Short version: I play Marvel Snap again, I enjoy it most when I treat it as a game and not a job, and I have not decided whether it should become a daily video habit. I quit in February 2024 after reaching collection level 1,465, spending over $500 and climbing into the 70s in rank, because a competitive game only felt right to me if I was all in. Being all in is exactly what I do not want, so the question I keep coming back to is whether competitive play is worth my time at all, not just which deck to run.
If you are deciding whether Marvel Snap is worth your money and your hours, here is where I have landed so far. Fun is the test, not rank. In my April 2024 spending post I said you should not spend anything until your collection level passes 500, because that is when the card pool gets interesting and paying starts to speed things up. I also said that once you have spent around $1,000 and have most of the characters you want, you can basically stop, and that if you make over $20 an hour and play an hour or more a day, spending some money is probably worth it. That is the honest answer I have so far.
The story starts with the quit. In my February 2024 post on quitting I wrote that a competitive game is not fun for me unless I can give it all my time, and that losing as a casual player is no fun. A four-hour live stream left me without a usable video, and that was the moment I decided to stop.
Within about six weeks my view on one part of it had shifted. Why It's Okay to Play Marvel Snap argued that the line between fun and addiction is how you feel while you play. If you feel allowed to play, you play a reasonable amount and walk away. If you feel guilty underneath, the same game pulls you into binges, which is what happened to me when I streamed it. Why Losing at Marvel Snap Is Fun made the other half of the argument: losses are what make wins feel good, and an eight-cube loss does not make you a loser.
The bigger question I could not settle came up in my May 2024 post on zero-sum games. I compared a Marvel Snap match with my wife and daughter playing checkers, where losing does not spoil the time they spend together. Playing a stranger online, I noticed, takes time that could go to connecting with people I can actually see and laugh with. I did not reach a final answer in that post, and I still do not have one.
Then came the return. In my June 2026 post I opened the game for the first time in two years, after spending over $2,000 on it in 2024. The cards I had paid the most for were nearly worthless, the shop was built to keep you checking every day, and the welcome-back calendar and daily challenges were there to pull me in. I told myself I would play one game, and then I played it again. I was honest that I had been a little scared to play at all.
Where things stand now is in my July 2026 post. I asked whether I should make Marvel Snap videos every day on my games channel, because one of my recent Marvel Snap videos drew about 400 views and I want a game I can enjoy every day. I also named the hard parts: the player community is smaller than in 2024, many creators have moved on, deck videos are already crowded, and I have not reached the top division yet. I have not decided. What I want now is feedback before I commit, and the question underneath is the same one I have carried since 2024: can I play without the addiction coming back?
Read in order, the arc runs from quitting to a spending reset, then a return, and then a question I have not closed. Read the newest post first if you only want where things stand. Each post is included in full below. If the wider gaming side matters more to you, the video game addiction page covers the quitting and relapse side, and the Warzone page covers the competitive years these posts keep returning to.
On this page
Every post I have written on this subject is below in full, newest first, each under its own heading.
- Should I Make Marvel Snap Videos Daily? (July 31, 2026)
- I Spent $2,000 on Marvel Snap, Quit in 2024, and This Is My First Play Since (June 18, 2026)
- Are Competitive Video Games Zero-Sum Self-Sabotage or Fun Character-Building? (May 4, 2024)
- Why It's Okay to Play Marvel Snap (April 18, 2024)
- Why Losing at Marvel Snap Is Fun (April 16, 2024)
- I Spent $1000 in Marvel Snap so You Don't Have To (April 10, 2024)
- Why I Quit Playing Marvel Snap (February 26, 2024)
Should I Make Marvel Snap Videos Daily?
From my video published July 31, 2026.
I got really into Marvel Snap a couple years ago. I'm a full-time YouTuber, and I'm wondering: should I come back to making daily videos on Marvel Snap? I enjoyed playing Marvel Snap so much that I spent a couple thousand dollars on it in 2024. I told the story back then that it was like an addiction and I should stop, that it was too much. And yet the reason I spent so much money is that I was having so much fun on it. It was also tied into my marriage, and I'm divorced now. I make YouTube videos every day, so the question I keep asking myself is: is there anything better I could do with my time than make Marvel Snap videos?
Because I love Marvel Snap, and I want to play a game every day on my Jerry Banfield Games channel that I could really enjoy — a game where I could just show up, play, and have a lot of fun. I'm wondering if that would be useful. So I figure the thing to do is just ask the rest of you: hey, is this something you'd want?
The signal from my last Marvel Snap video
I'm really grateful for what happened with my last Marvel Snap video. I made that video, and you all put about 400 views on it. Out of all the videos I've made on this new Jerry Banfield Games channel, that was one of the most watched videos I've done, and I'm super grateful for that. I'm figuring that's a good indication that there's demand for Marvel Snap content.
I especially like grinding out videos every day. I have a lot of value to offer. I have a lot that I can give, and what I'm wondering is where it should be given. Where do I give what I have to offer? Do I give it here, or do I give it somewhere else? Would it be better appreciated or more useful somewhere else? It seems like right now Marvel Snap is a great place.
Marvel Snap or a different game?
I was thinking about whether I should play a different game. Magic: The Gathering came to mind, and I got a lot of views playing Hearts of Iron. With Magic: The Gathering, though, the question is whether there's as much demand for the content. As a content creator, I want to make stuff where I can show up and make a video every single day for a year, I'll enjoy it, and there will be an audience for it.
Marvel Snap's players have dropped quite a bit since I used to play in 2024, but I imagine some of the creators have dropped off and moved to other games as well. I haven't gotten to the highest division in Marvel Snap yet. And Marvel Snap is a game where you're logging in and signing in every day, so while the community is smaller than a couple years ago, it's also very dedicated and consistent.
I'd love your feedback on what kind of content needs to be created. So many people already make great Marvel Snap deck videos. I want to make interesting videos that are not just Marvel Snap decks every day. I'm interested in figuring out what I can do that's unique — something that gives to Marvel Snap that nobody else is giving right now.
What's funny is that it's actually taken several takes to even get this recorded. For some reason this one has been a little more challenging for me to articulate. But I'm really excited and interested in finding a game that I can play and have a lot of fun playing. So is it Marvel Snap, or is it something else?
Can I play without the addiction coming back?
The other question is whether I can play Marvel Snap without feeling like I'm addicted to it. Marvel Snap was so much fun before I dumped tons of money into it. Now it seems like they've made some things a bit easier. You can actually just straight up buy collector's tokens now, which is interesting — you can drop in and buy those Marvel Snap collector's tokens directly with gold, which makes things a lot easier than before. At the same time, the temptation is still there. How much money am I going to spend on Marvel Snap? Am I going to sign into this every day? And do the people playing Marvel Snap even need another creator to watch? I don't know, and I'm so interested in finding out.
