Gaming Isn’t A Waste, It Is Escapism

Twitter is just a place for incendiary comments, shouting headlines at each other, and a complete lack of nuanced “debate.” Speaking as Phenixx Gaming’s social media manager for Twitter, it is a horrible place full of bile and hatred by people who seem to think that is all that others want to hear. I don’t want to hear it, I don’t need to hear it, and I don’t care about it. However, there is something that caught my eye that isn’t just a comment said on Twitter, but has been a general stigma against video games as a medium for years.

Don’t waste your lives on video games. pic.twitter.com/OiWtxpR8Uu

— Xurz 🕘 (@xurzlol) July 15, 2020

Yes, this useless excretion of man liquid spilled from a petri dish that somehow grew sentient over the years, spluttered useless nonsense and enraged some recently. No, for once I’m not talking about a Harry Potter writer. The basis of this comment denotes that “If you’re not making all the money in the world, what is the point?” I’d like to ask the same sort of question to anyone watching sports. Why don’t you just waste away in a corner for the next 40-years eating grey paste for the rest of your life, so you can make more money that won’t make you happy? It is a stupid argument by stupid people.

Of course, their following argument is “Well, people play games 8+ hours a day, that’s wrong!” Some scroll on Twitter and Instagram all day or go on the Keto diet, two things that are more damaging to your body & mental health than playing in traffic. Ok, that’s not scientifically proven, but they are both quite damaging to you. The other argument is “Go outside, excersize [sic], [and] make connections. If [sic] better for your mental health.” Being told by a dyslexic that your spelling and grammar are both dreadful is probably not much help to your mental health, but you need it.

Ok, god awful spelling aside, not every single human can go outside, exercise, and “make connections” like a disused piece of toilet paper on a businessman’s shoe. Let’s say someone has muscular dystrophy, are they still expected to “Walk outside, exercise, and make connections?” No, because that person can’t do all those things like the sentient liquid escaping from Dobby’s disused sock that expects everyone to be the same as them. Some people have physical mobility issues that result in their inability to exercise “like a normal human.“

It is comments like this from semi-formed proto-humans with half a working brain-cell, that only want to be famous or known for saying subversive nonsense. With no thought of how ableist, fatphobic, anti-LGBTQ+, or racist something can be, and I’m no longer talking just about this comment by some idiot that believes they are an intellectual. I’m talking about every Piers Morgan, Katy Hopkins, Donald Trump, Joanne Rowling, Graham Linehan, Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson, Owen Jones, Andrew Neil, and George Galloway wannabe, and anyone with a Twitter account that wants to poke and prod. Though that’s a topic for another time.

Let’s get back to the point of gaming, or rather this idea that everyone should “Get outside!” We are still in the middle of a pandemic with cases once again rising after lockdowns are lifted in some areas. America is the worst of them all so far. “Let’s go outside and spread disease that will kill many of us,” myself included as I’m one of the many that are labeled as high-risk. In a group of Toms, Dicks, and Harrys, this useless spod being the middle one, some of those Toms and Harrys are going to die if we all just go out and “Make connections.”

However, let’s take the current pandemic out of the equation. Comments supporting this claim suggests it is easy to get a highly paid job if you ignore games. Yes, all those high-skilled jobs that require sitting at a desk 8 hours a day coding Google, NASA, Space X, TESLA, Twitter, and every other company’s AI are much easier to get without looking at AI in the likes of games. Who needs video games to inspire them into working in tech jobs? Most of the highly paid jobs going forward are in tech, the tech that is influenced by media such as Star Trek, Movies, and video games.

We look forward in our thinking because of entertainment. It is the fiction depicting the future we look to when we want high-speed travel, social connectivity, and jobs. For the last 30-years, there has been a rise in the number of I.T jobs and a decrease in manual labor, with automation taking over those jobs. With that, there is higher unemployment, more low paying jobs that hardly pay bills, and abject poverty. “You should invest in getting a high payed [sic] job with a stable income,” is inaccessible for many with an economic climate that is in a ditch.

Later on, the useless berk tries to pull back the comments as “it is about moderation.” The initial two comments are not about moderation, they are about making sweeping statements on something that half the population of the planet does. Statements about being on a mobile phone while on a bus or the toilet, playing Fortnite, or playing something interesting. As some stuck up book critics would argue, movies aren’t culture. As toffee-nosed movie critics and directors will argue, video games aren’t culture, but they are the next step.

If you want to argue about things being done in moderation, talk about the Netflix-binge, the TV boxset, or 24-hour news cycles. Over the last 20 or so years, we have progressively become more attached to that fragile piece of anxiety in our pockets. We spend time flicking through Instagram comparing ourselves to people we don’t know, while we don’t see their bad days. Twitter is filled with arguments to denigrate us daily, and for all kids on social media, I don’t want to know how depressing that hell is. The word moderation has lost all meaning to the human race as we carry our phones around or sit at computers for work and TVs at home.

