The title is a play on Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy, which was a very famous and influential work of the middle ages. I assume this essay will play a similar role in the modern era. I thought about writing it because I seem to return to video games over and over, despite my better judgment.
This is only one example, but it will serve to make the point: I had a serious medical crisis recently -- almost lost my life – and, in the middle of all the agony and misery, I realized, among other things, that I spend way too much of my life playing and yapping about video games. “I really ought to be doing something more meaningful.”
This seemed like an important revelation – not a new one, but an important one – and something I felt committed to following through on. However, here we are six months later, and where am I? I am playing as many, if not more, video games than I ever have.
Why? What happened? It’s not that I lack discipline. Well, I do lack discipline, but that’s not the reason.
The reason is that video games make my life more interesting, enjoyable, and tolerable. They are not particularly meaningful in themselves, but they make my life better. At least I think they do. And here’s why.
My sometimes hum-drum life gets punctuated with exciting adventures. You may find this surprising, but I don’t normally battle waves of aliens, hang by my fingertips from snowy peaks, crash high-performance cars into walls, or detonate large buildings. My life is often a fairly repetitive, workaday experience – go to work, deal with stuff, and then come home and deal with other stuff. You do that over and over for several decades, and it gets a little dull sometimes. Watching a movie, you get to feel the excitement of watching other people being excited, but it’s not the same thing as in games. In games, you are in the middle of the action yourself. Games spice up life in a way no other medium can.
I get to feel powerful. I don’t know about you, but a lot of my daily activities involve fulfilling social obligations of one sort or another, based on rules set up by people who are not me. And a lot of what happens in the world (politics, other people’s choices, etc.) is not in my control. A couple of weeks ago, a colleague said to me, “We really are small fish in a big sea.” That’s how it feels sometimes.
But in a game, I am the central actor. I am the axis around which everything else pivots. My decisions shape the world. I determine who lives and who dies. I make the call. I destroy whole platoons single-handedly. I save the world.
Freedom. Persona 5 director Katsura Hashino said recently that today’s world is full of people who are “bored and discontent with their lives, at a dead end, chained down to a world of which they resent being a part.” Persona 5, he said, was “a game about freedom – the kind these sorts of people haven’t had, living in the real world. I want them to be able to attain that sensation by playing the game.”
I don’t think I’m that bad off (“chained to a world of which I resent being a part”), but I get his point. In real life, I don’t have the freedom I want. I’ve always loved freedom – the freedom to do what I want, when I want, how I want. But instead, I have to get up at a certain time, go to work, take care of my responsibilities there, then come home and take care of my responsibilities here. I have a lot of flexibility, but I don’t have the freedom I really want.
Games, though, give you that freedom. Especially in open world games, you go where you want, when you want, and you do what you want. I can blow stuff up. I can run people over. I can do whatever the hell I want to do. Freedom feels good.
Flow. This is a bit esoteric, but stay with me. There is a researcher named Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and he wrote a book called Flow, where he talks about his studies of “optimal experience.” These “flow” states have certain qualities – for example, they are structured tasks that pose significant challenges and require a high level of attention and skill, and there is performance feedback. If you think about it, that is all present in gaming.
In fact, Csikszentmihalyi uses games as an example of the way that people access this flow state, which is characterized by complete absorption and engagement, a sense of challenge that meets your skill level, a loss of a sense of time, and increasingly complex levels of understanding and interaction. I access that flow state often in games, and it is very satisfying. I never feel it in relation to movies or TV. I do feel it at work sometimes, and sometimes in a good conversation, but games are one of the main ways I access it.
Play. Play is action without a clearly structured purpose or goal. We know that people need to play – not just children, but adults. It serves a critical purpose for us. “All work and no play…” Sometimes, my life seems like “all work.” Things can get serious sometimes and grimly task-oriented. My job is serious. I’m a serious sort of person, mostly. Games help me relieve that heaviness. When I turn on a game, I can relax, let go, and just goof around. I can keep the child in me alive.
Being a sociopath is fun, as long as no one gets hurt. In real life, I’m pretty much of a softie. But it’s nice to play the other side of the coin sometimes. I am in fact appalled at how ruthless I can be in video games. I slaughter wildlife from coast to coast (don’t tell the ASPCA); I kill innocents; I run down pedestrians and laugh as their bodies go careening over my vehicle. I do all sorts of reprehensible things without a twinge of conscience; in fact, I enjoy it. And the reason, of course, is that I’m not actually hurting anyone.I get all of the fun of the violence but with none of the guilt or pesky arrests and convictions.