What's unique about me is that I'm a 42-year-old single dad looking for another woman to marry. I've got a dating channel, I do interesting videos that are a little unusual, and I make all these videos all the time.
Playing a match while I think it through
While I've been talking, I've been playing a match. Copy a card from your deck into your hand — all right. I've got some random cards in my hand, so I guess I need The Hood, though I don't know if it's even useful. I have three cards to weigh up, and I'm thinking maybe I should play this right now, and then that will be able to get played. In one of these games my opponent retreated — all right, let's go.
It's interesting — I've got a lot of cool stories to share. It's a little hard right now to talk over the background while I'm playing, because I'm still remembering how to play the game. But the more Marvel Snap I play, the easier it gets to just talk right off the top of my head. There's a card that can hit the highest enemy with minus seven power — that's pretty good. So we could play that right here, and we could also play this one. Nice. And I will snap on cubes.
I'm having a lot of fun. I have a vlog I do every day that people are getting really into. I've just got a lot of value to offer, and I want to make sure I'm offering it in the right place. And I hope what's useful for you is to consider that you have a lot of value to offer too. Are you offering it in the right place? Are you offering your value in a place where what you do is appreciated and respected? That's what I'm always aiming to do as well.
Let's see how this game comes out. Nice — we knocked that one down really hard. This one is pretty strong, and this one is pretty strong too. We could even play The Hood and then play Annihilus, and this should be a win — yeah, they retreated. All right, let's go. I've won the first three games here, probably against bots; it's been pretty easy. If you want to see more of my gameplay, this kind of daily experiment is exactly what lives on my Games playlist.
So what do you think? I'm doing this as a little test and seeing what happens. Maybe you'll start seeing my Marvel Snap videos every day.
I Spent $2,000 on Marvel Snap, Quit in 2024, and This Is My First Play Since
From my video published June 18, 2026.
I spent over $2,000 in 2024 playing Marvel Snap, trying to be a streamer and getting myself leveled up to 74, failing to hit Infinite. Since then, I got a little burned out, felt addicted, and got bitter. Some of you may even remember I did some YouTube videos about it back then. And I've been a little scared to play again. But I had so much fun playing Snap before, and what I'm interested to see is: okay, I literally didn't log into the game in two years. What is it going to be like to just use one of my existing decks? And what's it going to feel like to jump back into the game today?
Opening the game after two years
Holy cow, there's a lot of notifications, and there's the shop. Man, they make the shop maximum — you have to check this thing every day. I used to buy out every single bundle trying to level up. I'm close to the next collector's tokens right here. And I'm sad to see, after two years not playing, that some of the cards I paid so much for are nearly worthless now — which, you know, they have every right to do that. I'm the one who spent the money on it, right? So let's just jump in and see what happens playing a game.
Do I even remember how to play?
It'll probably be against a bot at this point, but I'm just going to use the deck I had before and see if I can even remember how to play. I'm interested to see: what does it feel like? Do I like it? Do I not like it? Does it feel good? Does it feel bad? And do I want to keep playing? The cube element is really well done in Marvel Snap — it kind of feels a little bit like gambling, but it's not actually gambling, which is funny. And I'm trying to remember what the cards even do. I've played long enough, but I don't even remember what any of these cards do. "Cards cost one less" — that's good. So I guess we'll just throw her out and end the turn. It's probably a bot, so we'll just go ahead and snap, right? Like, why not? See what happens.
The first game back
What does this guy do — your cards with power? Oh, all right, now I kind of remember this one: minus power to the right location. So we'll throw him out right now. And then we use Annihilus to throw the negative nine over to his side. All right, I remember this. So we've got Mockingbird here — ongoing effects apply an additional time. Nice. And then, all right, this is interesting: if we drop Cerise right here, we can actually transform this into something better instead of having it switch sides. That is a little risky, but let's just throw Cerise out — I'm just interested to see what happens. Let's see what happens if we transform this Void into a different card. Oh, she's transforming into the Devil Dinosaur. That's funny. That's so funny. Well, that's going to be an easy win, isn't it? Probably. I have no idea what kind of decks I'm playing against at this point. It's crazy — I didn't play for two years, and there are things that look recognizable, but man, it's amazing how fast you forget things in life.
One more game
Ongoing effects apply an additional time. Cards cost less. So we can remove the text of a card here and nerf it — we could nerf a card right here. A lot of options. Let's start Red Guardian down here; we'll nerf one of their cards, and we'll bump him up — we'll play a Sentinel there, and we'll play Jeff there, and we'll get some more Sentinels in hand. Okay. The opponent retreated. Well, that was pretty straightforward at this point — you're just playing bots, right? I wonder how much I need to play so we can upgrade that to a Legendary.
The welcome-back grind and the range of emotions
I liked that this game's available on a tablet. But dude — you definitely need to play Marvel Snap every day to get the best out of it, which is part of what makes it addicting. But don't you get burned out having to show up every single day? I remember reading that they have a welcome-back calendar, so you've got to play every day and get your welcome-back calendar and the daily challenges. It's interesting to experience the range of emotions going through me right now. Like, wow — here it is again. All right, let's play one more. Oh no, I've got a yoga class to go to.
So, I'm interested to see — okay, I played one game of Marvel Snap. Is this going to reel me back in, or am I never going to play this again? I spent all this money on it; I just had to see one time what it's like to play it again. So I played it again. If you've ever walked away from a game you sank real money and time into, you'll know this exact feeling — it's the same thing I wrote about in the hardest thing in gaming. You can watch more of my gaming videos on my Games playlist. Let me know if you think I should come back to playing every day, or what else I should do with my life.
Are Competitive Video Games Zero-Sum Self-Sabotage or Fun Character-Building?
From my video published May 4, 2024.
Are competitive video games like Marvel Snap self-sabotage, zero-sum games where I'm essentially wasting my time, and where I'm either the winner and I'm triumphing, or I'm the loser and I'm feeling bad? Or are video games like this character building, a good spiritual practice to help you get to know where your life is at?
I've been debating this so much in my head lately, because I often enjoy playing Marvel Snap. I've spent thousands of dollars to collect the cards in it. I'm up in the 70 to 80 rank, up close to infinity at the maximum rank tier. I've enjoyed a lot of card games and competitive games in the past, but I'm also big into self-improvement, making the life of your dreams, and optimizing everything. And I've been thinking: if I play Marvel Snap, or if I play a competitive video game, is this purely a zero-sum game where either I win and it's good for me, or I lose and it's bad for me?
The night I lost eight cubes and felt awful
Like last night, I lost an eight-cube Marvel Snap game right before bed and I felt awful. I felt, man, you're so dumb for losing that. That was so annoying. That set me back on my quest to get to infinity rank, the highest rank. And I'm thinking: is this conditioning my brain to think zero-sum, to look at other people as enemies that just need to be beaten, to look at situations as a me-or-them?
