How games saved my life

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Fri, 04 May 2012 01:17:38 -0400

Callie discusses how Persona 3 helped her understand and appreciate her friendships.

The game Persona 3 saved my life, in a way. It made me really realize how important having friends and family really is. I’ve never really been the social type. I’m somewhat anti-social, and people usually just make me want to shoot someone, namely myself. I mean, after being bullied from the time I was 5, just starting school, to recent times, as a 15 year old, a sophmore in high school, underappreciated by both teachers and friends, who wouldn’t want to?

It was actually this year that I first played Persona 3, after much resistance. A girl in the grade above me handed me a copy of the game, and told me to go play it over Thanksgiving break.

I was wary at first, but after a few hours of gameplay, I noticed that the Protagonist was a lot like me, despite our genders. I also noticed that I was personally making these bonds with each character as I played the game, and how strong the bonds got the more you talked to these people.

I thought for a while. Though the people of this game could get annoying, it was like they were my true friends. So, the week that we got back to school, I watched my relationships with the people around me. They weren’t so different from those in the game.

Persona 3 made me realize that although some people may really make me angry, they were and are my friends, and they care about my wellbeing and my sanity. Some of them are willing to do anything to help me if I need it.

For the longest time, I felt as if there was nobody who gave a damn about me. But Persona 3 showed me that all I had to do was pay more attention, and I would see that I was loved, and needed, and wanted.

I still get those thoughts every once in a while, but I just think about my friends, and Persona 3’s lesson, and I know that I can’t do what I thought about those many times. I have episodes where I may dig my nails deep into my skin, but I know that I can’t let myself die just yet.

How Video Games Saved me From Drugs

Fri, 04 May 2012 01:15:00 -0400

Kyle discusses how video games helped him overcome his addicting to painkillers and heroin.

When I was 17 or 18 years old I smoked weed for the first time. It was my first experience with an illegal drug and I loved it. It’s such an empowering feeling to know that you are doing something against the rules and you feel great doing it. It was fun. I probably liked it too much. It became an everyday thing for me and followed me to college, but this story is not about weed. I only mention it because I think it was the stepping-stone I needed to enter the world of all the other drugs.

I don’t know what it is about the college environment but it totally glorifies drug use. Everywhere I went there were people passing around a bowl/joint/blunt and there was alcohol at every party. It made me want to experiment with other substances. I was just so curious it was very easy to turn my curiosities into a reality. I tried LSD and after a couple acid trips, I gained the confidence to try everything and anything. Over the next two years I pretty much tried every substance besides crack and meth.

Out of all the drugs I tried there was only one that really left it’s mark on me and lured me into using it again and again. The feeling and high I experienced with painkillers was like nothing I had ever tried before. It was just pure bliss in the form of a pill and it made me feel like everything in my life was perfect. I could just forget about any issues I was facing and enter a dream-like state where happiness and comfort were the only feelings left in the world. This was the beginning of my drug addiction. Painkillers, mainly Oxycodone, became part of my everyday routine. I soon found myself needing more and more though to reach that same feeling I had back when I first started and I soon went from spending twenty dollars every other weekend to owning a three-hundred dollar a day full blown drug habit. It seemed like it happened in the blink of an eye. It’s hard to explain or even understand myself, but you just get caught up in the drug’s powerful grasp.

When you have to spend hundreds of dollars a day it adds up very quickly, so I inevitably started selling drugs to support my addiction. My whole life was spiraling out of control and all I cared about was my next high. I lost friends, relationships, money, belongings, possessions, I was arrested, and eventually expelled from school. I just didn’t care about anything besides the drug and when I couldn’t find pharmaceutical painkillers I would turn to Heroin. It was a cheaper alternative but it was also more addictive.

Luckily for myself I was somehow convinced to enter a treatment program. My friends saw how bad it was getting and they really supported me by setting up an appointment and going with me. It was the start of my recovery and since the first doctor visit a little over a year ago I relapsed once but found a new doctor/program that is more effective. I’ve been clean from every substance for about 7 months including even alcohol and I feel healthy and like myself again.

