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Cult Of Games XLBS: How Do You Find Positivity In The Hobby?
January 25, 2026 by brennon
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The whole point of this discussion today is to find the positive in the hobby, so let’s try and do that here in the comments. Get stuck in and tell us about all the good, the awesome, the brilliant that gets you sitting down at the tabletop to paint and play.
Let’s not let the negative win and indulge in the awesomeness that makes our hobby so great.
We do need some positivity and I’ll do my best, but when I played FASERIP Marvel years ago my friends named my superhero Major Negative 🙂
watching the weekender and XLBS whenever you guys talk about whatever you really like.
That makes me happy as you can really feel the positive waves being broadcast :).
Chase the fun, Chase the connection with people. Don’t be shy to say ‘thanks, that’s not my thing but it’s impressive what you’re doing’.
I make things happen if I can, that’s where the positive comes from. Having fun from what we make happen and never, ever taking it seriously. It’s a bloody hobby and fun and socialising is the bloody point.
Honestly, socialising is way down on my list.
I love collecting and painting minis, reading rule books that I’ll never play, making war bands for those rules.
I do force myself out to the club to play, but I can’t say it’s not something I’d miss.
You want positive…
Carnevale. Admitedly, that particular game has a dark setting, but the movement makes the game interesting and the miniatures are fantastic. The sculpting is wonderful and the range is so varied. If I could afford it I would buy them all.
Crooked Dice. How can you go to that website and not find a miniature that you must own?
Thanks for this : it’s much needed.
I’m pretty sure that the worst that “Eons of Battle” says about a GW miniature release is it’s “fine”.
I’ll be checking out the youtube channels mentioned that I don’t already follow.
Just as Ben said, Discourse uses thumbnails that will garner people to click it but I find the content of her vids very good.
There are positive people out there. I follow Peachy, Louise, Ash Barker and others that Ben mentioned.
Since last year I have been following the guys from Lords of war games and hobbies. They talk from the side as store owners and do it in a very positive way. Other store owners reach out to them for help on how they handle certain situations because of their content.
The positivity of these channels do motivate to hobby and see that not everybody is negative and just thinks of the clicks they can get.
Poor Ben.
Forever stuck at the exhaust level when walking behind taller people …
No amount of deo is gonna help you with that, especially if they had eaten beans 😉
Hobby has to be positive. By definition it is the antithesis of, and antidote to, negativity. In this modern world, hobbies are vital. Those trying to make people feel bad about what they enjoy should be rounded up and shot (in a positive way, with happy guns).
I can be positive and recommend a book by the title “Against Happiness” (a rather small hardback with a yellow dustcover). It was great for me and should be good for others to stand against false happiness and the hamster wheel to avoid discomfort. Finding a balance between the bitter with the sweet in the failures and success of hobby and life is always a challenge. Remembering nobody gets out of life alive with our toys is a sobering and humbling reminder of mortality.
On second thought @avernos might be the only one of us to be fully entombed in Mount Lead that will be the edifice of tiny fighting men.
I’ve stopped following content creators who just post click bait negative stuff. I’ve also generally stay away from GW focused stuff simply because the 40K community for instance has become incredabilly toxic.
I posted a video last week looking at why some people may choose to leave GW hobby. I made the video fairly balanced looking at a number of reasons. The comments were on the whole were pretty balanced but there was some that were extremely toxic…
The problem a lot of creators have is if that’s their full time job then they need to chase clicks and engagement. So they’re having to chase the negative to earn a few quid. Whereas creators who work full time don’t need to chase the clicks and so are a lot more free in the types of video they produce.
I had to look for the postive video that Midwinter put out. I saw the negative video as it popped up on my feed.Yet I had to go looking for the positive spin version.
Finally sitting down to watch this year and get some paint on some mini’s. Also splurged on a couple of painting books too…
oiooh what books?
One thing that helps with YouTube is disabling the play next feature. That way nothing will play unless you make the choice to click on it.
I find my YouTube is pretty good. Only about a quarter of the videos I get pushed are dross I would never click on.
One of the main factors that made me drop the idea of main topics on my live stream was because it was an easy trap to just want to moan about stuff. Hopefully doing a more relaxed stream of consciousness format will keep things more positive.