Because life definitely is not a zero-sum game. For example, if you help someone else out, you will feel good. The person receiving the help will feel good. And a third party watching you help another person out will also feel good. That means life is something cooperative, where we can help each other so much that we can't just sit and watch. I think that's a good thing: you can lift someone else up, and then somebody else will feel good watching you lift them up.
Then I compare that to playing something like Marvel Snap. This goes for any competitive video game, like Magic: The Gathering Arena, or any game you're playing where it's you against someone else, and there are winners and there are losers. Often it feels bad to lose, and it often doesn't feel as good to win. When I lose, I get a sense of inferiority: man, I suck, I should have played better. And when I win, I get a sense of superiority, which ironically can hurt my humility. To me, having great relationships with people is the foundation of a happy life, and the foundation of a happy life through great relationships is humility, where you and I are equals.
So with competitive gaming, like playing something like Marvel Snap, I've gone back and forth on it a lot. I'm wondering: should I just quit playing Marvel Snap? Is this something that is bringing the quality of my life down? Or is this helping me build character and build humility, seeing that I'm neither superior nor inferior to anyone else? I keep all of my gaming reflections like this together in my Games playlist if you want to follow how my thinking keeps evolving.
Checkers with my wife and daughter
To give an example, I've been looking at how my wife and daughter will play checkers together sometimes. Now, you would not look at that as a zero-sum game, because they have fun spending time together. When my wife and my daughter sit down to play checkers, there's going to be one winner and one loser most of the time, and often it's my wife who's the one winner and my daughter who's the loser. However, my daughter's learning. She's expanding her mind. She's eight years old, so she's learning how to play checkers. She's having fun playing checkers. And my wife and daughter are having fun playing together.
Therefore, it's not a zero-sum experience when my daughter wins and when my daughter loses. They still have fun together. So it's not an experience that is dependent on winning or losing in order to have value. Obviously, if you're playing video games and you're having fun with it, then that is a useful experience. But if I'm playing a game and I'm not having fun with it, and I'm not connecting with someone, then there's often a better experience I could be having instead.
The opportunity cost of playing online
What we often don't look at in life is the opportunity cost of everything we're doing. For example, the time I'm playing competitive video games is time I can't be doing anything with anybody else. And if I'm playing a game against someone else online, I'm not having the chance to really connect with that person. We are playing the cards together, but unlike when my wife and daughter play together and have fun with each other, I'm not actually getting to see this person I'm playing against. We're not getting to laugh together about how the game goes. We're not really able to connect and have fun the same way you could do in person. In fact, playing a competitive game online is blocking me from being able to have that experience with anyone else.
That leaves me wondering: what is the best use of my time? Is it worth my time to play a competitive game online? And if so, is there value in it? Because sometimes struggle and loss and losing can be very helpful with character building.
When losing builds character
I go around sometimes thinking I'm so much better than everybody else. And then when somebody scrapes eight cubes off of me in Marvel Snap, I don't feel so good. I'm like, well, I guess in this particular instance, I'm not better than this guy. This guy just beat me at Marvel Snap, and it doesn't feel too good.
Other times, really funny things happen. Like one game I played, the other guy plays Killmonger, blows a sure win, and loses four cubes because he throws away the game with that move, which actually ends up helping me more than it ends up helping him. So in that case, I get a laugh and the game was good for me. But what about him? In other words, if you combine my experience plus his experience, is it zero-sum? The joy and the laughter I get from watching him make a bad play, if he wanted to win that was a bad play, and the joy I get from winning, if you put that together with his experience of losing, is that zero-sum?
Because I don't want to take time in life to engage in zero-sum activities. Not just because, to me, it's kind of a waste of time in the first place, but in the second place, it's also programming me to think zero-sum in other areas.
Does it program me to think zero-sum everywhere?
After all, if I'm playing Marvel Snap, I'm trying to beat people in Marvel Snap. Or like when I used to play Call of Duty Warzone, I was focused on trying to beat people all the time in Call of Duty Warzone. If I'm putting all this time into playing a game where that's the world I'm in, then how am I going to operate the rest of the time? Am I going to look at my marriage as a zero-sum marriage, where either I get what I want or my wife gets what she wants, where my wife is essentially the other player in Marvel Snap, and I have to get my way and get my eight cubes out of her? That leads to self-pity and bad relationships, where you're not satisfied because you look at your relationship as a zero-sum game, and it's not satisfying.
So I really don't know on all of this. I'm sharing these thoughts to try and talk these things out and get some more clarity, because I'm wondering where the best place is to find joy. I have a desire to play Marvel Snap and to collect the cards. But at the same time, I'm wondering about the cost.
My history with addictions and pointless mastery
I've also had a lot of addictions in the past: a gambling addiction, alcoholism. I've seen how the things I end up putting my time and energy into, like alcoholism, or playing Call of Duty zombies, often just seem to drain me. I pour my energy into things that I then look back on and think, man, I wish that instead of being one of the best Call of Duty zombies players in the world, I had learned how to make music. Because who cares whether you're one of the best Call of Duty zombies players in the world or not? It seems kind of pointless to be one of the best Call of Duty zombies players today.
So I'm on a quest to get to infinite, the highest rank in Marvel Snap. But is that worth the cost I'm paying? Is there something better I could be doing with my time? I know a lot of people playing video games are not up for a discussion on the meaning of life, and are not thinking about this. That's just kind of the way I played video games a lot of the time, too. I was just blindly dumping my time into things like games, kind of mindlessly trying to earn rewards, maximizing how high of a rank I could get in the game. I very often wasn't thinking about the long-term impact of that, like: okay, if I do this for ten more years, where's my life going to be?
So today I'm glad I'm thinking about these things, and I'm encouraging you to think about these things as well, because some of these kinds of questions are some of the most meaningful and impactful things we can consider in our lives. A lot of the ways I've made massive improvement in my life have come from looking at questions like this, like: how can I contribute most to the community today? Thinking that way, instead of thinking about how to level up in Marvel Snap, ends up making the difference between selfish, self-centered thinking, where it's all about me and trying to be a superior ego, and contributing to the community. That makes a huge difference. I spent so much time in the past just trying to do things like win a video game, get a higher score, be a higher rank, and now it all kind of looks pointless. I was one of the best Star Wars Force Commander players in the world, and now it's like, who cares? Nobody even plays that game anymore. Winning Marvel Snap games too often feels like that.
It's like, okay, I win eight cubes, I make a really smart play to ruin the other guy's strategy, and I triumph. But then right after this I play another game and, if anything, I feel worse. I feel worse on the eight-cube losing end than I feel good on the eight-cube winning end. So yeah, it was awesome to win that game, but as much as it sucks to lose, I wonder: is there something I could do besides play Marvel Snap where there would be more joy and more contribution to the community? I dig into exactly that question in the story of spending $2,000 on Marvel Snap and finally quitting, and even in why starting a brand-new game is the hardest thing in gaming for me.
