Gaming Culture
Gaming for Shaurya's generation is not a hobby. It is social infrastructure. The games are temporary; the group chats, the inside jokes, and the friendships they create are permanent.
Games Create Group Chats
Every game gets its own group chat. This is not optional -- it is protocol. Fortnite during lockdown had its crew. Among Us had its revival chat that burned bright for two months. Marvel Rivals had the GANG from December 2024 to February 2025. Roblox Da Hood spawned Da Hood 2.0, one of the largest chats in the collection. Each game creates a social container, and that container often outlasts the game that created it.
The lifecycle is always the same. Someone discovers a game, a group chat is created, messages explode for weeks or months, the hype fades, the chat goes quiet. But the friendships forged during those weeks do not fade. The Among Us GC is quiet now, but the bonds built during those chaotic sessions of accusations and betrayals are still active. The Marvel Rivals GANG chat is dead, but the people who played together every night still talk in other chats.
Gaming Sessions as Bonding Time
A gaming session is a hangout that nobody has to leave their house for. The value is not in the game -- it is in the voice call. The trash talk, the callouts, the "BRO HOW DID YOU DIE THERE," the post-game analysis that takes longer than the game itself. These sessions are how friendships are maintained across distance, especially for a friend group spread between Dubai and Oman and beyond.
Some of Shaurya's strongest friendships were deepened through shared gaming. Vivaan M and the lockdown Fortnite era. Param Diwan and the squad sessions. The Dubai crew and whatever game is currently in rotation. The game is the excuse to get on a call together. Everything else that happens on that call -- the real conversations, the jokes, the checking in on each other -- that is the point.
The Competitive Element
The competitive energy in gaming spills over into everything else. The same people who are arguing about Haaland in the Da Hood 2.0 chat are arguing about who threw the round in Valorant. Every loss demands an explanation. Every win demands a clip. The scoreboard is scrutinised like a report card. This competitive spirit is not toxic -- it is bonding through shared intensity. You can only roast someone's gameplay this hard if you actually care about them.
From Player to Builder
The most consequential thing about gaming in Shaurya's life is that it led directly to coding. "How are games made?" -- that question, asked during a lockdown Fortnite session at age 9, started everything. The curiosity about what was behind the screen became a curiosity about building things generally, which became LockIn, Simplifly, Raly, and every project since.
Gaming culture does not just shape Shaurya's social life. It shaped his professional trajectory. The kid who wanted to know how games worked became the teenager who builds apps. The medium changed; the curiosity did not.
The Identity Layer
Being a gamer is part of the social identity, but it is a specific kind of gamer. Shaurya is not the grind-ranked-until-4am type (he is grinding code until 4am instead). He is the play-with-friends type. If the squad is on, he is on. If they are not, he is building. Gaming is a social activity first and an individual activity never. That distinction matters -- it means gaming enhances the social life rather than replacing it.
See also: Gaming | Valorant | Fortnite | Marvel Rivals | Group Chat Culture