Take E3 for example. One may find themselves caught up in all the hype, all the promises, the rumors. The glitz and glamor of it all. We know deep down that the reality never lives up to it, but the pre-show buzz feeling is a hard one to top. The engagement online or in person with like-minded fans, getting that sense of mutual anticipation and validation of one's opinion. The sense of smug satisfaction when you feel you favourite gaming company nailed that conference and "won" over the others.

Does your body produce dopamine (;P) when you look on Vgchartz sales data freshly posted for the next week to find your favourite console on top? How about the game you really identify with being the #1 top seller and/or guaranteed multi-million seller by insane margins. Or better yet when said game outsells a rival exclusive on a competing platform? Or when a established multiplat has sales preference on your favourite console? How about when there is PR speak from your own allegiance that gives you satisfaction in your purchase......or PR speak blunders from the competition that makes it really easy to put fans in their place and prove yourself right to total strangers.

Gaming itself is fun and engaging. But you can have "fun" in a variety of ways. This is also engaging. Many go online and talk gaming more then they play games. This gives you the feeling of belonging, acceptance, validation. And if you are on the winning side, especially if it means sucumbing to our base human nature of competition, our drive to win, elevating yourself at the expense of people you compete with, it gives you pleasure.

Please feel free to call me out for being weird, I can take it. But I am curious as to what "bias fans" think. It's ok, were anonymous, your real life friends/and family will never know the truth ;)

Both very much fun. I play games when they are out and in between I have fun in the forums. It's because game developers are so lazy that I have to pass my free time here.

Possibly. I measure my gaming intake, since i turned 18 i've kept it to an hour a day max, unless i'm really on a groove for something (Monster Hunter Tri/U could get me going far along, for instance), while going online and talking about games rapidly became a compulsion after i started frequenting Joystiq in the summer of 2006. In terms of hours spent since 2006, talking about games would handily come far ahead of actually playing them, due to my relative self-control in wanting to finish games at a decent pace (good for quicker games, as then they last longer).

The games are more fun pound-for-pound, for certain, but i play less of them by far.

I've certainly spent more time here in the forums than I have spent gaming the last 2 months. Pretty much here or reading news for a couple hours every day while I only game for 2-3 hours every other day. It feels like a crime with a backlog so large...

So obviously I do take enjoyment from the engagement as well as the play. But the engagement would be nothing without the play, much as the play would be less fun without some interpersonal engagement and my daily info-hunting.

Don't forget my post. I'm totally biased in what I favor! Just not blindly, and I'm getting over some of it.

This month for some reason I spent more time here than actually gaming. But other months when I'm busy, I spend most of my free time gaming and very little time posting here.

No. I don't enjoy this more than gaming. Sometimes I wonder why I even try to read some threads.