Is making videos about it just rationalizing?
In some ways, even making videos about Marvel Snap is kind of rationalizing. Well, I put this time and money into this game, so if I make videos about it, then it's worthwhile. But would I play this game and try to get the rank if I couldn't make videos about it? I know my mind has been telling me this is a lot of work, and maybe a long, rambling reflection that's not making any difference and not making a positive contribution.
But thinking about things like this, being retrospective, considering our contributions to the world and the community, considering what we're doing with our time, these are valuable things to think about. I hope this has been useful for you to consider where you stand. If you're just beating other people at a video game, is that really the right thing to do? Is that really a worthwhile use of your time? And if it is character building, is there a better way to do that same character building?
Why It's Okay to Play Marvel Snap
From my video published April 18, 2024.
It's okay to play Marvel Snap. I know on the surface your mind will be like, well, of course it is. I can do whatever I want. I'm a free person. But I want to challenge the deep down part of you. Is there some part of you that feels like it's not okay to play Marvel Snap, or to play video games generally? That feels like games are just a waste of time, that you're being selfish playing video games?
There's a part of me that has felt exactly that. I've quit gaming several times since I've become a dad. I quit in 2016, in 2019, and multiple times in 2022 and 2023, because I kept feeling like playing games is a waste of time. Playing games is just something selfish that I did when I was single and lonely and desperate. And I'm grateful my kids and their interest in gaming reawakened me to the fact that it's okay to play games.
Why having fun is proof you're wealthy in time
Having fun is a sign of health and vitality and abundance. Taking time to do something just because it's fun, that is proof that you're wealthy in time. And many grown ups are not time wealthy. Many grown ups are time poor, where all of your time is spoken for. You never have time to do the things you really want to do, and all you do is work and do chores. And even when you do engage in things that are supposed to be for fun, you're engaging in them from more of an addiction, and you're feeling bad underneath it.
So I invite you to look at it: when you're playing Marvel Snap, do you feel good about it? And is there some part of you that you can address and speak to and say, look, it's okay to play Marvel Snap, and to have fun playing this game, and to take time to just enjoy it?
Fun versus addiction is about how you feel
The difference between playing a game because it's really fun versus it being kind of addictive is how you feel about it. If you feel like, hey, it's okay to play Marvel Snap, I love playing, it's fun — if that's how you really feel, then there often won't be an addictive quality about it. You'll be able to play a reasonable amount, and you'll enjoy when you do play.
Now, if you're playing the game and you're getting frustrated about it, and then you play too much of it and you feel guilty about it, as of course I've done before, then what's going on there is there's some addictive quality about it. On one level, you feel like, yeah, of course I play Marvel Snap. This is right. This is fun. I deserve this. But on another level, you feel like this is wrong and I shouldn't do it.
So if you feel like it's wrong and you shouldn't do it, you'll often swing back and forth. One side says I'm going to do this all the time. I'm going to constantly play Marvel Snap. I'm going to buy all the stuff off the store. I'm going to grind until I get infinity. And then you'll kind of get disgusted with yourself and stop playing and be like, what was I doing? I shouldn't have done this. It's a waste of time. If you don't feel deep down like you deserve to play, or that you have time to play, or if you feel bad about it deep down, that's generally how it will come about. I've wrestled with this same tension before, including whether competitive games like Marvel Snap are zero-sum self-sabotage or fun character-building.
Why streaming Marvel Snap stopped being fun
So if you are playing Marvel Snap, I encourage you to really lean in and have fun playing it. For me, playing it just for myself is fun, because I can enjoy losing and I can really just play as much as I want to. But I found that if I'm trying to stream Marvel Snap, like play it on Twitch, then it's not fun anymore. It starts to feel more addictive, where I feel like I have to justify that I'm playing it because I'm a creator and I'm on Twitch. Me playing Marvel Snap on Twitch was happening because deep down I didn't feel like it was okay to just play it. But if it's because of my business and I'm a content creator, then it's okay if I play it, right? And from that point of view, I often would play addictively, where I would just play constantly.
One day I played hours and hours of Marvel Snap at once, to the point where I felt bad about how much I played, and then I quit. In fact, I've already posted, I think, two videos saying I quit playing Marvel Snap. And that's an indication that deep down, I didn't feel like it was okay to play Marvel Snap. Yes, on the surface I said, oh yeah, it's cool to play Marvel Snap, of course, I'm a grown up, I deserve to play it. But deep down, deep down, I felt like I was doing something wrong. And that's why I kept announcing I'd quit. If you've ever done the same, you might recognize yourself in the day I spent $2,000 on Marvel Snap, quit in 2024, and finally played again.
Why playing Marvel Snap is a great use of my time now
So I'm grateful that today, I play Marvel Snap and I have fun with it. I don't play it on stream anymore. I record some of my gameplay and use it as background for videos. And I love that when I'm making these Marvel Snap videos, they're getting out to so many of you and sharing these ideas with you. These ideas are valuable, and I'm able to help you with some of the same things I've struggled with myself. That leaves me feeling really grateful that playing Marvel Snap is a great use of my time, where I'm not only having fun playing the game, but the game is a medium for me to relate to you and connect with you, because I'm a full-time YouTuber.
I have other channels, like Jerry Banfield Thoughts, where I'm already just doing videos like this one, but without the game. But these videos, because I have the gameplay in them, they get a lot more impressions on YouTube, because they're more relatable. You might not realize we have any common interest if I'm not playing Marvel Snap, but when I play Marvel Snap, you're like, oh, I play that too. That same connection is what I love to keep going in Jerry Banfield Family, where we talk through this stuff together on the weekly calls.
So Marvel Snap is a great way to have fun. And I love trying to figure out the decks, then playing the deck and learning the game. Now, I'm sure I'll move on to another game at some point, as I've moved on from all the other games until I ran into Marvel Snap — and honestly, starting a brand new game is the hardest thing in gaming for me. But for now, this is the most fun game I can think to play. I enjoy the characters. I enjoy the cards. I enjoy the community of those of you who watch the videos. And I finally am leaning into the idea that it's okay for me to play this.
It's okay to spend money on a game you love
Not only is it okay for me to play this, it's okay for me to spend some money playing this game. I just went into the store today and cleaned out all the bundles. I bought the $100 bundle with the 6,000 gold and the two spotlight keys. I bought the two smaller bundles with the 3,000 coins. I've got most of the cards already, and this will speed things up and gave me some more of the cards I didn't have. But I've got the money. I'm glad I'm wealthy. I've got the money to spend. I enjoy the game, and me dumping $1,000 into it supports a bunch of people who are playing for free. You could even think of it as a little bit charitable. I know you could argue that's a little delusional, but you could think of it as a little charitable.
