Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Play Money
So apparantly I'm the only one in the whole class who will admit to being any level of a "gamer". So far, everyone else has talked about how they don't see the point of playing these games. Well, as a moderate "gamer", I truly enjoy Dibbell's book as I fully understand the topic and questions he is posing. For many years, my "game of choice" was Runescape, a free online game (although you could pay $5 a month for extra features) at www.runescape.com. I would spend hours on this game and I'm now a level 63! After reading Dibbell for a while, I began asking myself why exactly I find myself so drawn into these games. Dibbell talks about Flow, in which he draws from a psychologist who defines Flow: "Concentration is so intense that there is no attention left over to think about anything irrelevant, or to worry about problems. Self-consciousness disappears, and the sense of time becomes distorted" (37). To me, this exactly reflected my interactions with not only games but also reading. When I am drawn into a good book, I will sacrifice other aspects of my life until I have finished it, often sitting for hours without realizing it. So why am I so susceptible to the appeals of fiction and virtual reality, which, after all, are quite similar? I blame it partially on the fact that I become very attached to things very quickly (I'll admit, I still have my "baby blanket" on my bed at home). In high school, it used to be guys, but now that I have a boyfriend, I've found it better for the relationship to direct this attachment to other areas (haha). I've since found my attention grabbed by games. Sega, X-Box, Nintendo, Computer games, you name it, I love it. The stereotype of "gamers" is that they are all nerds -- they are weird because they play games; however, could they play games because they are weird? Although this semantic does not sound any better, it means a whole different thing. Many use games as a way to escape life (often what writers claim they do when they are writing). In a world such as Runescape, one is, in practical terms, safe from the world outside. Here, in a contained environment that they can in most senses control, they can overcome obstacles and become something of a hero and a "big man on campus". I'll be the first to acknowledge that I have always had self-esteem issues for a variety of reasons, though for some inexplicable reason, the feeling I got when I reached level 60 on Runescape was equivalent to getting an A in a tough course. I had an odd sense of accomplishment and pride -- when all I had really done was "wasted hours of my life" by sitting in front of a computer clicking on things. Perhaps I thought it attested to my patience to be able to sit for that long. Perhaps this patience is the Flow that Dibbell was talking about. I love to work, not because I enjoy it, but because it gives me a sense of purpose. Games such as Runescape give people enough freedom to establish their own identity in the world but still enough restrictions to make them feel as though they have accomplished something. And who knows, maybe they have.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Rachel, I dig video games too. My system of choice is the Nintendo DS, but I've logged a lot of hours on Resident Evil games on the Gamecube, too. My only problem with 'em is that so many are just rehashes or imitations of other, better games. Though I guess that's true for most popular media.
Post a Comment