Gaming can be meaningful. It says a lot about us, and it says a lot to us. Like all art, gaming offers us the opportunity to develop as a person. Gaming can make us challenge our perspective on almost anything because we have to inhabit a different person or we have to deal with different people, learning their unique conditions. And then there are games like ‘Life is Strange’ which is entirely about character development.
The first thing I should point out is that videogames don’t automatically make you a better person. That would be irresponsible of me to say, but more to the point, one has to be open to develop emotionally in order to develop as a person. If video games just automatically changed you, then the argument that videogames caused people to be violet would be more valid. I personally don’t believe that is the case.
That being said, the virtual worlds that you get to inhabit as a character in a story that's completely foreign to this world can place you in a situation in which you start to consider other people’s perspectives. This could potentially help you to develop a sense of empathy that perhaps you did not have prior to playing that game. Unfortunately, many people don’t always do the best job of instilling that sense of empathy in kids growing up nowadays. Anyway, that's neither here nor there, and I shouldn’t criticize.
However, what is a video game exactly? Well it's a collection of interactive virtual experiences which books and movies aren’t able to offer. A video game asks you to be more than an active observer, it asks you to participate. The player is asked to participate in a scenario that may or may not be realistic. However, if it is relatable on an emotional level, it can resonate with the player. By interacting in a virtual space, games can force you to question how and why you are performing the actions necessary to progress in the game. The best games make you search for answers within yourself. As games become more and more realistic, you are presented with situations that you may not ever actually do in real life. Hopefully when you play GTA, you know you would NEVER actually perform those actions in real life, particularly given that your actions rarely end in a positive/peaceful way. However, even, on a small level, negative actions in GTA have in-game consequences.
Games like Mass Effect ask you to make a lot of moral choices. Who dies, how to accomplish tasks, what not to do, and it always presents you with consequences throughout story. Although we have never experienced space or inter-species politics, we can relate those things to our world now. Characters in Mass Effect serve as an analogue to our current world, the issues and politics that we face on Earth. The game helps to remind us that other people might think differently than we do, for varying reasons.
If a game can hit emotionally hard, and make you acknowledge that things went either horribly wrong, or went right because of YOU, you begin to understand that your actions have lasting consequences.
Whether or not something attempted to have a deeper meaning, there is meaning behind it. What matters is that you are open to thinking about it. When you approach a videogame, even one as “immoral” as GTA, what is it telling you? Maybe in some way, your actions have real consequences. Even if something in a video seems unrealistic, there are analogues to real life experiences, and through those experiences, we can learn more about ourselves.
I’m certainly interested in hearing. How have video games affected your life?