The Zola play that made me laugh out loud
And as evidence that I'm truly having fun playing the game: I'm not being so serious about my rank and how much I win. In one game, I dropped Zola over there just because it'd be funny. Nobody was watching, I'm not playing on stream — I was just thinking it'd be hilarious. I dropped this guy over there with Venom, and I took a 50/50 chance on whether I'd copy Venom or whether I'd copy a squirrel. Now that's fun. I'm having fun playing the game this way. Like, let's gamble. And it copied the squirrel. Like, oh, oh. And it was funny to me.
I'm playing the game just to have fun. I'm screwing around, and I'm like, just drop this guy over there and copy the squirrel. I'm having a great time. Now, I know I could have played Killmonger and I could have played to try and make a smarter play, so to speak. But I'm having fun, and that's what really matters. The opponent retreated, even though it looked to me like they were going to win. I don't know why they retreated, but I was laughing so hard after playing this game. I'm like, what just happened? What happened was, I had fun. And I had fun because I felt like it was okay to play. You can watch how this plays out across more of these games in my Games playlist.
Having fun lets you set boundaries
I'm not addicted to this. I'm just enjoying my time. And what's nice about having fun is that you can set boundaries. Okay, I had enough fun playing this — I'm going to go do something else with my time now. That's the whole point. When you genuinely feel like it's okay to play, you can lean in, enjoy it fully, and then walk away when you're done.
Why Losing at Marvel Snap Is Fun
From my video published April 16, 2024.
You need to lose more Marvel Snap games. Seriously. I imagine if you're like me, you tell yourself, losing sucks. It's no fun. I don't want to lose. Losing means that I'm a loser. Losing means that I'm not worthwhile. But really, it's losing that makes the game fun.
Do you remember starting out playing Marvel Snap? If you're like me, all you did is probably win. Almost every game. And it was miserably boring. You're like, God, I really wish this game would beat me. I really would like to lose. It gets old, winning constantly. Believe it or not, it's losing that really makes it fun.
I remember when I first lost, the first game I lost in those first few games, I'm like, thank God. I was getting so bored just winning Snap games all the time. I took an eight cube loss and then a four cube loss, and I was actually hoping to lose the next one too. I'm not trying to lose, and my opponent just snapped. That said, it's losing that makes winning joyful. When you just beat the computer and their bot every single game, the game's no fun.
So I encourage you, next time you're telling yourself how bad it is to lose, and you hate losing, and you're dreading losing, lean into it. Lean into winning, obviously. Winning, duh. But also let yourself just enjoy losing and enjoy the experience that the game has to offer you.
It's a balance in life
Because it's a balance in life. It's having things go bad that makes it awesome when life goes good. The worse your life is today, the more you have the chance to appreciate when life is not bad.
For me, my life is going just fantastic. I'm a full-time YouTuber and I have a wife that's beautiful. We have a great relationship. I have kids that I love and they love me, and they're all healthy. My life is amazingly good. And one reason I can actually appreciate that today is because I was an alcoholic who drank and was lonely and who struggled and had a really hard time. I know what it's like to have life be bad. I know what it's like to have life be miserable. And I'm grateful that it's not like that today. Because of the struggles I had in my life before, now I'm in a position to really enjoy my life.
That's why often, we all want to raise our kids up so that they're wealthy and they're healthy and have a nice life situation. But often, it's spoiled rich kids that grow up miserable. Why? Because their life was too easy. Nothing was difficult. They didn't struggle. They didn't have the hard times that many of the rest of us had growing up. They grew up with everything and so much abundance, and ironically, that can really make things stink sometimes.
I used to detest losing
I've been a competitive gamer a lot in my life. I even was a professional gamer. I got paid to play video games. I made over $100,000 in 2021 playing video games. And I used to absolutely detest and hate losing. The worst thing that could happen in my day was that I could go on my live stream and just get annihilated.
So today, I'm really glad to take an eight cube loss. I'll take an eight cube loss, and the opponent retreated, and I was kind of getting excited. It's losing that shows you where you have the chance to learn. And this is why my life is so good right now: because I lost so much before.
I lost way more than most of my friends did when I was dating. I swear I found every way not to date a girl, from getting fake phone numbers and getting ghosted, to leaving girls at the club, to a restraining order, to losing a job. I really tried all these different ways to date. And now, I have the happiest relationship of anybody I know. From when I was younger to the year 2011, when I met my wife, I took a lot more pain than most of my friends and family did dating. But the friends and family who just had it pretty easy dating often have ended up with messy, nasty divorces and really long, unsatisfying relationships. And things have went great for me.
So if you want to be a better Marvel Snap player, you should enjoy losing. You should get good at losing. You should be comfortable losing. Because losing is what builds you into a winner. The best Marvel Snap players have lost way more than almost anybody else has. The best Marvel Snap players have taken more losses than almost anybody else. Because most people just lose over and over and get beat and get smacked, and they're often not going to continue playing the game. It's having the patience, the persistence, the love, the joy to continue playing after you've gotten beaten repeatedly. That's where the magic happens. I get into this whole question of whether competitive games are worth it in why I wrestle with competitive games being zero-sum self-sabotage or character-building, and this is the same struggle from the other side.
Be proud of the losses you've taken
So I'm grateful today for all the stuff I've been through. And I hope you can be grateful for the stuff you've been through in your life too. Because that's how character building happens. That's how you get to know what you can really do in life. That's how you get to really appreciate your skills and talents. It's losing that makes a winner. It's having things not go as you planned.
Now, yes, this can backfire. This can backfire if you tell stories that you are a loser. If you tell stories that because you lose, you are a loser, then that's going to backfire on you. So never tell stories that you're a loser simply because you've lost. If you've lost, that means you've tried. That means you've showed up. That means you have something you can be proud of. So never be down on yourself for what you've been through. Be proud of what you've been through. I'm very proud of the life I've had and what I've been through, and that's how I am able to keep showing up here today.
So I want you to be proud of the losses you've taken in your life, even if they look like they were self-inflicted. For example, I was a police officer and I had a career in law enforcement that, because of a girl I dated and my behavior in relation to that, I ended up losing the job. And I'm so glad that happened just the way it happened today. Like losing a Snap game, it doesn't mean I will lose the game. It doesn't mean I am a loser. It's just fun. It's fun to try and see what you can do and what you're capable of.
If you play life safe and you try never to lose all the time, then what happens is you end up not being able to be very fulfilled or very satisfied, because you're too concerned about losing and you're too concerned about being wrong. What happens is life ends up being really boring. So take those losses and be proud of yourself for the losses you've taken. And life will get better than you can imagine. Life will blow you away with how great it can be. And all you have to do is just be willing to lose. Be willing to throw the cards down. Be willing to lose. And have the game not come out how you thought it was going to go. And see what happens.
