No way around it; life isn't that great. Even if you are someone who is happy with their life, in the end, life was not that great. There is not enough time to do everything you want, and see everything you want, and live through all those great moments you dream about. This is where video games come in; they let you live the life of someone else, but only the moments that are worth living*. Imagine being able to tune out for an hour or two, or maybe five or six in many cases, and be the hero who slays dragons and becomes a legend, the commander of an army desperately holding on for control of a town, the best formula 1 racer in the world, or the creator of an entire world, limited only by your imagination. In the most simplest terms, it takes boring moments, moments not worth experiencing in our real life, and turns it into moments worth living in another world.
Why the Stigma?
We have all heard it before, and we all know the stereotypes: Gamers are anti-social, unhygienic, overweight men with scraggly, pube-like beards sprouting from their necks. Others say gamers are violent, and many say that we are wasting our lives. Since we choose to spend our time in a world or a setting that doesn't exist to escape reality occasionally we are labeled as some sort of out-cast. The reality is, we are spending our time the same way everyone else is, but it is less accepted.
What is a movie? It is a 2-hour break from life where the viewer gets to experience the lives of other people.
What is a TV show? It is a half-hour break from life where the viewer gets to experience the lives of other people.
What is a book? It is a 500-page break from life where the reader gets to experience the lives of other people.
What is a video games? It is a break from life where the player gets to experience the lives of other people.
We all do it.
We all do it, but no one wants to admit it. Regardless if you watch TV to avoid doing dishes, read a book to spend some time before work, watch a movie because you don't want to cook dinner yet, or play a video-game instead of studying; we are all trying to experience moments when there aren't any moments to experience. Of course, books and reading have been around for far longer than Movies, or Television, or video games, and they are all things that weren't really accepted at the time. When books were first able to be printed and mass distributed, the Bible became a book nearly all people had. It often wasn't read for leisure but for guidance or faith. When people began writing books of fiction**, it was uncommon for someone to just be reading, since reading was not a common past time of a previous generation. Movies, similarly, were not nearly watched as much as today when they were first screened. Not many people owned a Television when it first came out, and it was something people thought was a waste of time.
We finally come to video games, which have only been around for half a century, and commonly only since 1972 with the release of the Magnavox Odyssey, or more probably in 1977 when the Atari 2600 was released. Even though this was the introduction of "commercial" video games, in the sense that anyone at home could use it, not too many people were playing games. The "best" games were usually still in arcades, since the large machines were able to hold more content. With the introduction of powerful gaming hardware, with consoles like the PlayStation 1 and the Ninendo 64 (honorable mention for the NES and SNES), we opened up a path for games to move exclusively to the living room. This is the generation that begins seeing video games as a common past time. The thing is, I'm not sure if we are the generation that saw video games as a common and acceptable past time. It was common, yes, but I know many gamers who don't just openly talk about games because of the stigma that comes with it. However, I think that the current generation will be the one to begin normalizing video games through the help of us and older generations of gamers. E-sports is becoming huge thanks to Counterstrike, Starcraft, and League of Legends; video games are becoming a learning tool for elementary teachers by using games like Minecraft or educational games to make learning more interesting. However, I might just be wrong, and it might all just be a fad. In the end, just remember that video games are a past time like anything else and it is not something to be ashamed of. Of course, sitting in front of the computer or TV all day, every day, is not a healthy habit; everything needs to be done in moderation. Remember, we are replacing moments that offer no experiences with a reality that does, we are not replacing our reality altogether.
*Some games, like The Sims, Minecraft, and many detailed RPGs let you live the moments that aren't much different from our own
**This blog will try to remain neutral whenever possible, I am not saying the Bible is non-fiction, nor am I saying it is fiction - it is up to the reader to choose which one it is
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