Staying positive in the light of recent things happening (not just here and in our hobby bubble but around the world as a whole) is something I really do struggle with at times. “Just ignore it” is something you can do for something mundane as the hobby but when it comes to things that directly affects peoples lives and potentially threatens them “just ignore it” won’t do. But that is a wider topic and will completely derail everything so I’ll keep that to myself for the moment.
As a general “pro tip” to keep your sanity and remain positive I highly urge you to delete all social media app from your phones. The only thing remaining on my phone are messengers (WA and signal), Emails and PixelFed. No facepage, no youtube, no instagram and especially no X/Twitter. With that done you’ll archive many things and one of them not feeling the constant need to check online what is happening. I make an effort to only look at social media, forums and blog when I am at the table with my PC. [Obviously if you only have your phone and no PC or Laptop you can’t do this as easily but in that case you can have an app that helps you with ‘not looking at them’ in a set time frame]
That is something to live by and I really try to do so. But sometimes things need to be called out. And then the grumpy old man gets the better part of me.
Lastly I’ll do something I tend not to do. I’ll make a pledge. I pledge to try to be a more positive content creator and no fall for clickbait. So if you see me going down that road again: call me out on that. I feel if we keep the creators aware that not everyone wants to see all the rage bait all the time things could change.
That’s it I think. See you lot next week.
I love nothing more then to just sit at my table in my Hobby room which i am lucky to have has my kids are grown and flown the nest and just shut the door and forget about all the crap that is out there from soicial media even normal media to just the world in general it is all negative so i just stay away from it because to be honest do you really need it, i dont but then i am a man approaching 65 so i just put up two fingers to it all. This does not mean i hide from it i just choose to ignore it.Has a grandfather the joy of my two grandsons joining me in my room to do a bit of painting i enjoy and making my grandaughter cry brings such joy( only kidding….but am I..lol)..To be serious, I love ww2 one of the darkest periods in earths history but i find great positivity from the studing of it for my hobby and then the making of the models and the painting and just looking at them makes me happy i can sit in my room and get my minis out ( i am talking about my toy soldiers incase you think that minis is a pseudonym , but at my age it is mini..ha) anyway where was I oh right yes….then put them back into there storage and go back down stairs happy and positive and flash the wife whos looks at me ” you had your minis out again didnt you” but lets not dwell on that. The thing we call our hobby in all shapes and forms is a positive in my eyes, it can help you mentally and socially, but has i am solo gamer the social side does not bother me, when i am in my hobby room the podcasts i enjoy are “YARKSHIRE GAMER”, “TWOFATLARDIES”, “BATTLECHAT WITH HENRY HYDE” WARGAMES SOLDEIRS AND STRATEGY” and “TABLETOP MINIATURES”, my youtube channels which I watch regular even just sat on the sofa are “PEACHY TIPS”, “THE GREAT MIMS WARGAMING WORKSHOP”, “SONIC SLEDGHAMMER STUDIO”, REALMS UNRAVELLED” , ” MEN OF THE WEST” which is all about the lords of the ring. So to finish i just love this hobby and what it does for me even being a solo gamer I choose and focus on the things i like whci i thinks helos so i am not chasing different things , i am just starting to get int RANGERS OF SHADOW DEEP after having the ruels for a while plus love to play X WING, SO HOW CAN I NOT BE POSITIVE…….
The Aeon rpg itself also suffered from the fact that they were sued by MTV for having a name that was too similar to the cartoon show they had at the time (and very cheesy movie … ).
So they had to literally relabel their first print run.
For me the hobby is not just about happiness – it’s a necessity. I suffer from PTSD and if I let it get out of control then it takes me to a very dark place.
I find immersion into my hobby is the most effective form of therapy that there is. Cleaning and building miniatures and then painting them helps me to center myself, it brings about a kind of zen that nothing else will. Put me in front of a big pile of plastic with my scalpels, files, sanding sheets, glues and greenstuff and all my troubles and woes melt away and I find my happy place. I also find watching painting tutorials on youTube can bring about a zen like state of mind and often leave them running in the background while I’m doing other stuff.
If I find something which I’m doing or watching to be boring or not enjoyable, I just switch to something else – I’d rather draw a line under it and move on as opposed to persevere and not enjoy the experience – to me its not the destination that counts, it’s the journey. Just find something you enjoy doing and do it until you don’t enjoy it any more. And then find something else.