Importance of Gaming
Obviously won't apply to everyone, but this thread here is to talk about the positive effect if any gaming had on you. Just anyway it either helped you through something or was just a hobby or something that you feel you are better having taken up then you were before. Just any positive effect the medium/artwork may have had
With me it kept me off the streets. Basically in the neighborhood everyone was heading down a bad path for the most part all my friends at the time idolized their older siblings who were basically all about drug dealing and thug life and of course were heading down the same thing. I always had an interest in gaming and such but I was wrapped in the same stuff as everyone else to extent fighting and basically little gangs and stupid crimes. A few trouble with the law and time away later I began to sort of engage myself with roleplaying games more and more to sort of get away from it and other issues going on in my life and mind. I began to see that sort of thing wasn't about much and without much else to do and not fitting in with any other group I turned more and more to the worlds of video game and small sense of accomplish within them. It sounds lame but I began to rather explore more of these virtual places then hang out with my friends and roam the streets, and when they would come over it became more about Zelda and soul calibur then about who we hated and wanted to beat up. I don't have the best life right now and I'm not exactly someone people should point to as some great member of society or success but most of the people I spent my life with are in jail or still out there on the streets in petty gang shit and having kids they don't raise.
Games still get treated as scapegoats for issues with the youth and anytime some domestic issue occurs and it bothers me. I know most don't think anything special about gaming besides a hobby and that's fair but just wanted to say to me it gave something to do and a place to go when there wasn't much else and it helped me step away from being just another person continuing a dark cycle. And for that it will always be important to me.
Gaming has had both a positive and negative influence in my life. Per thread I'll focus on the positive.
1. During my teens it helped me stay away from bad habits such as drugs, alcohol and cigarettes. Now I ended up doing them later in life, but I believe I would have started sooner had it not been for the gaming hobby that kept me busy.
2. It helped me get a better grammatical understanding of English with a few bad habits because of shitty translations(Yes Squaresoft I'm talking about you) and later helped me increase my fluency by fighting people over the net via Xbox live etc.
3. Gaming in general has allowed me to make a couple of really good friends who share the same hobby. Life long friends.
Pretty sure there is more, but those are the first that come to mind.
Games simultaneously allowed me to bond with people as a common interest and also be a recluse with dysfunctional social skills until I was about 20.
Nowadays I'm not too interested in video games. I play them when I'm bored, pretty much. Most of the people I knew irl who were into gaming aren't as much anymore, and I'm pretty jaded with gaming as an industry. There are absolutely no games coming out in the foreseeable future that I have any real vested interest in.
Originally posted by Lek Kuen
With me it kept me off the streets. Basically in the neighborhood everyone was heading down a bad path for the most part all my friends at the time idolized their older siblings who were basically all about drug dealing and thug life and of course were heading down the same thing. I always had an interest in gaming and such but I was wrapped in the same stuff as everyone else to extent fighting and basically little gangs and stupid crimes. A few trouble with the law and time away later I began to sort of engage myself with roleplaying games more and more to sort of get away from it and other issues going on in my life and mind. I began to see that sort of thing wasn't about much and without much else to do and not fitting in with any other group I turned more and more to the worlds of video game and small sense of accomplish within them. It sounds lame but I began to rather explore more of these virtual places then hang out with my friends and roam the streets, and when they would come over it became more about Zelda and soul calibur then about who we hated and wanted to beat up. I don't have the best life right now and I'm not exactly someone people should point to as some great member of society or success but most of the people I spent my life with are in jail or still out there on the streets in petty gang shit and having kids they don't raise.Games still get treated as scapegoats for issues with the youth and anytime some domestic issue occurs and it bothers me. I know most don't think anything special about gaming besides a hobby and that's fair but just wanted to say to me it gave something to do and a place to go when there wasn't much else and it helped me step away from being just another person continuing a dark cycle. And for that it will always be important to me.
I'm glad you shared this with us, and I applaud you for it. I wish I could match my feelings with words just as you did, but to me, it's something I have yet to know how to describe, as I've never given it enough thought. I will, however, say that it's like music, in a way. It knows how to say what you don't.
Put simply, it keeps me out of trouble. When I'm not working, I'm either gaming or drinking (or both, I guess), but if I'm gaming I don't drink nearly as much. A lot of my friends have physically moved away and I'm too damn lazy to try to get a new group of friends, and online games are a great way to still do things together when we're more than two states away.