I. A Gamer's Perspective

Most of you know that I am an avid gamer. I play all sorts of games - first person shooters, real-time strategy games, role-playing games, etc. I've been gaming since I was young - the first game I remember playing was Ski-Free on Windows 95.  My first console was the N64, complete with Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire. Curiously, my Dad [who bought us the game] decided we were too "young" to play and instead played the entire game by himself. Coincidence? I think not!

In my experience, (1) games are beneficial and (2) not a waste of time.

Some of you might think that this is sad: I have played games since I was a kid and continue to do so now, even through law school. On the contrary, I think that growing up gaming has been a great experience for me. Gaming has been an integral part of my life - I love games for many reasons [aside from the fact that they're ridiculously awesome!].

More after the jump!  Warning: very long - I apologize in advance.




1. Games take skill and strategy.

In Halo 3, I like to run in blindly and try to kill as many people as I can. However, it usually makes more sense to hide behind a tree when I'm being shot at, or to take the long route and sneak up on my enemy. In DOTA, I can ignore the rest of my team and take on enemy heroes single-handedly - but we'd likely lose if I don't cooperate with the person I am laning with. Even in a game like TF2, where there are so many players that any one individual often doesn't make a difference, we must be willing to work together - without offering to play a class that no one is willing to play [I hate playing Medic!], Red or Blu would never win.

Yeah... running straight in was a BAD IDEA

2. Games allow my imagination to wander, giving me an opportunity to exercise my creativity.

When playing Dragon Age: Origins, a game with a rich history of countries, people, and its own lore, I'm able to imagine the vast world of Thedas - what would life truly be like if I were one of the Grey Wardens? Would I make the same choices that the game designers allowed? Why do the characters in the game act as they do, and is there a way I can use my knowledge of their motives to my advantage?  What do I imagine the history of each character to be?

By the way, my header is a screenshot I took from Dragon Age. It's an amazing image and shows that video games are not always just about blood and gore - they are works of art which we can fully appreciate.

3. Perhaps one of the most significant ways in which gaming has influenced me is by allowing me to not take everything I hear to heart, and not to take every single criticism seriously [though I'm still trying!].

When I'm playing TF2 or when I'm on Xbox Live, I hear people say things for the sake of being annoying or for the shock factor. I can choose to yell back, at which the eloquent player on the other end can respond with something like, "noob," "pwned," or "your Mom." I've learned to ignore the insults that people throw at me because it makes no difference to me what they think. In the end, the ability to tune them out [and muting sure helps!] is an important skill that allows me to know when and where to accept criticism and when and where to engage in argument.

No use yelling back at her . . . she's obviously a troll!

a. I'm going to go off on a tangent here for a second. One of the most annoying things I've come across while gaming are the idiots players who always pretend to be amazed that there are females on the Internet, let alone on game servers. The fact that females still play when there are morons players making lewd comments and asking for pictures and personal info is a miracle. I used to love using my mic while playing - but after awhile, being spammed and harassed with such comments gets a little old. Of course, not all players are like that - my TF2 community has been a great place for me to feel welcome and talk with others who have similar interests.

4. My typing skills are vastly improved since I started playing games.

My classmates are amazed that I'm able to basically transcribe my professor's lectures, word for word. How do I do this? Because my typing speed is up there - and it has to be, especially if I'm going to warn a teammate in DOTA about a gank, or yell at a pyro to come spy-check my buildings in TF2. Basically, the longer I take to sit there and type to my teammates, the longer I'm vulnerable to an attack. In a game like StarCraft, the faster I build by relying on hotkeys, the more of an advantage I have over an opponent who does not use hotkeys.

MWAHAHA thanks to my superior hotkey skills . . . ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US!

5. Finally, video games allow me to have an outlet through which to release my frustrations, tensions, or stress when there is no other sane way for me to deal with them.

Video games give me a break from my mundane world of reading casebooks and writing briefs and memos - instead, I get to slip into a world where I'm the hero who must defeat the Blight, or must defend my Ancient and defeat my enemy's. I'm in a world where I'm bent on surviving the zombie apocalypse a la Left4Dead, or a world where I am the only thing standing between the Covenant, the Flood, and the annihilation of the human race.

Video games let me escape for a little bit from my everyday life and journey into a world where I have [almost] complete control over my destiny. They let me escape my tiny apartment and enter a place full of unexplored cities, countries, planets, and worlds.

