OPINION PIECE - HOW DOES GAMING AFFECT US?

How does Gaming affect who we are?
What effect does gaming have on who we are? I’m not asking about your “Immortal Soul”, but rather wondering how what we do in virtual worlds affect who we are in the real world. While all of us are biased, including myself, this is a question we honestly need to ask ourselves, without being afraid of the answer, instead of pretending the question doesn’t exist or the answer is “obviously none”.


The Boeing Wargaming club used to meet at the Boeing Activity center in Kent. We met in a little room off to the side. There is also a Boeing Psychic club, which has a yearly Psychic Fair, which takes up most of the activity center. When the Psychic Fair came, they kicked us out of our meeting room, not because they were using it, but because they were worried about the bad karma that wargaming generates. We never knew that the thought of cardboard counters screaming in agony as they were removed from the mapboard caused a lot of psychic harm, but I guess it must have ^_^. While I never agreed with them, it did get me thinking. Personally, I believe that damage to the virtual world is contained within the virtual world itself. However, all our actions reflect on who we are, both actions in the real and virtual worlds. So, my question for discussion is “How do our actions in virtual worlds affect who we are in the real world?”

My gaming resume: Lest you think I have joined with the anti-game forces by writing this, you need to know a bit about me. I’ve been gaming ever since Chutes and Ladders, and I never looked back. I’ve played card games, chess, a hundred or so board wargames, the original 3 book set of Dungeons and Dragons, the colossal cave adventure, Zork, Wolfenstein3D, Doom, Quake, Unreal, and about a hundred more all the way up to Final Fantasy, Baldur’s Gate, Oblivion, and Neverwinter Nights.

Potential negative effects of gaming:

What damage do we do to the virtual world itself? For private virtual worlds, none. (Well, to be honest, we might mess up one of our savegames.) For public virtual worlds like WoW, damage we might do is limited to how it affects other players. For example, the funeral massacre in WoW, or the event disruption with flying genitalia in Second Life. Some people have fun by spoiling others fun. Overall, the damage that can be created to public virtual worlds is negligible at this point in time, but I wonder if someday too many players will be able to “run down” and destroy a town (when we have persistent damage to the landscape as some games now allow).

One form of damage to others is rude behavior online. I think that this is a reflection of who we already are more than something forming our personality, these are likely the same people who are rude in real life.

One good idea that the gaming industry had was to self regulate and form the ERSB, before some kind of government mandate was imposed for game ratings. While the ERSB isn’t perfect, I think that they are doing their job overall. I wonder if in the same spirit, the gamers should be the first to ask what the effects of gaming are on the gamers themselves instead of letting outsiders define it for us in the court of public opinion. We stand the most to lose or win – games affect us the most, so we should be the ones on the forefront of this discussion, not those who are certain that video games are just “Murder simulators”.

One danger we face as gamers is days when the virtual world becomes more compelling than real life. There have been days I was more excited about coming home to finish the quest I was in the middle of than I was to see my family. (Just for the record, I don’t pick up my game until my boy is in bed.)

Positive effects of gaming:

There are many positive aspects of our virtual world gaming. For some, this helps us learn to open up to others, to develop relationships with real people instead of just our books and movies. It can serve to sharpen our sense of right and wrong for use in the real world. It keeps the brain much more active than just watching TV. I’m not sure it really does that much for our reflexes, but some claim it does. It is a much more powerful experience for us because we *did* it instead of just watching it. For me, online gaming is a way to interact with real people instead of just with my remote, or a book.

Back in high school English class, we learned about Greek plays and catharsis. The idea is that you get all these bad thoughts and feelings out of your system by watching someone else do them. Personally I never bought into that idea, so I don’t buy that acting evil in video games “gets it out of our system”, so it never occurs in real life. This is just an editorial, so you have just as much right to your opinion if you disagree with me here, but I want to get the dialog started.