Life sucks sometimes. When things get too stressful or tense, games provide a respite. I played a lot of Morrowind when my marriage wasn’t going very well. I’m pretty sure it helped (me, that is … probably didn’t do much for the marriage). It allowed me to escape the noisy arguments between my wife and her daughter. Similarly, when I come home after a really stress-packed day, games help me let it go and leave it all behind.
Thrills without risk and decisions without consequences. In real life, of course, it’s tough to find genuine low-risk thrills. If you want to drive an automobile at high speeds into incoming traffic, you’re probably going to have to deal with rising insurance rates, if not bodily dismemberment. If you want to bludgeon someone to death with a giant dildo, you will probably be looking at a citation, at least. Likewise, if you want to make big, earth-shaking decisions in real life, you will probably have to deal with flak and the risk of failure. But in video games, all the thrills are risk free, and none of the decisions have any real consequences. Wheee.
Beauty. If I can wax philosophic for a moment, in the Upanishads, it says, “Whenever you stop before this or that and say, ‘ahhh,’ that is participation in divinity.” Real life is not always beautiful. Sometimes, it is drab, and sometimes, it is downright ugly. In games, though, I often “stop before this or that and say ‘ahhh.’” Maybe it’s a view from a mountain top. Maybe it’s a well-lit underground cavern. Maybe it’s an alien landscape. Maybe it’s a character. Games can sometimes be beautiful when life is not.
Wanderlust. When I was a kid, my family would go on vacations. I’d sit in the car, looking out the window and wondering, “What’s over that hill?” Later in life, I took up hiking and backpacking as a hobby and did that for many years. In my personal life, I’ve always been a curious person, exploring different subjects, interested in knowing the world better. Games feed that need to find out what’s around the next bend.
So, those are some of my thoughts about why I play video games. I doubt any of this comes as a shock to anyone – we all know we game for a reason, and these are some of them. It was a useful exercise for me, though, to think it through. I left a few reasons off, because I didn’t want the article to be too long.
After thinking about all the reasons I play video games, I’m not too surprised that I still do, despite my reservations. They provide me with benefits and consolations that I probably can’t get anywhere else.
This is only one example, but it will serve to make the point: I had a serious medical crisis recently -- almost lost my life – and, in the middle of all the agony and misery, I realized, among other things, that I spend way too much of my life playing and yapping about video games. “I really ought to be doing something more meaningful.”
This seemed like an important revelation – not a new one, but an important one – and something I felt committed to following through on. However, here we are six months later, and where am I? I am playing as many, if not more, video games than I ever have.
Why? What happened? It’s not that I lack discipline. Well, I do lack discipline, but that’s not the reason.
The reason is that video games make my life more interesting, enjoyable, and tolerable. They are not particularly meaningful in themselves, but they make my life better. At least I think they do. And here’s why.
My sometimes hum-drum life gets punctuated with exciting adventures. You may find this surprising, but I don’t normally battle waves of aliens, hang by my fingertips from snowy peaks, crash high-performance cars into walls, or detonate large buildings. My life is often a fairly repetitive, workaday experience – go to work, deal with stuff, and then come home and deal with other stuff. You do that over and over for several decades, and it gets a little dull sometimes. Watching a movie, you get to feel the excitement of watching other people being excited, but it’s not the same thing as in games. In games, you are in the middle of the action yourself. Games spice up life in a way no other medium can.
I get to feel powerful. I don’t know about you, but a lot of my daily activities involve fulfilling social obligations of one sort or another, based on rules set up by people who are not me. And a lot of what happens in the world (politics, other people’s choices, etc.) is not in my control. A couple of weeks ago, a colleague said to me, “We really are small fish in a big sea.” That’s how it feels sometimes.
But in a game, I am the central actor. I am the axis around which everything else pivots. My decisions shape the world. I determine who lives and who dies. I make the call. I destroy whole platoons single-handedly. I save the world.
Freedom. Persona 5 director Katsura Hashino said recently that today’s world is full of people who are “bored and discontent with their lives, at a dead end, chained down to a world of which they resent being a part.” Persona 5, he said, was “a game about freedom – the kind these sorts of people haven’t had, living in the real world. I want them to be able to attain that sensation by playing the game.”
