Why Do We Game?
I know, that's a silly question. Why do we game? Well, because it's fun. Article's over, goodnight everyone. There's always something deeper though. This generation - more so than previous generations - seems to place high regard on playtime. Our personal lives are vastly more important than our professional ones, and we just plain like to play. Board games, chess, sports and other forms of play have been around for centuries but video games have captured imaginations far more than any previous incarnation of kicking a ball around or moving a carved piece across a board.
Of course, video games are more immersive. As our technology increases we are able to provide increasingly more realistic simulations of the various environments we are trying to recreate. Games are more intricate and more detailed, but I believe there is something deeper to our obsession. I think it's us. It's how we were raised.
Keep in mind this is entirely anecdotal. I am not a psychologist. I have a degree in Art, not in analyzing brain meats. I am just spewing a mind-dump on you this Monday morning as I sit on the couch with a horrible head cold. Maybe it's the NyQuil talking, but I felt like sharing something personal with you guys. I, like many of you geekateers, come from a "broken" home. My parents divorced when I was 7 and spread a lot of anger, resentment and other generally negative emotions about. That's not to say that children from divorced families don't grow up to be normal, fantastic citizens in their own right. Divorce is not a bad thing. Marriage is a bad thing; divorce is just the product of us finally reaching a breaking point after being fed lies since birth that every princess must find her prince, and that a man and a woman must both be present to raise a child. It doesn't work, it never has worked, give it a rest. No, I am mainly talking about the effect living in such a negative home situation had on my personal level of growth.
After the divorce I spent a lot of time playing video games. I remember renting games from the local corner store religiously, playing through Mega Man 2, Final Fantasy and other NES classics. Sitting in front of that TV and experiencing the brilliance that was the NES heyday is one of my fondest memories of childhood. It was escapism, pure and simple. I was sitting there and having fun instead of listening to my parents argue violently. When they moved apart, I continued my obsession fueled by the fact that my mother was never at home. She was always out on dates, or out at bars after work, and my sister and I were left to our own devices in the evenings. Usually that meant playing video games or watching TV. Every other weekend, I would go to my Dad's house where we had an SNES that he kept over there so we had something to do. Between chores like mowing the lawn, I'd be playing more rented stuff like Secret of Mana, Earthbound, Final Fantasy 3 and Actraiser. I always loved the games that I could spend massive amounts of time in - real marathon sessions with Harvest Moon and SimCity. I'd stay up late, past when everyone had gone to bed and turning the sound down to barely a whisper. I'd let the quiet of the evening sink in while I sit there and play through these brilliant games.
Of course, having the SNES at my Dad's house meant that I couldn't play it all the time. I had to wait every other weekend, and when that time came you better be damn well sure I played it as much as I could. During the Summer that meant my Dad yelling at me to play outside, which I never understood. I was never athletic, I sunburned easily, had allergies and just felt more comfortable indoors with these highly intellectual and supremely fun games. Why would I want to go experience tired, sunburned sneeziness when I could quest with Moogles?
When the N64 came out, I had just received my very first paycheck from my very first paying job ever. I spent it on the N64 and a copy of Star Fox 64 and never left my bedroom. My friends would come over almost nightly to play Smash Brothers and Goldeneye. Now that I had my own money, I could get games whenever I wanted to, and it became a kind of natural high. It was a sort of a "screw you" to my Dad that now I could play games as long as I want, whenever I wanted to. I'd pick up a new game from the local Game Crazy. I'd tear off the cellophane and open the box, immediately smelling the manual. I'd read it cover to cover to make sure that I got everything out of my purchase. I was going to experience every single second of this game because I bought it.
This kind of obsessive behavior has spread to my adulthood. I still choose to escape into video games, but now that it's become part of my professional life as well it feels a bit less dirty. Everyone I know plays video games, and it's fast becoming one of the most successful forms of media, surpassing the movie industry by far. Is it still escapism? For me, only sometimes. Now I game for various reasons: to keep up with the industry (Halo 3), to relax (E4), to have fun with friends (Rock Band).
Going through my very own divorce this year has made me contemplative about life in general. As I grow older I notice similarities between my parents and I. Whereas at my age my parents were giving birth to me and working long hours in order to survive, I put my focus on how much time I can spend with friends, and how many hours a day I can squeeze in game time. I am by no means hardcore, I don't play shooters and tend to gravitate more towards adventure or puzzle games - stuff I can pick up and put down at any time. My gaming tastes have changed, but the reason I play remains the same.
Why do you game?
