Video Games and Why I Play Them

Quote of the Day -- "What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets." (Dracula, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night)
My Face When of the Day -- http://myfacewhen.com/i/498.jpg

So as I sat here, bored today, I started thinking about why I do some of the things I do. I thought about why I argue for fun, why I'm as lazy and uncaring about certain things as I am, etc. The major thing I thought about today is....Why do I play so much vidya? Sure, everyone may have their own reasons, but what specifically makes ME want to play games so much?

The answer : Achievement. Bragging Rights. An Escape.

The first, the achievements. I'm not talking directly about Xbox 360 Achievements or anything, but the feeling of having done something, either big or small. Completing a game, taking the time to 100% it, or just raising a skill level after some time playing. It's all the same. I can sit there and mindlessly play something like Runescape for hours on end, because I feel like accomplishing after seeing my skills raised in levels or seeing the stack of gold I made today.

The second, bragging rights. I'm a gamer, and as such I seek out fellow gamers to talk to about games. Seems like a natural thing to do. Well, it's nice to be able to say that, "My best killstreak was 40-0 on COD: MW2. What's yours?" when you meet them and get into that kind of discussion, which will almost always come up when you play similar games. Some people just feel the need to be better than others at some things, or at least be able to stay on par. I guess I am just one of those kinds of people. I refuse to look at it in such a negative light most of the time. It's good to have some kind of drive to succeed, driven both by this point and the point I had made previously.

The third....escape. It has taken me several years to realize this fully and to accept it, but I most notably used video games to escape from my middle school and high school years. Sure I didn't have a horrible reason to escape, but to me...life gets boring way too often. So, why not disappear into a video game where I can have interesting adventures or kill some zombies etc? People use many things for an escape from daily life, so its not hard to imagine or see.

Now, these are just glancing views at some of the reasons I play video games, as I'm sure you can tell they aren't horribly detailed. Everyone has their own reasons for doing things, I just thought I'd write about mine today.

Go ahead and leave me comments about maybe why you play video games, or anything along the lines of the three ideas posted today. Or just criticism. Or just hi.

Until tomorrow~

Gray