[Opinion] Keeping it real?

It's tempting to start posting reasons why I haven't updated for a few days, things which explain how life away from a gaming blog have been... but this isn't really relevant. The reasons are good, but would only qualify as excuses here. Better to get back to a decent routine...

Unreal life

It was tempting to describe the things that were happening as "real life" - those things which happen away from a computer screen and can't be controlled with a joypad or mouse... and perhaps more disappointingly, can't be as controlled by experience or a learned ability. It's a shame the tools we use to cope are so different, really.

Yet that isn't exactly the case. Gaming is about exercising imagination, living a life different from our own - they are an escape, a piece of fun or a wish fulfilment. Yet we don't look at films or books in the same light, that sense of experiencing a reality or a life away from our own as something else.

Perhaps it is how we look at games - we are not passive viewers, we have to get involved, without actually taking the risks of getting involved. Street Fighter players don't go out and get into brawls; Gran Turismo players aren't street racing; and despite the anxiety of the wider media, Doom and Modern Warfare players are not passing time between actual shoot-outs when they're playing. With MMOs, there are obviously more factors - direct competition with other people, artificial time-sinks to keep people returning - but ultimately they are still about finding something fun.

I've never been a huge MMO player, though I've certainly done slightly more than dabble (Atlantica Online, DDO, LotRO, Guild Wars... I've never approached The Big One - as all the others are either free-to-play, or non-subscription, maybe that just says I'm a cheapskate!); it seems to be even more common there - if someone is busy, it is "real life". Yet MMOs are surely the most real of all gaming forms - it's ironic to think of the game as not real, when you have to recognise that the people you're speaking to, and so the means of communication, actually are.

Games are real - obviously, not tangible, and likely not productive (although there are many other things which fail that test - trips to the cinema, a night out clubbing, watching a sunset, or a huge number of hobbies would fail there as well, for example), but they are taking up a part of a person's life. They can define part of who a person is, give them a way to relax or take over time that is needed for other things too. Gamers play games; this doesn't mean they live to eat, sleep and breathe games (although they may do, too - though this is more about self-control and time-keeping) but they are still a part of their lives, something that contributes to the person they are and part of that understanding that lets gamers form their own sub-community. How can something not be real when its made to be so?

So, the next time you can't get on to speak to your guild somewhere, it's not real life pulling you away - it's another part of life pulling you away. It is about prioritising, not disregarding.

In short, I'm arguing that games are real - you just need to reconsider what real is.