Many people consider video games to take the role of allowing (temporary) escape from the real world. I find video games to be an important piece of my life, but I don’t look at them as such.
Reflecting analytically on my attraction to video games, what I think I distill is instead a supply of experience my mind craves that the real world fails to sufficiently provide. This sounds very similar to escaping from reality, and in fact finding the difference between the two motivations requires me to actively unfold my vague feeling that this is a distinct sentiment. But I do think when the edges of these thoughts are sharpened, I end up being able to pinpoint the distinction.
I just don’t ever want to dispose of the real world and be of some video game world for a while. In fact, I have several times upon considering a video game world I really liked asked whether I’d like that being the real world instead, and my mind nearly immediately jumps to “this world is definitely nowhere as interestingly complex to compare with the real world, and cannot be anywhere as rich an experience”. Being elsewhere is not the fantasy.
Being more than here is. The distinction is supplementation versus replacement. Why I’m attracted to fantasy worlds is because they provide experiences that the parameters of reality fail to allow. I desire the real world to have more clear-cut goals and quantifiable significant properties. I desire the real world to not be as risk-punishing. I desire the real world to have more parts of storylines line up in the way that causes that wonderful tingling feeling. And I quench these desires with the worlds of video games. Even though these worlds lack the beautifully intractable web of interaction of the real world, the compact bundles of excitement video game worlds deliver show what reality is missing out on; as a player I get to not miss out on as much by interacting with the game. In these games are the additional traits I desire beyond this world, augmenting this world, enriching the experience in this world, not instead of this world.
rhua
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