So what if you lose?
And if you lose, so what? It looks like I'm going to lose eight cubes on this game. And do you see, was I harmed? Was I harmed losing eight cubes? Did I become injured? Did I lose money? I just lost eight cubes right there, and it took me down to rank 86. So what? Did anything bad happen?
In fact, you can even look at losing as something considerate you're doing for other people. I remember when I was playing Warzone, I was one of the best Warzone solo players in the world. I won, and I won a lot. And I wasn't cheating. A lot of the people who were playing Warzone solos and winning a lot on Facebook in 2021 were cheating, and that's how they were winning. I wasn't cheating, and I wasn't some teenager with absolute best reactions. I was using really smart strategies. People were actually getting upset watching me. They're getting upset, like, this guy's strategy shouldn't work. He shouldn't be able to just camp the whole game and then creep around at the end and win and beat 149 other people with almost no skill. But it did.
And how did I learn that? Well, let every loss in life teach you a lesson. Learn from every loss you take in life. Because when I take an eight cube loss, I'm learning. I'm not going to make the exact same mistake I made again. When you learn from your losses, every loss is a learning opportunity. When you're winning, it's kind of hard to learn, which is ridiculous. But when you're winning, it's difficult to even learn. Because when you're winning, it's like, okay, well, I did everything right, so I'm just, you know, I'm awesome. It's losing games that teaches you a lesson.
Never confuse losing with being a loser
Therefore, never confuse losing with being a loser. Always take pride in: hey, I tried. I learned. And maybe I lost. But my effort is proof that I'm trying. I'm proud of the losses I've taken in my life. And I continue to put myself in a position where I will lose more and more. I will lose more eight cube games in Marvel Snap. But you'll notice, I keep leveling up also. I keep leveling up and I keep getting better and better at the game. And that's awesome. It's really nice to get better and better at the game. It's nice to be proud of my skill at the game, and to know that I'm good at the game because of all the losses I've taken.
And every loss sets you up for a win. Even if, for example, you lose at Marvel Snap and you think, you know, I hate this game, I don't want to play it anymore, then that's a win. Because now you've learned something valuable. You're like, you know what, maybe there's a better use of my time. It will even help you set up your next win by revealing to you, hey, I really like doing something else. I'd rather not spend my day playing Marvel Snap. There's something else I'd rather do. So even then, if you lose, your loss has turned into a win. Your loss has shown you that there's something better for you to do. And that's a win. That makes a real difference. And then your victory is so much sweeter because of that.
So I just took a four cube retreat right there. And because I lost the last game, it feels better to collect that win. Isn't it one of the most precious things in life just to have emotion? Just having emotion is precious. The most difficult thing for a game to do is to get me to feel something. And I love that Marvel Snap gets me to feel something. So I hope sharing this gets you to feel something too. If you enjoy this kind of thing, you can watch more in my Games playlist, and you might like reading about the day I came back to Marvel Snap after spending $2,000 and quitting or about losing 18 to 1 and still saying yes to the moment.
I lost six cubes total across these games. But the lessons here could be a huge win for you in your life. And I'll remember this next time I take another eight cube loss.
I Spent $1000 in Marvel Snap so You Don't Have To
From my video published April 10, 2024.
I spent $1,000 in Marvel Snap so you don't have to. Here's what I learned spending that money. And yes, it has been fun, and I'm grateful I have enough money from being a full-time YouTuber to spend this, and it's not a big deal. I thought I'd share everything I've learned here with you.
First big lesson: don't spend a dime until collection level 500
In Marvel Snap, the first big lesson is that you do not need to spend any money. Do not spend any money at all until you get your collection level over 500, because up until that point you're just playing against other people who are free to play as well. Lots of them are bots. A lot of the cards you get in your collection before you reach 500 are just free cards. You'll upgrade your collection, and you can earn credits simply by playing games and doing challenges.
So if I had to spend this money again and start a fresh account, I would absolutely not spend any money until I got to 500, because that's when you start to play against the pool 3, series 3, 4, and 5 cards. Technically it's around 480-something, but let's just round to 500. Then you start getting these spotlight keys and collector's cash reserves, where you get new characters and cards from, and you start to play against the pool 3, series 3, 4, and 5 cards. This is where spending money actually speeds things up dramatically.
If you've gotten to collection level 500 for free, then you know you actually really like the game. After that, it is a real grind to collect the cards free to play. For example, I've spent $1,000 and played 50, 60, 70 hours of the game, and I'm still only at collection level 2,600, where there's still like 40 percent or so of the series 3, 4, and 5 cards I don't have yet. Spending $1,000 has helped me get a bunch of them. If video games are something you tend to throw yourself into, you might enjoy why I treat video games like alcohol — it's the lens I keep coming back to with a game this sticky.
Collector's tokens — spend these very carefully
What you really want to be careful with spending are these collector's tokens. For example, it's 6,000 collector's tokens to grab Blob, who's been one of the series 5 cards consistently in a lot of decks I've wanted to build. You can pin a specific card if you really want one. You need to pick these cards out very carefully, though. Any bundle that you can buy with collector's tokens is usually well worth it, because the only way you generally get collector's tokens is through your collector's reserves. Once you get over 500, you'll start getting these collector's reserves, and sometimes, not that often, those will have 100 collector's tokens.
So you've got to level up your collection a bunch. A bunch. If I go from zero to infinity on Gamora off of the boosters and credits I got in a bundle, that gives me 31 levels, which is only going to give me two collector's reserves. One of them gave me a title, and one gives me a card, the Dr. Octopus card, series 3. So I didn't even get 100 collector's credits out of there. Obviously you want to infinity-split your cards too, so you can further upgrade them. And if you buy packs that have boosters, I can go straight to another infinity-level Gamora off of the boosters I already bought. So if you're upgrading, if you're buying, if you're spending money, you want to be aware of what's really valuable.
Credits, and why the pro bundle isn't worth it
You can pick up a bunch of credits with bundles, and you get a bunch of credits just progressing your collection level. The pro bundle, as people told me when I asked about it, is not really worth it. The pro bundle is $99, and it's not a very good value. Yes, you do get 8x 155 boosters, which is enough to go to an infinity level, but that's actually going to eat most of your credits up. Do the math from what we just did: that's 31x8. So you'll be able to get a couple hundred collection levels off of that, plus more credits and boosters from progressing your collection level, but that's only enough to hit a few collector's reserves and maybe grab a spotlight key. A lot of these collector's reserves don't even have cards or credits in them — they just have titles. (One of mine did give me a new base card, which is great.)
