Usually, at this time of the month, you will see Paula’s Ramblings appear here. However, due to personal circumstances, Paula is taking a little break from writing, although she is still active behind the scenes. Our writers have kindly stepped in and are taking turns writing Gaming Tales.
Gaming Tales with Mina
“Who would have imagined you would be doing that for a living,” my dad said, chuckling around a bite of his burger. “You played so many video games as a kid.”
I shuffled my pesto pasta around my plate, watching as our waitress dodged chairs and patrons in the little restaurant we were eating in, heavy plates of food balanced like they weighed nothing on her shoulders. “And you said playing video games would never get me anywhere,” I joked, putting another bite of shrimp into my mouth.
“I can’t even imagine how excited you would have been to meet adult you as a kid, doing this for a living. You’d be so thrilled.” My mom nodded along to my dad’s words as she ate, her eyes wandering around the packed little mom-and-pop spot we’d chosen for dinner. She’d been supportive of my desire to be a writer from the beginning; there was a short story I had written about a tuna fish sandwich when I was in fifth grade that she still keeps a print out of. Even when I decided to go to college for art instead of writing, both my parents were supportive (even if my mom would tell me about once a month that I could change my focus to writing whenever I was ready).
It was a little crazy to think about how lucky I’ve been up to this point. I have been a full-time professional writer since 2019, writing for a massive gaming news company. Not only that, I also have been writing for LadiesGamers for several years. Had someone told me that would be my future growing up, I would have been ecstatic. As I close in on about a month until my 40th birthday, I have been thinking about how much games of all kinds have changed my life for the better.
A Life of Gaming
I have built friendships around my love of gaming that are decades old; my oldest friends, who I have known since elementary school, are still people I hang out with and play games with to this day. My family is big into board games, and I can always trust that Labyrinth or The Mind will end up being played at any family gathering. I met my husband playing Magic: The Gathering, and we got married at a Magic tournament nine years ago.
One of my favorite things is to play Archipelago randomizers with friends; this is where all the items from everyone’s games are mixed together, then are redistributed into everyone’s games. I usually play Final Fantasy 1, a game I have poured more than 4,000 hours into over the course of my lifetime since it was released in 1987. So if I open a chest in my FF1 game, there is a chance I will find a Moon Pearl from someone else’s Link to the Past, a feather from someone playing A Short Hike, or some banned list unlock from my husband who is almost always playing Yu-Gi-Oh. It’s something we’ve done collectively together for years, and it is only occasionally replaced by a run of Lethal Company, R.E.P.O, or Content Warning.
A Gathering of Nerds
Last night, a whole bunch of us gathered to put our minds together to try to figure out Lingo, a video game that gives you a whole selection of words in boxes, and you have to figure out how the words relate to one another. They give you almost no hints for what all the different categories are, and you are left to ponder over them alone. For more then three hours, three of my oldest friends, my husband, and another friend that we all adopted into our group a couple of years ago, shouted words at the screen, laughed, and snacked on pizza.
It was welcoming, warm, and some of the most fun I’ve had in a long time. I have spent the last few months working hard, trying to get more involved in my community, and getting ready to move apartments, but it was nice to just spend an evening vibing with some of the most important people in my life.
I feel without gaming, my life would look completely different, and I am so glad that I have all these wonderful memories, wonderful games, and wonderful people to fill up all the space inside my heart.
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