Gaming as Escapism.

I'm doing a more serious piece over my usual light-hearted nostalgia trips. I'd recently thought about the idea of gaming as a form of escapism and began jotting down notes as they came to me which eventually turned into pages of intangible writing, so I apologise if this doesn't flow well, one of my main objectives is not to offend.

This did involve some form of reflection, I couldn't talk about this idea without using my own experiences and personality as a gamer. They are, after all, what I'm most familiar with. This mostly involved following my mood patterns in correlation with types of games I played and just how engaged with them I have been.

It's pretty common to, like myself, have games to play that promote or reflect a certain mood. I know I'm in a good mood when I'm playing Gitaroo Man, this I picked up on straight away, I'm always happy when playing it and that is evident in the fact that it's a fun, lighthearted game. Then I have my boredom games which are usually basic side-scrolling platformers like Super Mario World, Sonic and Zool. However, it's the kind of games I play when I feel sad that brought me onto this touchy subject.

They are always the long, dramatic, artsy, adventure games. Zelda, Ico, Shenmue (to name my most regular visits) which strangely enough are in my top 5 games. These aren't games I will sit down and play for an hour, these are games that I have been known to sit and spend days playing, taking my undivided attention and full concentration. Being engrossed is perhaps the correct term. Spending so much time on one game isn't uncommon and it certainly doesn't point to escapism, at least not as an individual reason. But when combined with the original emotion of choosing to play that game and the feelings the game promotes (or blocks out) I began to wonder if I use gaming as a form of escapism from difficult times in life and if that is why I have become so attached emotionally to these games, they are after all inanimate objects.

I'm painting this terrible picture of me being a recluse person that indulges in games too often but that's really not the case which also drags my argument against gaming being a form of escapism. Gaming is meant to be recreational, for the most part, so perhaps I turn to these games during depressing or anxious times merely for recreational purposes.

My problem with that argument (to debate fairly) is that I don't come away from it feeling any better afterwards but my mind is diverted away from any current issues in life during the game play. If I merely wanted to feel better and 'cheer myself up' then, logically, I would turn to a game such as Gitaroo Man that promotes a sense of recreation and fun but I don't.

The biggest finger of blame points to Massively Multi-Player Online RPG's (MMORPG) such as World of War Craft. Unfortunately I'll have to divert the attention away from me here, as I've never played them. These kinds of games often fall into a 'addiction debate'. I 100% believe that you cannot genuinely become addicted to a game (I might talk about that some other time), they can be described as addictive but biologically, no. These games often get the 'ultimate escapism' tag due to the nature of the games. You create your own character, almost a gaming extension of yourself, and interact with other real-life (well not REAL life) people. You can essentially be (or rather, pretend to be) anything or anyone you want and no one knows any better. You can become respected, feared and popular in this gaming world yet amount to little in reality.

In conclusion, I believe that rarely (and in times of trouble) I do use gaming as a form of escapism and yes, sometimes other gamers also use games for this purpose. Do I think it's unhealthy? No. I'm not going to be hard on myself because it's no different than other vices and escapist tendencies I think we can all have in hardship. Some people turn to the bottle, some people try to get out and about and some people use games to blot out and ignore what's going on around them.