Kettle On, Controller Down: What British Gamers Actually Do During Loading Screens

There's a unique kind of British patience that gets tested every single time you boot up a game and watch a progress bar inch forward like it's queuing for the post office. Loading screens are the unsung architects of our gaming habits — the accidental architects, frankly, of an entire secondary lifestyle. We don't just wait during loading screens. We thrive.

We put out the call across our socials and dug into community polls to find out exactly what UK gamers get up to during those stolen moments between worlds. The results were, frankly, a portrait of a nation.

The Great British Brew: Still Undefeated

Let's start with the obvious. In our poll of over 2,000 UK gamers, a staggering 61% said making a cup of tea or coffee was their number one loading screen activity. Of course it was. This is Britain. The kettle doesn't care that you're mid-campaign in Elden Ring. The kettle demands to be boiled.

What's fascinating is the subcultural precision here. There are gamers who have timed their tea-making ritual to specific loading screens. One respondent from Sheffield told us, quite seriously, that the Cyberpunk 2077 fast travel load (pre-2.0 patch, mind) was "a perfect single-bag steep." This is the kind of lived expertise that no university course can teach you.

Honourable mention goes to the snack run (favoured by 34%), which operates on similar principles but carries higher risk. Nobody wants to return to a completed load screen holding a packet of Hula Hoops and find their character has been standing in a bonfire for ninety seconds.

The Doomscroll Dimension

Coming in at a close second, 48% of respondents admitted to picking up their phone during loading screens. And look, we're not judging — but there is something profoundly 2025 about escaping one screen by immediately turning to another, smaller screen. It's loading screens all the way down.

Social media is the primary destination. Twitter/X, TikTok, and Instagram all feature heavily, though several respondents specifically mentioned checking gaming subreddits "to see if other people are also waiting for this exact loading screen." Community, innit.

The danger, of course, is the doomscroll trap — that temporal vortex where you pick up your phone for thirty seconds and resurface twenty minutes later having watched fourteen videos about cats and somehow ended up on a thread about whether the moon is a simulation. Your game has been ready for a while. Your character is still standing there. Judging you.

The Wanderers, the Philosophers, and the Toilet Runners

Beyond tea and TikTok, our data revealed a rich tapestry of loading screen behaviour that speaks volumes about the British psyche.

22% said they simply stare at the loading screen, reading tip text and lore snippets with the solemn dedication of someone studying for an exam they didn't know they'd signed up for. These are the gamers who actually know the backstory. Respect.

19% use the time to stretch or move around — a genuinely sensible response that we will not make fun of, because we also have a bad back now.

14% admitted to going to the toilet, which raises the eternal question of whether game developers have a moral obligation to keep load times under thirty seconds for the sake of bladder health across the nation.

And then there's the 7% who said they use loading screens to text people back — because apparently a loading screen is the only circumstance under which replying to your mum feels like a reasonable use of time.

The Hall of Shame: 2025's Worst Loading Offenders

Right. You knew this was coming. We asked, you answered, and the community has spoken with the weary authority of people who have had far too much time to think about this.

Honourable (Dishonourable?) Mentions Before the Top Five:

A handful of you flagged Dragon's Dogma 2 for load times that feel like a philosophical statement about the nature of waiting. Several more pointed to various live-service titles that somehow take longer to load a menu than a full level. We see you.

The Definitive 2025 Loading Screen Hall of Shame:

1. Starfield – Still. Somehow. Still. The meme writes itself and yet here we are, years later, loading into a loading screen that loads another loading screen. Bethesda, we are begging.

2. Hogwarts Legacy (last-gen ports) – If you're still playing on PS4 or Xbox One, first of all: respect for the commitment. Second: we are so sorry. Hogsmeade apparently takes four business days to render.

3. Forspoken – A game that perhaps didn't need quite so much time to prepare you for what was inside, and yet.

4. Redfall – The load times were, in a tragic twist, often the most interesting part of the experience.

5. Any open-world game with a 'fast travel' system that takes longer than actual travel – You know who you are.

A Love Letter to the Instant Load

It would be remiss not to acknowledge the other side of this coin. The Marvel's Spider-Man 2 SSD flex. The Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart portal transitions that made an entire generation weep with joy. These are the moments that remind us what next-gen actually means — not just prettier grass, but respect for your time.

The PS5 and Xbox Series X were sold to us on the promise of killing the loading screen. And for certain titles, they delivered. But for every instant load, there's a cross-gen port somewhere making you watch a spinning logo for ninety seconds while your tea goes cold.

And perhaps that's fine, really. Perhaps the loading screen is less an inconvenience and more a feature — a built-in mindfulness pause, a forced moment of stillness in an otherwise relentless hobby. A chance to put the kettle on.

Just don't go on your phone. You'll be there all night.