Gold, bundles, and the gold pass
Some of the best values in the store are the little bundles. For example, one gave me 2,500 gold and a thousand credits plus 600 boosters for $25. Gold is a store currency, and when you buy gold for the first time it gives you a bonus. The first time I spent $100, I got 16,000 gold. So buying gold — these gold bundles — is often a good buy the first time, but I wouldn't buy them again.
The regular bundles are a great value because they'll often have more gold than you could get otherwise. One was around $15 and gave me 1,200 gold plus a bunch of boosters and some credits. Another for $25 gave me 2,500 gold plus credits and boosters. These bundles cycle around every week to a month depending on what kind of bundle it is, and they're often a much better value — except for your first gold buy, and sometimes even on par with that.
There's also the gold pass for $5, which gives you like 50 gold a day. If you're a daily player, this is a good value. You can then exchange your gold for credits, but if you buy 16,000 gold, that ends up giving you around 20,000-ish credits. So the pro bundle at $100 is not that great of a value for the credits and boosters to just straight up progress your collection. But if you're desperate, the pro bundle will work.
If you want to force your way up on the collector's tokens, that's essentially $100 or so, depending on whether you can get the gold bundle, to get about 4,000 collector's credits off of one gold bundle. And that's not even enough to buy one single card off the store. A single card is 6,000 credits — so paying for that essentially is like $300 of just buying gold. If you can find a bundle that has collector's tokens, those are a pretty good value. One cost a little bit of gold and had 500 collector's tokens in it, so I grabbed that one. Then you just keep checking for new bundles as you sign in. I keep talking about gaming spending decisions like these over in my Games playlist if you want to go deeper on the games I'm into.
Spotlight keys are one of the best ways to unlock cards
There's a spotlight key I haven't mentioned yet. You get spotlight keys every week, they change which characters are in the spotlight, and the spotlight key is a great way to level up your collection. You get spotlight keys at certain intervals in your collection — roughly every hundred levels or so. If you have four spotlight keys, you can guarantee that you'll get every character in the spotlight collection.
For example, I'm going to get my next spotlight key in about 30 levels. If I upgrade some more in my collection — say I upgrade Star-Lord, which costs 1,400 credits, about a little less than 1,200 gold plus boosters — that will get me to another spotlight key. So spotlight keys every week are one of the best ways to unlock a whole bunch of cards, especially if you advance your collection. But be careful: I accidentally blew a spotlight key on a variant. You only get four spotlight keys a week that you can use, so you generally want to plan your money spending and collection unlocking over time.
Once you've spent about $1,000, you can basically stop
Once you've spent about a thousand dollars and you've got most of the characters you want to use in your different decks, you really don't need to spend any more money. I'm hitting a point where it doesn't really matter if I spend more, because I have most of the cards. I've got 50 of the cards I can consistently make meta decks with. The spotlight keys will rotate, so you'll get new characters in there, and there's always something rotating in the store. You get a free series 3 card every month, and they'll give you special bundles for characters you don't have. So it's better to be patient with your spending. If you really want to go hard, maybe buy all the bundles and stuff — but just kind of take it slow. I got a bit impatient, bought the pro bundle, bought out all the gold, and that was helpful to accelerate my collection.
Is it worth it? It depends on what your time is worth
Some people say, you know, I've free-played the whole time, I've only put $100 in. It depends on how much your time is worth. I'm a full-time YouTuber. I'm a father, a husband, a homeowner. I go to Alcoholics Anonymous five days a week. I go to yoga five or six days a week. And I take time to have fun and do stuff that's not just gaming. So I have a lot of other stuff I do. My time is what's most scarce, and Marvel Snap is fun. For me, I've got tens of thousands of dollars in the bank, almost a hundred thousand in crypto, and my wife has her own money and is able to pay all the bills herself with her job. So for a thousand bucks, I'd rather have my time than grind Marvel Snap games against other meta decks.
If you're less than collection level 50, or less than rank 50, you really don't need to spend any money either, because you're not up against decks that are that good. However, once you get into the 50s, 60s, 70s, if you spend some money and have a meta deck, things change. I've been running over people with this She-Hulk, Leech, Infinaut deck. It has some cards in it like High Evolutionary and Magik that I bought off the store, plus She-Hulk — I collected these mainly by paying money. If I was just grinding free to play, I wouldn't have these. Because I have them, it makes games real easy for me to win. So if your time is valuable and there's less of it, and you want to get into having more fun in the game, it's definitely worth it to spend the money on the bundles.
Squeezing value from gold: refresh your daily missions
These credit upgrades can help you advance your collection every day, but they'll also lead to you running out of credits. If you need to use gold to replenish your credits, one of the most effective ways to get more credits — if you're playing every day — is your daily missions. You can use 120 gold to refresh these daily missions.
Watch what I get out of using 120 gold. I had missions worth 100, 100, and 151. I use 120 gold to refresh two missions, and now I get another 51 and another 100. So I spent 120 gold and got 150 credits worth of missions, plus 50 to 100-ish season pass XP. The season pass helps you unlock more boosters, more cards, more credits, more gold. So one of the most economic things you can do with your gold is to wait for little bundles in the store. For example, a collector's tokens gold bundle was, I think, around 700 gold and ended up being a great deal compared to what you get buying variants.
So you want to save your gold in the shop, ideally to grab some of these bundles they offer, and to go into the daily missions and use your gold to refill them. You can only refill so many of these, but sometimes you can get multiple hundred-credit missions, and that will give you more credits. It's also fun to try and do the challenges. You can refill these a bunch of times with gold. That's generally how I use my gold, and it works better than credits.
The bottom line on spending in Marvel Snap
I'm having a lot of fun playing Marvel Snap. I wanted to make this because I couldn't find a video that really gave me everything I wanted — talking about all the different aspects of when to spend money, how much it's worth, all of it. I think if you make over $20 an hour at your job and you play an hour or more of Marvel Snap every day, it's probably worth it to spend money to speed your collection up faster. But the great thing is, at this point I don't really need to spend money anymore. Or if I do, I could spend a very small amount, because there aren't as many cards left to collect. Once you've spent like a thousand dollars in Marvel Snap, you really don't need to spend much anymore — 10 bucks here, 15 bucks on a season pass.
The season pass tends to be a great value. If you play every day, it'll give you a card and a bunch of other things like gold, credits, and variants. From here, if I just buy the season pass and a bundle or two in the store, I'm going to have all the cards and be able to play all the meta decks all the time. Eventually I'm not even going to need to collect cards anymore. If you want the longer arc of how this played out for me, I followed it up with the story of how I spent $2,000 on Marvel Snap and quit in 2024.
Why I Quit Playing Marvel Snap
From my video published February 26, 2024.
My friends, I quit playing Marvel Snap after reaching a collection level of 1,465, after spending over $500 in the store, and after getting as high as the 70s in rank. And you will love hearing why, because Marvel Snap is a very fun game. If you get into playing it, the locations, the collections, the Marvel characters, it is definitely a fun game. However, is playing a competitive game the best use of my time at this point in my life?