I don’t think I’m that bad off (“chained to a world of which I resent being a part”), but I get his point. In real life, I don’t have the freedom I want. I’ve always loved freedom – the freedom to do what I want, when I want, how I want. But instead, I have to get up at a certain time, go to work, take care of my responsibilities there, then come home and take care of my responsibilities here. I have a lot of flexibility, but I don’t have the freedom I really want.
Games, though, give you that freedom. Especially in open world games, you go where you want, when you want, and you do what you want. I can blow stuff up. I can run people over. I can do whatever the hell I want to do. Freedom feels good.
Flow. This is a bit esoteric, but stay with me. There is a researcher named Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and he wrote a book called Flow, where he talks about his studies of “optimal experience.” These “flow” states have certain qualities – for example, they are structured tasks that pose significant challenges and require a high level of attention and skill, and there is performance feedback. If you think about it, that is all present in gaming.
In fact, Csikszentmihalyi uses games as an example of the way that people access this flow state, which is characterized by complete absorption and engagement, a sense of challenge that meets your skill level, a loss of a sense of time, and increasingly complex levels of understanding and interaction. I access that flow state often in games, and it is very satisfying. I never feel it in relation to movies or TV. I do feel it at work sometimes, and sometimes in a good conversation, but games are one of the main ways I access it.
Play. Play is action without a clearly structured purpose or goal. We know that people need to play – not just children, but adults. It serves a critical purpose for us. “All work and no play…” Sometimes, my life seems like “all work.” Things can get serious sometimes and grimly task-oriented. My job is serious. I’m a serious sort of person, mostly. Games help me relieve that heaviness. When I turn on a game, I can relax, let go, and just goof around. I can keep the child in me alive.
Being a sociopath is fun, as long as no one gets hurt. In real life, I’m pretty much of a softie. But it’s nice to play the other side of the coin sometimes. I am in fact appalled at how ruthless I can be in video games. I slaughter wildlife from coast to coast (don’t tell the ASPCA); I kill innocents; I run down pedestrians and laugh as their bodies go careening over my vehicle. I do all sorts of reprehensible things without a twinge of conscience; in fact, I enjoy it. And the reason, of course, is that I’m not actually hurting anyone.I get all of the fun of the violence but with none of the guilt or pesky arrests and convictions.
Life sucks sometimes. When things get too stressful or tense, games provide a respite. I played a lot of Morrowind when my marriage wasn’t going very well. I’m pretty sure it helped (me, that is … probably didn’t do much for the marriage). It allowed me to escape the noisy arguments between my wife and her daughter. Similarly, when I come home after a really stress-packed day, games help me let it go and leave it all behind.
Thrills without risk and decisions without consequences. In real life, of course, it’s tough to find genuine low-risk thrills. If you want to drive an automobile at high speeds into incoming traffic, you’re probably going to have to deal with rising insurance rates, if not bodily dismemberment. If you want to bludgeon someone to death with a giant dildo, you will probably be looking at a citation, at least. Likewise, if you want to make big, earth-shaking decisions in real life, you will probably have to deal with flak and the risk of failure. But in video games, all the thrills are risk free, and none of the decisions have any real consequences. Wheee.
Beauty. If I can wax philosophic for a moment, in the Upanishads, it says, “Whenever you stop before this or that and say, ‘ahhh,’ that is participation in divinity.” Real life is not always beautiful. Sometimes, it is drab, and sometimes, it is downright ugly. In games, though, I often “stop before this or that and say ‘ahhh.’” Maybe it’s a view from a mountain top. Maybe it’s a well-lit underground cavern. Maybe it’s an alien landscape. Maybe it’s a character. Games can sometimes be beautiful when life is not.
Wanderlust. When I was a kid, my family would go on vacations. I’d sit in the car, looking out the window and wondering, “What’s over that hill?” Later in life, I took up hiking and backpacking as a hobby and did that for many years. In my personal life, I’ve always been a curious person, exploring different subjects, interested in knowing the world better. Games feed that need to find out what’s around the next bend.
So, those are some of my thoughts about why I play video games. I doubt any of this comes as a shock to anyone – we all know we game for a reason, and these are some of them. It was a useful exercise for me, though, to think it through. I left a few reasons off, because I didn’t want the article to be too long.
After thinking about all the reasons I play video games, I’m not too surprised that I still do, despite my reservations. They provide me with benefits and consolations that I probably can’t get anywhere else.