Welcome to the Exciting World of Casebooks!

. . .

Of course there are plenty of other reasons why I love playing video games - it has always been one of my hobbies, no matter how much some of my friends try to get me to stop gaming. So this next section is for all those who insist that playing video games is a waste of time.

1. What do you do when you come home from school or work?

Do you go onto Facebook for hours and play FarmVille? Restaurant City? Social City? Mobsters? Do you play online Tetris, Chess, Poker, Peggle, or Bejeweled? Well guess what - those are all video games, too! Video games are more than Grand Theft Auto, Zelda, or Mario - they include those little games you play while in class or at work, or on your iPhone, NexusOne, or Droid.

You likely play video games, you just don't want to admit it!



2. What do you do for fun?

Watch TV? Listen to music? Read books? I know a lot of people who don't play video games but instead spend hours and hours surfing the web or watching movies and TV shows - isn't that just as much of a "waste of time" as playing games?

You might spend hours watching the entire last season of 24 or Lost, or you might spend hours reading the Twilight series. I don't really care what it is, but the fact of the matter is that you probably spend as much time doing "useless" things as I spend playing video games! We all need some form of entertainment to give us some relief from the daily grind, whether it is through video games, TV, movies, music, or books. In reality, if I didn't play video games, I would probably be doing one of the above. I don't see why those forms of entertainment are acceptable, whereas video games are a waste of time.

I firmly believe that video games are actually more engaging than most forms of entertainment - players are fully immersed in the virtual world rather than just sitting back and absorbing everything.  We're thinking and strategizing about our next moves, we're organizing our items and armor, we're chatting with people, we're planning which quests to fulfill.

Entertainment? . . . You're doing it wrong.

3. Another common misconception about video games is that all gamers are socially-awkward geeks who live in their mom's basements, hooked up to three different monitors and playing games while eating chips and drinking soda [no offense meant if this is you!].

I agree with critics that it's important to have plenty of face-to-face interaction on a daily basis - the virtual world cannot substitute for the real world.

But I don't want you to underestimate the amount of communication that goes into gaming. When I want to chill in my pajamas and not worry about looking presentable, I can go online, log onto Steam, and chat with people in my Friends list or in-game. I can play DOTA and talk to the other members of the Sentinel about gameplay or whatever else I want. I can jump onto XBL and play Halo with friends from high school and college. For those who play WoW [I haven't tried it yet], I'm sure you wouldn't be able to go on successful raids without some form of communication with the rest of your team - and many people do form real friendships while playing games like WoW.

When I invite friends over to play Super Smash Brothers or Mario Kart, we're yelling and laughing and challenging each other. When I play co-op in Gears of War with a friend, we're talking and discussing strategy and tactics. It's about making sure that everyone is working together and building up a form of trust - it will save you the trouble of having to replay a level over again because your teammate was unwilling to communicate with you, or losing a game because your teammate wasn't listening.  But it's also about getting to know and understand people better and building up friendships.

Socially awkward loners? . . . I think not!

Sometimes it's easier to talk to someone you don't know and who doesn't know you - someone without a  perspective on you.  They can be more objective when listening to your problems and when giving you advice. It may be easier to really be yourself around people who don't know you because what do you care what they think about you?

As long as you're smart about the sort of information you choose to reveal about yourself, I think that talking to others online is beneficial. You get to speak with people who might be outside your normal group of friends in real life, and you may be more comfortable and open when discussing issues because it doesn't really matter what they think of you anyway.

By the way, I'm in no way condoning chatting with strangers about all aspects of your personal life and giving them details such as contact info and your address. Be smart about who you talk to online and what you choose to share! Don't forget that the Internet allows us to mask our identities and be almost anyone we want - so be very, very careful about who you talk to and what you say.

. . .

In the meantime, I'm off to play some Dragon Age! The Awakening expansion pack is coming out tomorrow, and I absolutely can't wait.

As an aside, I sometimes wish I had a PS3. Although I was complaining about immature certain players earlier and the way they sometimes treat female gamers, I would totally go onto PS3 Home and relentlessly torment those idiots players who annoy me.


*No copyright infringement intended by the images used in this post. I found all the above images on Google Image Search. If you feel that your rights have been violated, contact Google and request that they remove the image from their site.