I quit playing Marvel Snap because for me, playing a competitive game like Marvel Snap is not fun unless I can really give my all to being competitive. For me, this means that as a YouTuber and a Twitch streamer, if I want to play Marvel Snap, I don't want to be a casual and always be losing games because I don't understand the deck. To me, Marvel Snap is a game that's really fun if you've got hours every day to play. If you can be researching the cards and the meta, and you can always know exactly what's possible, and really play the locations of the day all the time and customize your deck, it's a fun game to kind of get way, way into. But it's not that fun to play casually.
Gaming first and foremost needs to be about fun
Why? Because to me, gaming first and foremost needs to be about fun. And what's not fun to me is to get beat by people who are try-hards all the time, which is why I'm quitting not just Marvel Snap, but all competitive gaming.
At this point in my life, I find it frustrating to do competitive gaming because I've been a pro gamer in the past. I've been really insanely good at a bunch of the different games I've played. And I don't want to play a competitive game unless I can be one of the best people at a game. I don't want to make Marvel Snap videos and content unless I can make really good videos that actually give you great info.
The live stream that pushed me over the edge
What really pushed me over the edge with Marvel Snap and being a creator is that I researched several different decks. I had this nice deck, but I couldn't get Venom to really make the deck work properly. On my last live stream on Twitch, I had won a bunch of cubes and had like a 70% win percentage. I don't know what happened, but I got wrecked after that. Maybe my MMR went up and I got some tougher opponents, made some bad calls. Maybe I just got lucky before that. But I got smacked after that.
And I took four hours. Four hours. And I couldn't even come out with a decent video. Where I'm at in my life, four hours is a lot.
Yesterday, I started a new YouTube channel called Jerry Banfield Thoughts. And in around two hours of real time, I cranked out videos on this channel that easily have the potential to go viral. I recorded three videos on this channel in under two hours, all from other viral YouTube video titles. This has really important information in it, like how I hacked reality to get anything I wanted. The ideas in there are really valuable. And if you give me four hours of time, I could probably film a week's worth of videos coming out every day. So I could have a video every day. At this rate, this channel will probably be my second or third channel to hit 100,000 subscribers after my main channel. And then maybe we'll see if it can beat my crypto channel. This channel is so exciting and has such power and energy behind it, and it's so fast for me to crank videos out about it.
Where I want gaming content to go
For gaming, I was able to make a beginner's guide for Marvel Snap that people liked, and I was able to make a couple of other videos people liked. But the further you get into the game, the harder it gets to create good content. For me, I want to be able to make gaming videos. I want to be able to relax and have fun when I'm playing games. And what's really fun for me is learning.
I've already been a competitive gamer, and I can tell you, being a competitive gamer for a job sucks. I made over 100 grand in 2021, mostly on Facebook gaming, as one of the best Warzone solo players in the world, with strategies that people were very polarized about — just basically camping and playing extremely tactical and slow and patient. And I got to hate that. I got to hate every day that all people wanted me to do was play Warzone, because it's boring. It's boring. (I dug into this side of competitive play more in my take on Warzone and playing the long game.)
If you're a gamer, your mind probably thrives on learning and playing new games. But you get into these routines. You get into the comfort zone of playing the same game. You get into the comfort zone of playing games all the time. And for content creators, if you're doing gaming, there are kind of two different paths. You can go the variety gaming path, where you're always making videos about other games. Or you can go, you know, I'm going to make a video about this game over and over and over again. If you go that path, though, lots of times people will not transition to the new games. So I'm at a key point in my gaming channel.
I was wrong about Marvel Snap — and still right to quit
With Marvel Snap, I made a video saying, "I played Marvel Snap for 10 hours so you don't have to," where I came to this same basic conclusion. But then I got excited after that video got over a thousand views organically, and I said I was wrong about Marvel Snap. While I still stick to that — yes, I was wrong, Marvel Snap is a very fun game, it's a great game to play competitively if you play card games. I'd say it's better to play Marvel Snap competitively than about any other card game. Better than Magic: The Gathering, Hearthstone, Gods Unchained, whatever all the other ones are.
However, is competitive gaming the best use of your time? What I've noticed for me is that some of the worst days I've had, some of the worst I've felt — and I feel really good almost all day, almost every day — two of the days where I felt the least good were after playing a whole bunch of competitive games. One of them was competitive Call of Duty Warzone. The other one was Marvel Snap. On my live stream, I tried too hard last time in Marvel Snap. I played for four hours straight, and I couldn't even get one good video out of that live stream. I felt like I just totally wasted my time and my energy. Unless I want to dedicate my entire self as a YouTuber and a Twitch streamer to playing Marvel Snap — which there's no way I would do.
Because being a competitive gamer sucks for money. If you want to be a creator and make money, crypto is the best place to create and make money, which is why I have two crypto YouTube channels. And if you want to make money also doing finance videos, or like the Thoughts videos I showed, that are much more general relevance — gaming is niche. There's a ton of people playing video games all the time. There are lots of creators. There are creators creating video game content all the time.
All in, or just play for fun
For me, Marvel Snap is either an all-or-nothing kind of thing. The other day, doing Marvel Snap for four hours, it's like — I did the video before saying I was wrong about Marvel Snap, saying I'm all in. I have to be all in. And does it make sense for me to dedicate all my energy to being all in on Marvel Snap? No. I've shown in the past, I will always get bored playing the same game over and over again. (That's the same restlessness I wrote about in why starting a brand-new game is the hardest thing in gaming.) And what really sucks playing games is to be bored and to try and create content from a place of being bored.
So for me, I either go all in and get really good at the game and become one of the best players in the world, or I'd rather just play casual single-player games or cooperative multiplayer games like zombies for fun and relax. This is the kind of honest, behind-the-scenes thinking I love getting into on the weekly calls, so you can join Jerry Banfield Family anytime.
So for those of you who liked my Snap videos or my Snap streams and were wondering why I wasn't doing them anymore — that's what happened. That's why I quit Marvel Snap: because it's not fun to play casually for me. It's fun to either be all in and be like addicted to it, or just don't touch it. It's the same logic that had me walk away from Twitch after nine years rather than keep doing something halfway.
Going forward, I am going to keep uploading gaming videos that are taken from my Twitch stream. You'll get to see lots of different games I'm playing, and I'm going to show you games that I think will be really fun for you — things like Hogwarts Legacy, Hades, and Returnal. I have a list of the 21 most fun games I've played since 2020. My goal is to share gaming videos with you that are fun, that will help you enjoy gaming, relax, and that you can play casually — videos for those of you that just want to have a little fun gaming, not those who are going to be playing games for eight hours a day. If you enjoy that, you can find more of it in my Games playlist, where I share the games that are actually worth your time.