Video Games and Escapism

A Journey into the world of simulated stimulation

With the summer holidays rapidly approaching and this year’s exam season a small, unshapely blob surrounded by whirling dust particles in the rear-view mirror of my life, I’ve recently found myself with an abundance of free time and not enough money to continually inebriate myself into the comfortable depths of short-lived euphoria. In my quest for cheap entertainment, I recently came across an old relic of a game who for these past couple of years had been biding its time in the cupboard, just waiting to provide me with a sense of nostalgia and once again govern my attentions as daddy’s favourite toy. Placing Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion into the disc tray of my Xbox 360, I sat down on the bed and eagerly awaited to relive what must have pathetically been the highlight of my 15^th year on earth.

As I began playing through the opening chapters, I found myself uncharacteristically musing on the philosophy of the whole experience – why am I doing this? I suppose the short-term, superficial answer would be “to kill time”. Yet that didn’t explain why I didn’t just go outside and ride my bike, or hang out with my friends or even attempt to get a job. Having stood timidly on the borders of casual and hardcore gaming for most of my life, I’m no stranger to the feeling of being able to lose oneself in the medium of video games (and indeed this may be the crux of any interactive experience), but I can’t help feeling slightly unsettled by the fact that I’m more than willing to neglect pretty much any aspect of life for that of a virtual experience.

I mean, there’s nothing wrong with escapism if it’s occasional and not desperately sought after as an alternative to your current life, because if the latter is true then something has definitely gone wrong for you somewhere along the line. But escapism is a fundamental part of human existence; the imperfectity of the whole “live out your miserable childhood, then get a job and work for 50 years to support your wife’s shoe fetish” rigmarole is bookended by birth and death – supposedly cyclical in nature, but apparently not for Mr. Joe Bloggs (pun intended) – and our imaginations and impossible dreams are usually what keep us going for so long.

And then the paddle that is my argument once again hits the text and sends it flying into the other side of the court. The half inhabited by pessimism.

Gaming, much like alcohol, drugs, women and smoking is a breeding ground for those with addictive personalities. I’m not going to blame video games for being addictive, because I really think that’s more to do with the person in this case, but there’s no denying that masses of smalltown nerd paradigms are drawn to video games in a motion that can best be summarised as “magnetism”. Indeed, those a few a rungs below me on the social ladder (the type of poor, depraved human beings who spend their waking hours googling pictures of girls because they can’t hold a conversation with one in real life without hyperventilating) need something to fill the empty void in their lives usually satiated by sex and human contact.

Now, as far as limits go, I’m not entirely sure there is one. Some people end up literally living their entire lives on social substitutes like Habbo Hotel or Second Life, even allowing them to take priority of their relationships, and most of those people probably don’t see the harm in it. Nurturing, more than academia and definitely more than wealth, success and fame, is the most important aspect of human development (yes, shun my unilateralism declarations, but you know I’m right). Sure you have genes and DNA and other shit like that, but who you ultimately are depends on what you’ve been exposed to, and if instead of those all-important social experiences to bring you into the real world from those days where you’d cry and kick and scream if anyone other than your mother picked you up you have LCD screens and filth-encrusted keyboards, then you’re not exactly going to blossom into that cute, little flower of extrovertism, are you?

Video games have the potential to lead people astray, but that’s no more the fault of the video games industry than it is of any other media in society. I hate how they get so much stick for something that really isn’t their fault, and it annoys me so much that I’m going to list the main reasons for it so as to show you how stupid and illogical they really are.

1) Out-of-touch parents. Let’s face it, for every 1 parent who actively participates in video gaming, there are at least 8 or 9 trollops who wouldn’t know how to turn a computer on if the button glowed an arousing, neon green colour. Oh wait, most of them do. And the stereotypical ignorance of these austere, 40-something parents is particularly exacerbated in the likes of Christian mothers, particularly those from Texas. Whenever any angst-riddled teen decides that others are unworthy of God’s life-giving oxygen and sets out to empty a few magnum rounds into a nearby classroom, those buttcheeks are always the first to grease up the wheels, rein the horses and get the bandwagon of “video games are bad” rolling, usually with the support of a bespectacled, suit-wearing local Christian councillor. Pretty easy to blame video games, or violent movies, or Slipknot, isn’t it? Maybe if you’d spent some time encouraging the kid’s happiness instead of screaming bible verses at him whenever he so much as looks at another man’s sixpack this wouldn’t have happened, you fat, sexually-repressed theist.

2) A scapegoat for society’s decadence. Okay, so it’s easy for us to say that life is good and happy and wonderful, and that the sublime beauty of nature’s innocence manifested in the aimless fluttering butterflies’ of wings beneath the warmth of the morning sun is proof of this, but I’m sure we all secretly know that 90% of everywhere on earth sucks. Despite the fact that we’re lucky enough to live in a place where, even if you’re a talentless liability to the world you can still rely on state handouts to live a comfortable and secure life, there is a large degree of moral decay. Society largely revolves around money, success, materialism and shallow pretensions of popularity, coincidentally how we also usually how we measure our worth as human beings, and whenever something goes wrong in society (i.e. the rampage of a gun-wielding teen leaving two dozen families distraught), we’d much rather blame a minor influential force than actually consider re-evaluating the customs and very framework of our culture that drives people to murder - á la video games industry.

3) Manhunt/2. Yes, this is a specific reference to the series of games which ostensibly revolve around maiming human beings in the most horrific way imaginable, all for the sake of the sexual pleasure of some deranged sadist somewhere. Above all others, this game is particularly well-noted for its beef with the pacifist community, and as such often comes into arguments for why video games encourage violence. I kinda see how they might have a point on this one, because the game pretty much revolves around killing, but allow me to draw upon a few honest facts and compare them for you. While Japan has an alarmingly large niche market for rape games incontinently leaking depravity that usually involve underage schoolgirls, this couples with the country having one of the lowest rape rates in the world. Compare 1.77/100,000 people in Japan to 14.2/100,000 in United Kingdom or the 30.1/100,000 in the United States [Source] and hop onto my train of logic here. The government doesn’t encourage these games in Japan, but the Freedom of Speech movement lets them tolerate it and the effect that has on the subject matter being displayed is rather interesting. It’s not conclusive evidence from the results of any overhyped study, but it does support the point that if you loosen the choke chain of censorship on society then people tend to be more informed and less likely to do stupid things. Or maybe Japan’s just awesome, I dunno.

4) Ignorance. Although I’ve saved the least colourful for last, I do feel it’s the most important reason for pretty much any dissension between two parties. Most of the people that spurt out the same arguments against video games verbatim have usually never actually sat down and taken the time to experience a first-hand experience of what they’re ranting about. Their opinions are formed from advertisements, tabloid articles or sometimes even just being aware of a game’s existence, and this gives them no right to start making uninformed judgements. If you want to play a game for a while and then decide that it’s THAT detrimental to little Timmy’s development then fine, just go look at my other three points above, but you’ll probably end up at least questioning whether you’re right or not after you realise it’s not as bad as you thought. With the exception of Manhunt/2 of course.

To link this digression back to my original train of thought, bouts of escapism in games generally allow you to work off a lot of steam and have fun – pretty much what games are designed for. If you want to kill half the Wehrmacht in Medal of Honor or braid pigtails in Barbie’s Horse Riding Adventure, then go for it.

Just don’t forget you have a significantly lower resistance to bullets the next time you try to rob a state bank.