Why I Love Video Games

Video games have been a constant in my life since my earliest memories.  As far back as I can recall, I had an Atari 2600 and a Commodore 64 in my room.  At four years old I was learning to pull up games on the commodore, and I can remember my dad bringing home a copy of Missile Command for the 2600 and playing it with my older sister.  I remember many other things from this period as well, typical childhood memories of playing with neighbor children, scooping the family goldfish out of its bowl and leaving him (her?) in a pile of laundry (oops), locking Ken and Barbie naked in the clothes dryer, and watching Flight of the Navigator with my family and exclaiming “What a piece of junk!” in best Han Solo fashion when the silver  blob of a spacecraft first made an appearance.  I remember family meetings, summer days and the stuffed dog I snuggled as I went to sleep each night, and, along with all of these wonderful memories, I remember video games.

As a kid, video games were not a substitute for reality, nor did they keep me from playing in the real world.  On the contrary, I can recall playing Wizard of Wor on the Commodore, then shutting it off and sitting down to play with my “Barrel of Monkeys” and one of those wooden peg toys with a tiny hammer.  They were no substitute for imagination; if anything, they only acted as a springboard.  I recall turning out the lights in my bedroom and firing up Asteroids on the 2600 and pretending to be Han Solo navigating the asteroid belt in The Empire Strikes Back.

This only continued as I grew older.  I often played alone, lost in imaginative worlds of my own creation, envisioning whole galaxies with myself the hero of my story.  One minute I would be running through the backyard fighting intergalactic monsters who towered several stories above me, then run into the house, sit down at the computer and continue the story through some space shoot’em up.  Soon after, I’d be back out in the backyard fighting tooth and nail against the scourge of the galaxy.

This is what gaming was for me.  Gaming was not just a fun experience, not an escape, but just another toy that my imagination ran wild with.  As I grew even older, and began the gradual, awkward shift from schoolboy to teenager, things like running around the backyard with a plastic laser gun became far less acceptable to society, but within my mind these imaginative games were just as compelling.  Even while I was outgrowing my outward expression of these pursuits, my inner life was still a rage of imaginative worlds, and so video games gradually took a larger and larger role as they became a more acceptable outlet for this sort of wild fantasizing.  In time, they became the primary outlet, and as a teenager moving into college I put away my toy guns and space ships and taken the fight to an entirely virtual world.

Today I still find myself in that place.  The same themes that captured my imagination as a young 4-year-old boy are still just as real and amazing to me.  The same struggle of good and evil, of heros and villains, of far away worlds and times long forgotten.  Magic and science, monsters and aliens…these things are all very much alive to me, even as I know they are to countless other gamers around the globe.  Certainly there are other outlets for these feelings, like literature and film, but only in gaming can we move from a state of observational wonder into a one of participation.

For me, games have always been there, fueling my imagination and giving me the opportunity to take an active part in it.  It is hard to explain to someone who doesn’t already understand, but they are an integral part of my life and thought and deeply tied to my memories.  The stories and music are as much as part of my memories of family, holidays and seasons as are the sights and smells of home cooked meals and Christmas decorations.  I can remember the first day we set foot in our just-built new home in 1996, and the first day I set foot in Hyrule a few years prior.  I can remember my first grade-school crush, and the day I asked Maria, the mayor's daughter, to marry me in Harvest Moon.  I can remember games of Euchre with my parents and playing the bonus slots in Super Mario Bros. 2.  Memories of playing video games together with my father and mother are as dear to me as anyone’s memories of games of catch or backyard football, and I would not trade them for anything in the world.

To my fellow gamers out there who may feel the occasional pressure from others to “get a life”, I offer the following excerpt from my favorite author, C.S. Lewis’ poetry collection “Spirits in Bondage”:

The friends I have without a peer
Beyond the western ocean’s glow,
Wither the faerie galleys steer,
They do not know: how should they know?