Living In A Virtual World

In all my twenty years on this green and blue ball of rock and magma I have never been more at home as I am when I have a game controller in my hands. Be it 360, PS2, PS1, SNES, NES, MasterSystem or MegaDrive or even a PC keyboard and mouse (yes I’ve been a busy boy over 20 years but I do enjoy a good game) I don’t know what it is about gaming that I love so much. It’s one of the truest forms of escapism. To be able to just turn on your console of choice and slip away into another universe. The years have hit gaming just as hard as they have hit any other medium, games developers going bust, new ones sprouting from nothingness and coming out with some of the best games out there today. There have been several discussions on whether or not games are art, most people are ready to say implicitly that no, they are not but I beg to differ with them. Some of the most beautiful images I have ever seen have been in a videogame. The rippling water effects in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, any cutscene in Fable 2 or Fallout 3. Even the more gruesome aspects of gaming are done in a delightfully beautiful manner. Well I think so at least. All those people out there who say that videogames cause violent behaviour are either stupid or have never played a videogame. If videogames dictated behaviour then I would be running around in a suit of armour, hitting things with a sword or gun or some description of magical spell… and that really doesn’t sound like something I do. It would be fun though. If I wasn’t doing that I would be swallowing mushrooms, jumping down pips screaming “WAHOO!” neither of those things happen. C’mon people. Videogames give us an escape, not a way to further our idiocy in the real world. If I could I would live in a virtual world. As long as I got to choose, I definitely wouldn’t choose the Fallout universe, no chance. BUT! My virtual world would have a reset button and cheat codes something I could chose to implement if I saw fit, but if I did that I wouldn’t get the achievements so not worth it all