The Game’s the Thing

“Years ago, I was asked by a non-gaming friend to explain the attrac­tion of gam­ing, specif­i­cally play­ing MMOs. ‘It just makes no sense,’ she said to me. ‘Why do you want to pre­tend to be some­one else, in a made-up place, with a bunch of other peo­ple who are pre­tend­ing to be some­one else?’

I remem­ber shrug­ging and say­ing, ‘I don’t know, exactly. You read nov­els, right?’ She did, and nod­ded. ‘Well,’ I asked, ‘What’s the attrac­tion of read­ing some­thing that came from some­one else’s imag­i­na­tion, that is explic­itly untrue, and that only ends up exist­ing in your head?’

She smiled and said, ‘You got me.’

I’m not say­ing play­ing games is the same as read­ing. And I’m not say­ing that doing one in any way replaces doing the other. But there are sto­ries in games. And there is imag­i­na­tion, strat­egy, think­ing, cre­ativ­ity, fun, friend­ship and com­mu­nity. Those are all things I hope my son can find at every library he encoun­ters.” [World­Cat Blog]