’s willing to listen when I want to tell him about something cool I did in game. And we watched the Warcraft movie together after it came out on DVD. When Khadgar used polymorph on the prison guard, he started laughing so much I had to stop the movie for a few minutes. That was fun 🙂

Me and my brother talk about WoW at family meetings so I think all of our family members know that we want to kill Gul’dan, legendaries and ilvl are important and mages and paladins are awesome (I’m a mage, he’s a paladin). It’s always completely out of context so it can’t make much sense to them.  We play WoW very differently, he’s all about progression, mythic+ dungeons and raids and I do PvP and achievements, so we don’t play together. But it’s great to have something in common.

I don’t have many friends outside of WoW and other parts of the internet. I’m very introverted so meeting people IRL is hard but WoW gives me the option to communicate with people as much (or as little) as I want, whenever I feel like it. It’s perfect.

My flatmate is a huge gamer too, althought she plays other games, mostly Assassin’s Creed games. It’s nice to have someone close who understands when I’m stuck at something hard or when I cry over character’s death. A lot of hugs were needed in the beginning of Legion..

Gaming gave me a perpective on other people’s hobbies. In my country, gaming is still seen as unhealthy and a waste of time and money so a lot of people don’t understand why I play games. I may not understand why people do sports, craft or go to the pub, because these things don’t interest me. But I can respect it and if it makes them happy, I’m happy for them.