When I was a child, video games were viewed as a sort of “necessary evil” in my household. Certain games were absolutely off-limits. Exhibit A: Tomorrow Never Dies, a James Bond game from 1999 that my dad was “strongly recommended” to return to the store after Mom saw just how much blood splattered on the screen when your avatar died. Other games, like Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon, didn’t violate any kind of moral taboos, but they were always deemed second-rate activities to things like Going Outside and Spending Time With Friends.
Now, I don’t have a perfect memory, but I don’t recall wanting to spend too many childhood days glued to the couch playing video games. I’ve always been restless; too many consecutive minutes doing anything is more than I can handle; I’ve spent most of my life, especially recently, bouncing back and forth between the couch, the kitchen table, and the neighborhood sidewalk in order to quiet my frenetic mind. Still, in those moments I choose to spend in front of the television with a controller in my hand, I hear whispers from my childhood: “This is a waste of time. Couldn’t you be doing something more productive? More useful?” After some reflection, I’ve formulated some responses to this self-interrogation. Feel free to use them whenever somebody questions your gaming addiction!
1. Video games give me a rare opportunity to collaborate. In my experience, the older I get, the fewer opportunities I have to work together with others in order to achieve a goal. Marriage is an obvious exception, but it’s not like I’m working on group projects for school on weekends anymore. My life, for the most part, is my own, and I don’t have to depend on anybody else for my own success or failure. In certain video games, like Rocket League, things are quite different. Rocket League, for those in the dark, is a ridiculous concept: your avatar is a car, and your objective is to win a game of soccer. It’s Mario Kart-meets-Mario Strikers: Charged (a criminally underrated soccer game), and it’s a team sport to the highest degree. You can try to work independently of your teammate, but you won’t win many games that way. And while it’s a delight to play with actual, real-life friends (thank you, Kjell, for encouraging me to re-download this game), it’s a unique challenge to play with strangers. Using only a few stock phrases provided by the game (like “I got it!” and “Thanks!”), plus a little bit of intuition, you and your teammate have just five minutes to concoct a winning strategy against other strangers who have likely never met, either. Collaborating in Rocket League is unlike any other life experience I can think of, and it’s a justification in itself for playing.
2. Video games teach anti-fragility. Anti-fragility is one of the most useful concepts I learned about in 2019. According to its developer, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, anti-fragility is the ability for “systems” (or people) to become stronger when they encounter failure and other stressors. It’s like resilience, only stronger. When you’re resilient, you bend but you don’t break. When you’re anti-fragile, you bend and then you actually become stronger from the process of bending. I’d like to write a an entire post about anti-fragility, but to keep it relevant to the topic at hand: I get smarter and better when I fail in video games. My personal profile will reveal that I have failed prolifically at not only Rocket League, but also games like NHL 19 (in which I lose games by an average of 2.5 goals) and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (in which I died 30+ times in boss battles as I learned my opponents’ moves and how to parry them). When I was younger, a lot of things came easily to me. I didn’t have to study much in school, and I found I had a natural talent for a few sports. With that early success, though, came a bitter distaste for failure. Rather than seeing failure as a teacher, I abhorred it. In most video games, hating failure simply isn’t an option. It’s not a question of if I will fail, but when and how. Learning to embrace failure in these games has led me not only to improve my skills, but also to feel the emotional reward of persisting, upgrading, and eventually surmounting previously unsurmountable challenges.
3. Video games provide an escape, and escape is healthy. I’ll begin by acknowledging that escapism is controversial, and that I have absolutely heard the call the asks, “Can’t you do something more important to help solve the problems in the world?” But, recognizing that, I think everybody needs to escape sometimes. The world is ruthless, jobs are demanding, and adulthood not only throws new problems your way but then accelerates those problems at the worst possible times. It’s not helpful to plunge your head in the sand ostrich-style, but it makes as little sense to face down your problems without respite. Even Frodo and Sam made camp on their way to Mordor. In a culture that provides so many avenues of distraction, playing video games seems to me to be one of the healthiest methods available. Whereas social media is a mostly passive experience, video games are active, facilitating a more mindful experience. You’d be hard-pressed to experience “flow” while thumbing through Instagram; alternatively, it’s difficult to succeed in many video games unless you are completely immersed in the task at hand. Escapism in video games works differently depending on the game: there are competitive games, like the games I’ve mentioned, in which complete focus is required to win; on the other hand, there are less taxing games (like Spyro) in which the fun of the game is exploring an open world with no ticking clock. Both types of escapism have served me well in different seasons of my life, and I’d recommend them to anybody looking for a few minutes away from the daily grind.
Honorable mentions:
- Video games feature some of the best music out there (the original Sypro soundtrack; the original score in Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order; even soundtracks in sports games like NHL 19).
- Video games facilitate virtual (and real) hangouts with friends (I’ve seen certain friendships, even in my own life, forged and strengthened by games like Rock Band, Overcooked 2, and Rocket League).
I’m sure there’s a lot more I could write about the benefits of video games, but my copy of NHL 20 just finished downloading and I’d really like to go try it out! I’m expecting to lose my fair share of online games, but, with any luck, I’ll be a respectable player by the time NHL 21 hits shelves.
Unsolicited Essays 