You may stay home tonight.

Seriously, you may stay home tonight and play video games.

Two weeks ago I told the rest of the Multiplayer team that I was going to write the blog post you are now reading. Some of them — I won’t say who — objected. I’ve defied them. Because, really, it must be said:

You don’t have to go out tonight. Even though it’s Friday. You can stay home and play video games.

Not that there is anything wrong with going to parties, going on dates, and other sundry social activities, but have you ever noticed how easily someone who doesn’t want to do that kind of thing can get away with saying, “I’m just going to stay in tonight and watch a movie”? You could get away with saying you want to stay home to finish a book you’re reading (”Harry Potter,” for example — no one would get in the way of that). You can say you’re determined to watch the new episode of a TV show you DVR’d, too.

But tell people you don’t want to hang out with them tonight because you want to play a few more missions in “Fire Emblem“? That you’d rather get sucked into “Assassin’s Creed” tonight or spend the evening in “Burnout Paradise“?

These are things I just don’t feel comfortable saying to ordinary friends (i.e. people who aren’t my wife), things even some gamer friends don’t endorse. Is the problem just with me, with us gamers, or with society’s standards of acceptable party-avoiding entertainment?