I look at a game-screen as I watch its beauty unfold before me. Maybe I hold it in my hands or am watching it from my couch or chair. My fingers fly across many-colored buttons, or maybe my whole body moves to the beat of the instructions onscreen. I watch stories unfold, characters evolve, whole worlds being realized. Video-games enchant me in only so many ways that I can only describe in writing.
We gamers are fascinating people. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night can stay the avid gamer from enduring the midnight launch and neither can the micro-transaction or cursed red-ring keep them from their appointed gaming. For every game we treasure or insults the core of our being, the most passionate of us rise to meet the challenge, the immersion, the experience again and again. I have played enough of them myself to wonder why I keep coming back to these discs and cartridges and buttons. I’ve played with them since before I can remember and only writing about them for so long on this site and in this blog. Maybe it’s the good round 100 that’s attached to this blog series that’s sparked a nostalgic sense of self-reflection in me. What drives me so much to this medium that I’ve written this much about?
I suppose the simplest motive we have to play video games is the opportunities they provide to escape the world we live in. Life can become as complicated and overwhelming as anything, and virtualizing it helps us to let go from our troubles. Escaping the daily grind and forgetting about our problems for even the shortest time, in some way or another, can sometimes be a necessity to maintain a healthy imagination, video-games or not. Gaming can’t ever be an end-all solution to problems, though. I’ve suffered from hiding away in my bedroom playing on my gaming devices for too long into the night and paid for it in class. In moderation, it’s a real gift and an enjoyable one at that. We all have too many things to worry about in this thing called life, whether it’s making the grade, a job, families we can love and hate, or the anxiety of uncertainty. It’s through gaming that I give my mind a siesta from the challenge of being human.
Escapism, of course, is only as worthwhile as it is fun, and for lots of us, that fun comes from video games. If video games weren’t fun to play, then I wouldn’t even be writing this blog and my trophy score would be a whole lot smaller. What defines fun? To me, it’s the fact that I can experience things beyond my window sill. There unfortunately isn’t a time-machine that I can use to go back in time to Red Dead Redemption or Okami. I probably won’t ever gain superpowers in an electric explosion or be chosen by the gods to wield a holy blade. Like the music, books, films, and TV shows that came before them, video games take us on an adventure that we couldn’t ever reach, and in terms of gaming, even experience. I love taking games as seriously as I like to laugh with them. I try to be as stoic or sarcastic as the character I imagine that I was, making the choices I would make, and in open-world games, living how I would want to live if I was there in the heart of the action. Regardless of the scenario, I enjoy believing what I see onscreen for whatever time it can delightfully manipulate me into being transported to another place and time far from my own two hands.
The rich variety of games can give everyone a rewarding choice of what they want to imagine. If you want to build an empire, conquer the world, solve riddles, or slay foul beasts, there’s a game for that. Want to save the galaxy Commander? Save the Princess? Games lend us their unique immersion through their interactivity and it’s through the mere tap of a button or wave of our hands that makes our thoughts come alive.
Gaming can further teach us about our future as it does our past. As much as I love history myself, the next player finds it boring. In years past we’d have to do something as shocking as *gasp* reading a book to learn about American anarcho-capitalism or cybernetics. Thanks to series like Bioshock and Deus Ex, a few more minds can experience rather than just read about politics or scientific ethics. Whether they accurately explore the fullest extent of these topics or are even fun is up to debate, certainly, but if they’ve brought a conversation about it to the dinner table, Ken Levine and Warren Specter can feel satisfied. Just don't cite your history papers with 'em.
Games are even changing the ways we socialize. Where people are increasingly judged on appearances in our real world, games grant us anonymity, virtually wiping out self-conscious guilt or embarrassment compared to socializing in a throng of real eyes staring at you. More and more games are built around multiplayer and perhaps for the better. I am often hard on games for having lackluster online play, but done well, it’s both a necessity to companies profits as it is in replay value. People often rely on them as methods of contact and bonding, after all, it always pays to face a tricky level with a trusting ally. Communities from the first Modern Warfare to Team Fortress 2 are still in touch thanks to a single game changing the way people play with each other. More than the cash that inevitable spews into developers pockets, games allow less confident people to be who they wish to be and express themselves freely. That has to be one of the greatest things which has come out of gaming: allowing everyone to be equal.
As our human nature has it, we’re all competitive, some more so than others, but we all enjoy winning. We all love a beating the odds and competition breeds contempt as often as it can camaraderie. As more professional tournaments like League of Legends’ are springing up, people are drawn to the hierarchy that gamers and companies are building for themselves. Call of Duty, for better or worse, has transformed itself into a sport of the best if not most trollish and kill streaks are the stuff of holy grails. I will honestly admit that I’m hardly a partaker of it, but by myself I draw much satisfaction from besting my own scores and records. Alone or alongside a clan, you’ll always find something to strive for, whether it’s that talking head mouthing off to you in your mic or your memory of your past, inferior self crying out to be proved wrong.