For many kids, adults, or many disabled, trans, gay, or any flavor of human on this planet, games are an escape from reality. As a kid, I was told “You can’t play sports,” though I would kick a ball about with friends, or join in the pre-class kick-about outside school. However, all my life contact-sport has been off the table, medically recommended along with limited exercise. Our own Editor-in-chief, Alexx, is wheelchair-bound and has been all his life. In his words, he’s not going base jumping anytime soon.

Telling people gaming is a waste of time is irresponsible and stupid, along with expecting the idea of “in moderation” only coming from Aristotle here. What this Immanuel Kant just can’t get, is that there is a large amount of life that is inaccessible from those with very visible physical disabilities and those with less visible ones too. Experiencing life to its fullest is different for everyone, that is why you don’t see a beach filled with throngs of mid-2000s EMO kids dressed in all black. They would rather listen to their music of sad sobbing about parents in a rainy wooded area with three other kids that look the same.

Video games fall in the same rule, as I’ve been playing Red Dead Redemption 2 recently again, but why? Well, HBO’s Westworld isn’t a thing, and there is only one way of rooting, tooting, and cowboy shooting. I hate the game as a game, but escaping into that world of hunting and fishing is the only way I’ll do those two things. I think hunting for the sake of it without eating the prey is morally abhorrent personally, and others go a bit further. However, in a game, I’m not harming an animal or killing anything. It is an escape into a thing I won’t do in my lifetime, in a time period long gone.

Traveling the vast landscapes of open-world games gives some of us experiences we’ll never have. Some don’t live in Montana where a death cult grips the entire state. Some could never drive trucks or fly planes across the country or planet. Zombie flicks like The Walking Dead give us moments we’ll never see, not until a government can get your uncle’s tin foil hat off him. The day I step into an F1 or F1-like car to drive it, you should nuke the place from orbit. I’m not responsible enough to drive that thing. Some of us will never go to Japan or New York dressed in a red and blue suit. Some of these aren’t based on physical ability, but socioeconomic limitations.

Escaping to alien worlds or familiar ones with slight changes is what video games do best. Unlike a book, movie, or TV show, you can inhabit this magical land of mystery or gangland filled with grannies and builders going full Crips and Bloods on the streets of London. Video games are escapism full of wonder and beauty that some of us will never see in our lifetime. Saying blanket statements such as “Video Games are a waste of time” shows a complete lack of understanding of what video games are to some people.

Let’s return to the social aspect brought up in the comments, which are inherently dismissive of every MMO, couch co-op, online multiplayer, and online co-op game too. For some, relationships are formed through playing games for hours together. You could form friendships, grow a better relationship with your parents, or find someone you love and have a happy life with. Just the other week, Lisa was talking about just watching Alexx play Fallout 4 and falling in love with the game through osmosis. My own love of Burnout 3: Takedown and Revenge comes from playing long into the night with my dad when I was a kid.

My friends and colleagues here at Phenixx Gaming, as hard as it might seem, know each other because of games. Video games are social, friendship or relationship builders for many people. Not every game is that, of course, you can play games alone and just enjoy the quiet or podcast listening moments. Though that’s not every gaming experience. It is a vast and beautiful plethora of solo experiences or playing games with people. I’ll stick my hand up right now and say I loathe my brother, but the few cherished memories I have of him are playing Crazy Taxi. That’s how great games are, they can bring two people that hate each other together.

Nintendo is trying to fight the exercise portion of gaming for an able-bodied group of players, but once again that’s limited. Yes, exercise is a wonderful thing, but it isn’t accessible to everyone. Telling someone in a wheelchair “let’s go for a run,” is wrong. The same could be said for telling someone on a limited income, who works 6-days a week in a low paying manual labor job to “get out and exercise.” They might not want to go for a walk after doing manual labor most of the week. Gym memberships are exceedingly expensive, and finding one where you don’t feel looked down upon is hard. That is not to mention women facing sexual harassment in many gyms.

By all means, make your blanket statements lacking any detail of your opinion, it just makes you look foolish in the end. Blanket provocative statements work if you’re a comedian standing on a stage to make people think about a topic, but on Twitter with limited characters, you just look like an idiot lacking any sense. I’ve already said it, if you want to talk about moderation, there are far greater problems than the three kids you’ve heard about on the news that play games 8-hours a day. If some parents want to use games as a crutch, that is their business.

Speaking as someone who would effectively “babysit” teenagers and pre-teens (generally just before hitting puberty), many parents don’t do that. If you’re worried about kids, phone or email your local council/local government and ask them for advice on setting up after school clubs. They are under-funded, under-promoted, and need help. If there is one, get involved, and if there isn’t, set one up and look for funding. As for being worried about adults, I’ll speak on behalf of them all: “Shut up!” They spend all week working to pay bills, they don’t need to hear you complain on Twitter.

However, you’ll do none of that. As usual, you’ll wake up to flick through Instagram, Twitter, and whatever a TikTok is. You’ll follow by doing that throughout work sly-ly while your boss isn’t looking/do the same at college. When that’s done, you’ll come home to eat, and flick through the news on social media while taking a dump, then play video games until you go to bed. If you want action, do the things that cause action. If you want whatever “clout” happens to be, keep saying you want something done on social media. It won’t solve your problem, but you’ll feel good about it when it gets a couple of likes.