“Gaming made me who I am today!” I’ve heard more than one of my friends say this. First, Siren said this (he has posted his story elsewhere on emaglive.com ). Secondly, one of my high school friends, Bart said it. Bart came from a broken family, and didn’t have many friends until he joined our D&D group. Playing D&D, he learned to think critically and engage his imagination, and it taught him lots of the skills that he uses today in his career. He had to learn to deal with the complexity of the games, and that helped him learn how to deal with complex electronics in the Navy.

MMO gaming can build leadership skills. Recent studies have shown that lots of the same qualities that make for a good leader in MMORPGs also make good leaders in business.

Gaming builds friendships and a community. I had no friends in high school at all until I discovered other gamers. In the era when I grew up, nerds were social outcasts, and ostracised. This left lots of us friendless and isolated until we discovered each other. For most of us, other gamers were the only friends we had.

Gaming gives us an outlet, something to look forward to. Gaming gives us a place to be heroic or clever, opportunities that the real world provides much more rarely.

Synthesis:

I think that how often we kill in virtual worlds is much less important than why we kill. One of my friends, Josh, tells a story where what he was able to do as a dark side player to the character Juhani in Knights of the Old Republic made him feel really slimy inside.

Violence is a part of the real world, and always has been. While less a problem now to the average person than it has been at other times in history, throughout history humans have had to use violence to survive, and for other reasons. We still go to war; we still have to defend ourselves sometimes. However, in the real world, we judge those using violence by *why* they used it. Self Defense is always an acceptable reason, as is stopping those who try to do evil to the world.

That is probably why in lots of games, the bad guys always attack you, or are often identifiably evil (pirates, brigants, gangsters, etc). If the reason you kill is self defense, you don’t have to feel guilty. However, I started wondering – if I know that I’ll have to kill a bunch of people because they will attack me if I go to a certain zone, does that make me less responsible for their deaths?

Back in the “D&D is Demonic” days, I thought of role playing as a personality intensifier – it makes you more of what you already are. The Good became more so, the Evil became more so, and sometimes the weird became even weirder ^_^. That might apply, but to a lesser degree with other games (in a RTS game, is either side ever really good or evil?)

I personally find that I only enjoy playing Good characters online. I respect the fact that other gamers like playing Neutral or Evil characters, but still I wonder what effect our actions have on who we are in the outside world.

In Oblivion, and even in Guild Wars, I find there are quests that I just refuse to take because I find them morally offensive. (In Guild Wars: Nightfall, there is a quest where you are asked to steal medical supplies bound for a city. You can refuse, and take the medical supplies to the city, but then you never get the follow on quest if you do.) It’s not a big problem for me because these kinds of quests are few, and none of them are required quests, but it does make me think. Someday I might have to take a stand and not finish a game because to finish I have to do something I find morally reprehensible. (Luckily, I can usually avoid buying those games from the get go – With a name like “Hitman 2″, I know a bit of what to expect.)

A bit of history that will repeat itself if we aren’t careful:

The crusade that games are bad for us is the third “entertainment is bad for us” witch hunt here in the USA. The first witch hunt was back in the 1950s, “Comics are warping the minds of the young”. Everything but superhero comics and newspaper daily comics were killed off by the court of public opinion. (Thank goodness the rise of manga has started to reverse the trend). The second witch hunt was “Dungeons and Dragons is demonic”, which hit in the 80s. Luckily, that one didn’t do much damage. Now, in the 00s, we’re seeing the start of the same kind of public knee jerk reaction to video games. Personally, I’m getting tired of it. This time, I hope we can be organised enough to present our side of the story (Gabe and Tycho have been doing a good job of this, but it is everyone’s job, not just theirs).

A Challenge:

So, now the challenge goes to you. I’d like for us as gamers to identify both the positive and negative ways in which gaming can affect us. First, for the forum, what do you think the effects of the games you play on you are? Tell us both the positive and negative effects that you have experienced. Second, we as gamers should form a team to study this. I challenge us to form a team to do the proper homework to prove our case in the court of public opinion when our trial comes. We already know that we won’t get to predict our “trial” date, but signs point to within the next two years, so we should be ready now.

By Peter Williamson. Thanks to www.EMagLive.com