Welcome back, folks! It’s been a busy time at Strange HQ (what I’m calling the basement I broadcast from). Holidays are upon us. Plans to be made. Gifts to buy. And through it all, I am still trying to balance time between doing my Dadly duty, and bringing you content on my Twitch channel. And napping.

So much napping.

I think I suffer from that seasonal affect disorder thing. Thankfully, I just get super sleepy and want to nap several times a day. Which I do, when the kid is at school and I don’t have anything else planned. So, when I’m not live streaming, or working on content, or hanging with the kid, it is a pretty safe bet I am asleep, cozy in bed.

Anyway. I just watched the latest web video from Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and he’s right. Snack food brands were at the height of their advertising game in the 90s when they made video games. They weren’t great games. I recall those days. I lived them. I probably played more of those games than I honestly should have. But here’s the thing. I would have rather played those than had the products interrupt my movie watching experience with an ad that has the volume so loud you can still hear it with the speakers smashed with a hammer. Yes, YouTube and Facebook Ads, I’m looking directly at you. What the hell is with the volume on these ads? Knock it off.

Mostly, these ads make me not want to watch videos on the platforms where I watch these videos. They’ve become obnoxious. And I am not going to pay ten bucks a month to each and every platform that decides to destroy my eardrums if I don’t want to pay a premium. I can simply stop watching videos on those platforms. And I will if it keeps up like it has.

So, what’s a company to do to market their product if they can’t assault my hearing on every platform that allows you to watch videos, because everyone has fled every platform that allows ads to assault your eardrums? Do that thing we loved back in the 90s. The technology has come a LONG way since those days, and it was successful back then.

The games don’t even need to be that good. You can connect with an indie developer and make a fantastic game though for relatively cheap, compared to running a twitter campaign, or making those way too loud video commercials we all loath. But you don’t need to make a great game. Even bad games get played.

The worst games in the most well-known franchises are still collectibles, and still played by gamers. They may hate themselves for it a little, but they still do it. Gamers have a hunger that cannot be satisfied, no matter how many games are made. If you have to buy a gift for a gamer this holiday season, buy them a game. It’s a guaranteed win. You might be thinking “But then I’m contributing to their problems” to which I say, what problems? How is playing a game that builds hand-eye coordination somehow looked down on when watching Football–which does nothing for the audience except raise their blood pressure, and gives the players concussions and other debilitating injuries for a few years of making too much money for a very limited skill set–isn’t?

Games offer a unique opportunity to interact with a community that you otherwise wouldn’t, and gives you the instant icebreaker to get your foot in the door. Multiplayer forces you to interact with others, and builds teamwork and leadership skills. When you watch sports, you may feel like you are part of the team artificially, but you are not expected to behave like you represent the team. In games, you carry your weight, or you are ejected by the other players. Sometimes it can be a little elitist, but most gamer communities will give you a shot to be a decent human amongst humans first.

The game you get your gamer for the holidays doesn’t have to be great. Bonus points if you do get them the one they wanted, but even then, there’s no guarantee that game itself will be great. Even the best game developers have made some stinkers. You still win, because you got them what they wanted. Some games are great, but never really get recognized, because very few players ever see them. But if you are unsure what game to get your gamer, gift cards are 100% acceptable. Contrary to popular opinion (which is surprisingly wrong a lot these days), gift cards to a gamer mean you care. It means you thought about it enough to understand that’s their interest and you don’t understand it enough to comfortably select something for them, and that acknowledgement of shortcoming is actually going to win the day.

And if you guess, and select a game they probably would not have gotten for themselves, that’s not terrible either. As long as you haven’t offended some hardcore CoD player with Barbie Horse Doctor, or something. You know what, even then, they would probably laugh thinking it was a fantastic gag. Just don’t buy someone a game they have said they do not want. Pay attention to that. I’ve gotten games I don’t want. Its because I have already played it, and did not enjoy it. But I, like most gamers I know, will make my feeling about a game I’ve played known. It’s gonna happen whether you want it to or not. So pay even the least attention, and you’ll know which ones to stay away from.

Point is, games are fun. People love games, gamers love playing them, and you can almost never go wrong enabling this behavior. Whether you are an ad executive, or a grandparent shopping for some ungrateful teenager. It might feel weird, like you’re giving a drug addict their fix, but you need to stop thinking about it that way. It’s probably keeping them off drugs. There’s plenty of scientific evidence to suggest society’s war on games has been wrong from the start. So get on board, and win this holiday season.