I love games, but even when I was playing a lot of multiplayer, it was never really a strong competitive thing for me. We hit our stride right after school because we were all spread out across the country, but nobody had too serious of a job or relationship to devote much time to. We would all lobby up, and just use the voice chat to bust chops and generally chat while the game was happening in the background.
Now, most of the people I played with don’t really have games in their life anymore, so they’re all at least 1 console generation behind. I’m married with 2 tiny children. I still play a bit, but it’s not organized, scheduled time… It’s basically whenever I can squeeze in an hour or so (usually either after everybody goes to sleep, or before anybody else wakes up). For this reason, I usually play single-player games, or if I’m playing multiplayer, it’s online with randos.
Now that you mention it I would REALLY like to get some of my friends playing Deep Rock. I’ve had nothing but good times playing with randos, but MAN it would be good to mess around with good friends.
Parenting, since our first child was born in September of 2020. Still giving it a go. We just had a 2nd child this July, so I guess you could say things are getting pretty serious.