Thoughts on Gaming

A Penny For Them

Gaming is such an interesting topic to me.

I have been gaming my entire life going way back to the early 80’s.

In that time I have seen so much change and so many different types of games & gamers.

I’ve seen old friends move on from gaming and new friends discover and fall in love with gaming for the first time.

I’ve met younger gamers unfamiliar with the classics and older gamers who embrace the nostalgia of our youth.

I’ve reconnected with friends that had drifted away, and the bridge that brought us back together was gaming.

Back in the Day

When I was young, games were fancy toys.

The lights and sounds were hypnotic, but the experience was very two dimensional.

But despite any shortcomings I still loved you, Atari 2600. 😉

No, the first time I ever experienced the feeling of getting sucked into a game world was playing The Legend of Zelda on the original NES.

That feeling of adventure and story, the way it sparked my imagination and how everything on the screen looked real through the eyes of a child.

After my parents had spent years trying to foster a love for reading in me that they had for their books, I had finally found stories that I could connect with. Stories that I could love.

The player agency I discovered caused my world to grow exponentially and impacted me dramatically as a child.

And I will never forget that feeling.

Turn and Face the Strange

Times have changed though…

And gamers have changed also.

The fun of low gravity, instagib on Facing Worlds, or hunting down that little bastard playing Odd Job has been replaced with a swaggering competition by people striving to be the next eSports champion.

Or that’s how it seems all these years later.

But the stories remain…

As I have grown older these stories have become far more important to me. These stories have been the thing that remains despite all the other change.

At the dawn of time people sat around campfires and told stories.

And we still tell them to this day.

People change, mediums change, purposes change but the stories still remain.

Our Mind Creates Our Reality

It took me a long time to realize that I found something different in games than other people I played with.

For the longest time, playing MMOs in the early 2000’s with my friends was a joy to me.

They would all eventually move on or complain about drop rates, the grind, PVP, competition, etc, etc, etc…

For me, I never really saw any of that.

Sure, here and there I would think, ok that’s a good point I hadn’t thought of.

But for me it was always about being a kid and running through the woods with my friends fighting dragons and going on incredible adventures.

Being a young adult and still using that power of imagination that games had given me as a child.

I guess that’s why I never saw it.

Or at least I never saw it the way they did.

“Stories you read when you’re the right age never quite leave you. You may forget who wrote them or what the story was called. Sometimes you’ll forget precisely what happened, but if a story touches you it will stay with you, haunting the places in your mind that you rarely ever visit.”

– Neil Gaiman

Hold Your Breath, Make a Wish

For me games have always been an escape.

A way to delve into and hold onto my imagination even as I grow older.

Sure, I could look at things through a much more critical lens, but why?

At the end of the day that wouldn’t bring me joy.

What games have offered me is an escape from the ordinary and tedious.

The way some people escape into art, movies, music or books.

Games are just another place for your mind to go and live for a while away from all the things that are out of our control.

Because of games I have spent a lifetime going on adventures with friends, real and imagined.

And the one thing that has always been there for me…

Are the stories.