To the chagrin and shock of my ninth-grade self, who had a not-like-other-girls streak that ran so deep I’m still digging it out, I would not classify myself as a gamer. I grew up playing video games, even sidequesting into niches like interactive fiction and Nuzlockes, and I have my share of opinions on them. Even these days, though my most consistent hobby is shamefully a mobile gacha rhythm game, I don’t often take the time to sit down and pour my hours
As a result of this, my mental backlog of games is continually piling up. I’ve had Tunic on my Switch wishlist since 2022 thanks to Phil’s consistently on-point end of year reviews. I watch Let’s Play-ers start a game and then force myself to stop watching, lying to myself that I’ll actually play this one myself first (Return of the Obra Dinn is the latest victim of this crime).
Sometimes, though, the time opens up. This year, when I was asked about my spring break plans, I told people that I was going to park myself on my couch and finally (finally!) play Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. To my surprise, I got a few reactions: a colleague who looked me dead in the eye and told me I had to update him with my thoughts, a student who gushed about the game, and another student who told me his mother had found all the Korok seeds (if you know, you know).
This was a refreshing change of pace from what I am used to. You see, the thing with being consistently behind the 8 ball with media is that sometimes, it doesn’t matter, and sometimes, it really does. Unlike books, where I can read a book two to five years after everyone else and have a central place to find other people’s takes on it (shout out to StoryGraph), video games are often a “you had to be there” moment. Some popular games, such as Breath of the Wild and other giants like Hades and Disco Elysium, have enough staying power that even if you are a few years late, people on Tumblr and Reddit are still talking about the game: making speedruns, discussing theory and gameplay decisions, ranting over poor design choices, and dissecting the music.
Not everyone is so lucky. I played Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, a JRPG which was a long-awaited follow-up to two beloved GBA games. It thoroughly sucked me into its world, and I thankfully was not too late to scour eBay and secure copies of those two games, which were even better than my introduction to the series. However, Dark Dawn was not a revitalization of the Golden Sun franchise—it was its dying breath. After playing these games and going crazy about the characters, loving it enough to grind my party to level 100 in the dungeon, all I had to keep me company in my excitement was a GameFAQ written ten years ago and a subreddit with posts from months ago on the “Hot” tab. It was my first taste of a bitterness that I would become quite familiar with: discovering a love too late with no one to share it with.
A part of the fun of video games, of anything really, is the community to share it with. As I write this, Deltarune fans are raving about the latest chapter in Toby Fox’s cult classic releasing serially, Kingdom Hearts fans are pouring over the latest trailer for KH4, and a Korean webnovel Got Dropped in a Ghost Story Still Gotta Work fans (including one who lives in my household and has been talking my ear off about it, despite me knowing nothing) are chomping at the bit for the next installment dropping on July 7th. If you get in on the ground floor of a media, you often have to wait, yes, but those waits are punctuated with fan theories, with discussions about characters, with fix-it fics that explore plot holes.
I played the anime strategy game Valkyria Chronicles when I was in middle school on the PlayStation 3, and I bought it and its sequel on a whim when I saw it on sale in the Switch store a year or so ago. I finally booted it up last month, experiencing the great emptiness that is summer vacation, and lost myself in the story and gameplay. My sister sat on the couch, and we experienced the game together, me making quips during dialogue when the foreshadowing was particularly heavy handed or when the writing was a little too cheesy. After beating the game (for the first time), I wanted more. I wanted to know if other people thought the writing of the female characters was basically cardboard cutouts of women, what other strategies people used to defeat the maps, if the fantasy racism was actually thoughtfully approached or just bandaid fixed with friendship. I had my sister, but there wasn’t a thriving Discord server or a subreddit or even a forum where I could have these conversations. I was just left to rant at my sister and change my Discord status to “Can this game from 2008 have a well-written female character? Hello? Can anyone hear me?”
The unprecedented access we have to past media makes it feel like we can have our cake and eat it too, that we can watch and listen and play pieces from the past—and it is vital that we are able to access all of that past. But what is often passed over is that if you miss your window with certain games or films, you can’t easily engage in a deep fulfilling way. Sure, you can make a video essay or write a blog post or post on a subreddit or craft a fanfic. But for me, I feel like an archaeologist combing over ruins and praying for the dusty artifacts and aging bones to talk back to me.
It’s not that dramatic, and it doesn’t matter that much. I moved onto Valkyria Chronicles 4 and started the cycle all over again. But it still feels lonely, and I’m left with so many thoughts on these games that slowly sink down into the ether until I lose them entirely. I guess it’s simply the price we pay for having it all.
Alex Johnson (‘19) is a high school English teacher in Massachusetts. She spends her days being an uncool adult who enjoys reading romance novels and explaining niche rhythm game strategies.
