I’ve been drawing ever since I can remember. There are parts of the process I enjoy and find satisfaction in, and other parts that can just be a chore. The feeling tends to vary with time as well. Some days I enjoy drawing/painting, and other days it feels like I’m only doing it because it’s what’s expected of me.
A mid-30s from New Zealand here. Out of my friends and family living in the country that I still keep in touch with, I can only think of 2 households that don’t currently own their home.
One of them was pretty undecided for a long time about where he wants to live and what career to pursue, so didn’t really settle down anywhere. He’s in a serious relationship now though so that might change.
The other one is my brother-in-law and his partner. They’re planning on purchasing a house at some point but it’s not a priority for them - they’re actually renting out our first house from us so they don’t need to worry about getting kicked out without warning or dealing with unpleasant landlords or any of those usual things. When they leave, we plan on selling the house instead of renting it out again. We only kept it to make sure they had a safe space to be themselves.
Out of the homeowners, there’s a quite a mixture of people. Some have come from privilege and got handed money from their parents. Others grew up in a lower socio-economic group and earned all of the initial deposit themselves. One guy has a single dad that’s never owned his own home and has relied on disability income for most of his adult life. My friend had a lot of trouble finishing his university degree and finding work, it was years before he landed his current job at a small store. They’re living together in a house he owns himself now, I thought that was pretty sweet.
New Zealand has had a housing problem problem for a while now, so whenever I think of owning/renting in general it’s usually with negative feelings and frustration. Thanks for giving me this moment to reflect on a more personal level, I think my friends are doing great.
Sometimes the games that people will watch is not the same as the ones they will play themselves. The same goes for games that are played on-stream vs off-stream, its just a very different way of enjoying the game.
For example, I would hang out in a twitch stream with someone playing a JRPG or a MMO or a dating sim. But I don’t have any interest in playing those genres myself. The fact that I’m watching someone else play doesn’t cut into the studio’s profits at all, because I never would have bought the game in the first place.
For visual novels in particular, I only play these live on stream. I get the most out of them this way. I like to pause the game and talk about things that were brought up in the dialog, or react to something that happened. My favorite is trying to guess things like plot twists. I had a whole Charlie Day pinboard situation going on while I played the Zero Escape games, and I have a lot of fun just chatting with viewers on all sorts or stuff like this. It makes me stop and really appreciate the game a lot more. Completely different experience to when I play by myself - I didn’t even think I liked the genre until I tried playing a smaller one on stream, and now I’m a little bit hooked.
On the flip side of this, I enjoy management and automation games but I absolutely hate streaming them.
Basically the point I’m trying to make is that playing the game solo vs streaming the game vs watching someone else stream the game are all very different ways of experiencing the same game and story. If I find a particularly chatty streamer doing a visual novel I’ve already played, it can be really fun to compare their thoughts and suspicions and reactions to my own, so there’s totally value to both watching and streaming visual novels for me in particular. I’m sure other people are the same way.