Explaining Games to Non-Gamers
Lately more and more people ask me “why do you game?” With so many in quarantine it seems non-gamers, typically parents stuck at home with their kids, are asking what it is that draws people to play games.
And when I say play games, I mean play games. I sunk thousands of hours into anything I could get my hands on as a kid: Runescape, Maplestory, World of Warcraft, that terrifying Jurassic Park game on the SNES.
These 200 pixels instill the fear of death.
To me and my friends, it was second nature, but I was well aware it wasn’t the norm.
Nowadays the tables have flipped. Gen-Z drops hours into games like midwestern white girls do rewatching The Office. Streaming and professional gaming are stretch goals for kids growing up. The pros that “make it” are idols. Teenagers are raking in thousands (even millions in rare cases) from winning regional tournaments. It’s “cool” to stream yourself gaming (and/or just about anything), whereas before you kept that shit locked down or faced ridicule. To top it all off, it’s easier to get games than ever with services like steam and digital downloads. And, while I have absolutely no source for this, it seems anecdotally parents are generally more accepting of their kids binging gaming sessions. This is probably in part due to the fact that many parents are/were gamers themselves.
At the least, parents seem generally more tolerant of their kids playing games. Personally, I think it was inevitable that parents and older generations started to become curious about the obsession that’s swept the younger generations. Much like movies and digital media that became commonplace for baby boomers, games are our generation’s entertainment vice, if you can even call it that.
Okay, so what? Just because a bunch of people are doing it, shouldn’t be a reason alone to follow suit. The question, again, is why do you game? Well, my cop out answer is always “why do you watch television? read books? play sports?”
The answers are obvious and trite: all of these things are an escape, an extension of ourselves, a method of playing, etc. You don’t need your doctorate in behavioral psych to understand, and that’s why it’s a cop out of an answer.
The question that’s never asked is “what makes you choose games over sports, tv, books?” This is where it gets interesting for me.
“But I don’t just choose one over the other. I do all of those things.”
Okay, sure. Great. I enjoy many hobbies as well, but you don’t see me over here dumping 5–12 hours into painting rocks, all the while barely moving from my chair.