More than entertainment value alone, games are capable of teaching us lessons. Morality has a heavy hand in the controversy that surrounds headlines reporting on games, from news networks to Congress. There’s no denying that more than a few game has fallen of my own radar thanks to a lack of good taste, but more have had a positive impact on me, even violent ones as I’ve gotten older. Games like Dishonored and Metal Gear Solid gave me the choice to kill and maim anyone I wanted in greater or lesser ways and The Last of Us gave a glimpse at the emotional toll of inflicting pain. Even the simplest penalty, like the imminent threat of reinforcements or characters’ disapproval forced me to consider real, if not simplistic, consequences. Killing is a quick fix that pays out in the short-term, yet not killing benefits you in the long-term, in both difficulty and story. It’s more challenging and even more interesting, especially keeping the characters you value like The Walking Dead’s alive. Every normal person can make the distinction between being naughty and nice, cops and robbers. It’s something everyone is taught, and realizes. That makes it all the more relatable to us even in the fantasy worlds we play in.
At the same time, these choices’ complexity only have as much impact as the mindset of the player that dives into them. There are an undeniable amount of players that never cared how often Red Dead Redemption’s John Marston had to do something awful for amnesty or even played long enough to see his poignant death. There are probably more that, for whatever reasons I suspect, played Mass Effect like an action game and didn’t care about the characters involved. You’d be surprised at how many people really do think like that. Even Grand Theft Auto’s social commentary on poverty, immigration, gang culture, racism, sexism, or its morbid depiction of caricatured egos fall flat on some concerned just with the violence. Most adult gamers can handle and understand the concepts buried underneath flashy gameplay, and it’s undeniably why the ESRB is in place to advise and in some cases completely safeguard against kids playing Bioshock or Fallout. Many kids can not only not handle the violence and action being put onscreen, they simply can’t fathom meaning behind it. Maybe that’s why I was lucky to live in a house that abided by ratings systems at all. I was able to get the most out of the choices I made with Lee or Shephard. Games are subjective enough to interpretation that I can make it as personal as the next player makes it big, dumb fun.
The reason we play games can rely on different factors, and what we play can depend on what we want from life at that very moment in time. In some ways I feel like I’ve grown just as much as gaming has. While I’m far from old enough to have remembered playing Pong back when it debuted in my parents’ college years (my, that’s a strange thought to still think about), I can say that gaming has gotten progressively darker ever since. As I started out with Nintendo and Sony’s colorful, lively cartoon characters I found myself drifting closer to the likes of Nathan Drake and Solid Snake with a little dash of Italian Assassins. I suppose that my gaming reflected my growing sense of maturity and the maturity I desired in my games. The world became so much less simple than it used to be and I changed with it. Gaming has played a huge role in my life, and the games I have played and the people I have discovered have shaped who I am and how my outlook on life is.
All the while I hold onto a sense of childhood innocence that I adore and miss. Be it nostalgia or simple pleasures, I enjoy returning to Nintendo’s family-friendly treats every year and will no doubt be fiddling away in its Hylian realms once again. As I get older, I only feel more nostalgic for some of the things I’ve lost, namely the simplicity of perspective so long ago. Back when bad guys were bad guys and good guys were just so good. Ni No Kuni and Lego City: Undercover have spoken to me just as much as Bioshock Infinite and The Last of Us this year for reasons that are one and the same. Sometimes the darkness is only as alluring and mysterious as the light illuminates our hope. Whose to say what maturity is measured by? Sometimes it’s the whisper that makes as much impact as a shout. Contrasting both reminds me how human I am. I feel rage, anger, and a frightening joy of destruction, but I want to build, love, and relate to people as often. Experiencing both reminds me of the emotional breadth that I create for myself. Games remind me that imagination is part of the soul that surely doesn’t dwell on any one feeling.
So why do I play? I suppose it’s for all the same reasons why I write. I’m drawn to mediums of self-expression, a way to immerse myself in something greater and more free than the world around me. There are some that might not see what we see. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, or a game is just a game. That truth stares me in the face for every game case and age old strategy guide I have laying around my home. Yet it’s the memories, the feelings, and parts of me that I put into those experiences that made them more than cheap bits of circuitry. I make believe with a controller the same way that I do with my keyboard as I type this. That’s what makes it worth it for every flag pole and trophy I’ve procured.
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Why do YOU play? Care to reminisce, reflect, or jot down what makes you come back to video-games? Write your comments below and thanks so much for reading. I especially thank those who’ve stuck with this blog all these months of 2013. I appreciate it more than you know. It ain’t over ‘til it’s over though. Stick around for it and you might just see a few more.