Nintendo Okie

Video games are a number of things to a number of people. There are as many reasons out there why people play video game as there are gamers. You can ask 10 people the question, “Why do you play video games?” and you’d get 10 different answers. Some people play them to escape the real world. Some people play them because it makes them feel like a hero. Some people play them because they enjoy shooting things, but don’t want to do that in real life. There’s no right or wrong answer to the question. Today I’m asking myself that very question. “Why do I play video games?”

First and foremost the answer would have to be to have fun. Video games, since I started back in 1990, have always been about fun to me. I can remember the day I got my NES very vividly. It was my 10th birthday and there were only 3 packages. One was a Transformers action figure. The other two, though, were much better. I reached for the smaller package, but was told to wait because that would ruin the surprise so I opened the big one and was floored when I saw the box for the NES. I don’t ever remember asking for one. I had played some video games before that, we had an Intellivision and a Commodore 64 and an Atari 2600, but I don’t remember playing those. I’m pretty sure I did, I just don’t remember. The other package was a copy of RBI Baseball. My brother, who was 10 years older than me at the time, helped me hook the system up to the TV and we played Mario together for hours that day. He was 20 and I was 10. Our two worlds couldn’t have been more far apart in terms of interest, but that one thing was enough to keep us together that day.

It’s been 20 years since then, but one thing has always remained the same. I have fun playing video games. If I’m not having fun playing a game it probably won’t get much more play out of me than the first few hours, in today’s world. You can see this article to see what I’m talking about. Video games are a form of entertainment. They’re very much along the same lines as books or movies. They all compete for both my entertainment dollar and my entertainment time. I think video games combine the best of movies and books into one happy compilation. Books, movies and video games all tell stories. They do them in very different ways, but they all basically do the same thing. I don’t read novels to learn more about myself. They’re meant to tell a story and entertain you. Many times you’ll find some life lesson or some point that is trying to be told, but generally they’re just there to keep your mind busy and entertain you. Movies don’t just tell you the story they want you to hear, but they also let you see the vision that the storyteller had for that story. Video games let you interact with the story and shape its direction. You’re going to get the same basic story, most of the time, but some of the smaller details will be different and the path you take might be different.

There are a growing number of people today that will tell you that video games are art and they should be used to teach you something. I will go on record and side with people like Roger Ebert and Shigeru Miyamoto and tell you that video games are not art. They are first and foremost and form of entertainment. That’s not to say that, just like movies and books, they can’t be used to tell a story, but the way the media is presented they have to be entertaining and engaging. They have to be fun or you’re going to turn it off and go back to playing Modern Warfare or Super Mario Bros. You cannot create Schindler’s List the game and expect people to flock to it and spend hours playing it. They’re going to see that horrifying period of history, interact with it, find it a bit creepy and turn it off. Video games have to use the interactivity and visceral ness of the medium to make a fun experience that gets your point across. Games like Braid are a perfect example of this. That game is used to tell a story, but it wraps it inside an element of gaming we’ve been playing for more than 20 years now. Another example of that is World of Goo. That may seem like a strange example, but work with me. World of Goo is all about excess in corporations, pollution and genetic engineering. The story is told through graphical elements in the game, background and in little messages left by the Sign Painter. It does all of this inside a puzzle game that is complex, challenging, and ultimately a lot of fun to play.

I may say that video games aren’t art. That may only be because my definition of art is something entirely different than someone else’s. Video games are, as they have been since the beginning, meant to entertain. Even games like Resident Evil, while they scare the crap out of you, do it while you’re being entertained. Some people find that being scared is a lot of fun. Especially in an environment where you know you are in no real danger. First person shooters are ultimately the world’s most popular type of game at the moment. Why is that? Do people enjoy killing others for fun? Well, in a word, yes. Most people understand that you’re not doing anything out of malice or hate. You know that the person on the screen you just shot is a jumble of pixels and computer code. Would they go out in real life and shoot someone? The answer to that, in most cases, is no. They’re having a good time. If you’re with friends online you’re conversing about the goings on in your life, you’re recounting old tales of “glory” and you’re having a good time. Everyone playing those games knows that war is hell. It’s not pretty and many games try to get that point across, but they do it in a way that still makes it fun to play the game. Those games also make you feel like a hero, even if in real life you wouldn’t ever get into the situation presented.

Why do I play games? It’s not to be a hero. It’s not to be beaten over the head with a message. You’ll see that coming from a mile away, understand that experience won’t be fun and shut the game off. I play games because I want to spend just a little bit of time being entertained. Goombas have been around for my abuse since 1990 and it’s never not been fun to see those little walking fungi smashed under the heel of Mario’s boot.