THE SPECTRE OF GAMING

Recently, Agent Brucie wrote an essay entitled "Why I Don't Game Anymore" on his website. I found it to be both revealing and depressing. On the one hand, I share many of his experiences (though not all) and on the other hand, he sounds very bitter and I am anything but-- so how did our experiences differ?

"Gaming" is a generic term for Role Play Gaming, or RPG'ing. For many of us, it started with the classic Dungeons and Dragons game, and among my peers it seems that around junior high is when we all got into it.

Gaming is making believe with your friends, just like you did when you were a kid-- only with slightly more adult themes and where there are rules written down in books to prevent the "I shot you! No you didn't! Yes I did!" arguments of childhood. Except they don't always, but some things never change.

Gaming is also an escape-- to the worlds of fantasy where one can pound out their frustrations on orcs, trolls, supervillains, monsters of every description, or that evil pharmacist down the street. It's a way to relax, to indulge, to express oneself and even to discover new things about oneself.

I started gaming in junior high; I discovered this "Dungeons and Dragons" thing and invited myself along to a lunch-hour game. By the end of it, I was making up a character. And I gamed most lunch hours with that group; we would request a classroom from one of our teachers and game quietly in there.

We never gamed over weekends; it was just something we did at school. Any gaming I did extra-curricularly was sporadic. It wasn't until high school, where I started a different group, that I began to really pursue it. These were dedicated gamers; no mere junior-high experimenters, these guys had SEEN and DONE and knew what they wanted.

That summer, the summer between Grade 10 and Grade 11, I would bike from my place in Edgemont down to my buddy's house in Brentwood, about a 7k ride, to game ALL DAY, EVERY DAY. We all made our way there, and gamed like mushrooms in his cool dark basement for a whole summer. And we did everything together; we went en masse to our first sci-fi convention, where I met yet OTHER gamers...and so on.

Next year, Grade 11, was when I started to drift away-- and by that, I mean emotionally, as a person. I began seeking to use gaming as an escape from depression; teen angst plus hormonal imbalance making my life an otherwise unliveable hell.

I skipped a lot of school to game. Or rather, gaming was what I did when I skipped school; the only way, it seemed, that I could bear what currently passed for my life.

Do I regret skipping all that school? Yes. Over time, I began to feel sick every time I blew off a day; like a junkie who over-uses his drug of choice, the "highs" got fewer and farther between until I was gaming just to feel "normal." And always in the back of my mind was "where is your life going? What are you going to do?"

Eventually, I shook it off. Was gaming the problem? No. As I said, it was what I did to escape; the factors that led to me NEEDING to escape were the problem.

In fact, if not for gaming, I might not be here to write this. I'm serious; that was a hard time for me and the "escape" of roleplaying made it bearable.

And, as inevitably happens when one survives one's teen years, I grew up. And you know what? I still game. Oh sure, I can't do marathon week-long sessions of all-night junk food frenzy roleplaying, but I've had a once-a-week game with Mrs. M (Yes, my WIFE games. I realize that married gamers are in the minority, but here we are.) and our friend Rob since 1995.

We game responsibly. We game socially. And we are interested about our games, and we talk "in character" about things we'd like to do in game-- but it never stops us from experiencing life.

I took a basic ballet course because of gaming. I had a character who was a dancer and thought it would be neat to learn. Gaming also gave me the confidence (and practice!) to pursue acting as a career.

Yes, it has a dark, addictive side. When one finds oneself spending more time pretending than living, it's time for a reality check. And when one is seeking to escape rather than face one's problems and make a serious change in one's life, perhaps it's time for someone else to stage an intervention.

I don't regret being a gamer. I don't regret spending time pretending; it didn't impact me socially-- I'm still one of the most social people I know. I have several circles of friends, a wife and son, I travel, I continue to pursue education in several interests-- and yet I still game.

So, I have to say that gaming isn't a problem. The problem lies in what one chooses to do with it.

Posted by Agent M at October 27, 2003 10:29 AM