The hardest part about recovery is staying in recovery/staying clean. My counselors and group leaders/members always say that you need to have something the fill the void left by the drugs. For me this has been video games (and making music, but I think the games have helped much more). There hasn’t been one or even a couple in particular, it’s been a whole bunch of various games that have been able to occupy my time and keep me on the right path. Some of them are Minecraft, Borderlands, Mass Effect 1 (I’m kind of behind on the series…), GTA IV, Saints Row, and many more. Video games have been so crucial in my recovery and when I’m not playing them I’m watching youtube videos about them or reviews. They literally saved my life, and there is no doubt in my mind that if I didn’t have gaming to fill my time I would have long ago been back to using drugs. Thank you Games.

A note from Kyle: I attached a song I recorded during the height of my addiction. The quality is far from optimal but looking back at it now I think it is a very accurate depiction of how I was feeling and it captures the inner struggle I was dealing with at the time. Everything was done on one take and the lyrics were made on the spot, which I think captured a sort of raw emotion. My cellphone also goes off a couple times but somehow fits the song (it’s also kind of funny or maybe pathetic because it was probably a drug related text). I usually don’t share my music, I tend to look at it as more of a journal or “diary”, but enjoy.

Listen to Kyle’s song here.

How "Robotech: Battlecry" Helped Better my Relationship with my Sister

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 15:37:37 -0400

Jarvis discusses how, after years of silence and indifference to his sister, playing multiplayer in Robotech: Battlecry with her brought them together.

My sister and I didn’t exactly get along. Our interaction was limited to casual greetings and forced hugs at the behest of my parents. For many years we really never spoke at all even though we lived under the same roof. I was seven years older than her, the big brother, and she was my little sister; that was about it. There were standards though: we never called each other names. It amazed me when my friends would refer to their siblings as “idiots” or other less endearing terms, that just didn’t happen in my house. It amazed them that we simply never spoke to one another and yet kept our relationship painstakingly cordial. Truth be told, I couldn’t imagine insulting my sister in the same way I couldn’t imagine insulting a perfect stranger.

We did have our outs with each other. When we did speak at length it was usually to argue. We did that more than play. As I got older I quit squabbling as often, not just because I thought it was pointless, but also because it was more trouble than it was worth. I settled with staying in my room and playing video games rather than fighting with my sister.

Now, I didn’t know anything about the story behind the Gamecube game, “Robotech: Battlecry.” I knew there were giant robots, which I didn’t particularly care for. I saw there was cell-shading, which was surprisingly well done. And I noticed that the game was full of escort missions, which I positively despised. Still, I played that game non-stop and garnered every medal and reward.

I unlocked a ton of multiplayer content, although it was content I could never play. I didn’t lack friends, but I was rarely allowed guests. I played single player missions over and over again, even playing out different scenarios in my head. I tackled missions in all different ways, but much of my unlocked content was only available in the multiplayer mode.

I’m not sure if it started out as me trying to reach out to my sister or simply my desire to play multiplayer with another human being—I’d lean closer to the latter—but I ended up asking my sister if she wanted to play with me. My sister liked video games; she had her own Gameboy Color. She had requested to play games with me in the past, but most of my games were too complicated for her or single-player. She didn’t hesitate to say yes when I offered. I didn’t expect much. Just a punching bag for me to test a few maps I’d never gotten a chance to really enjoy. I taught her the controls, showed her the different Veritechs, and we started up.

She lost a lot, it was to be expected. She’d never played the game or any game like it before. Still, she really enjoyed it and I enjoyed playing with her. There were times in the past that I can barely remember, insubstantial fleeting moments I know that we had fun like that before; I’ll always remember Robotech, though. It wasn’t like anything else we’d had fun doing in the past. I had played that game to death and had more fun with it than any other game in a long time and she was enjoying it, too. We laughed, we joked, and we heckled each other after we destroyed one another. We had Sniper only matches with fog turned on so we could stalk each other through the city and try to gun each other down without causing excessive collateral damage. We had high ground sniper matches where one person would fly up on the hills and take a position while another would hide in the arena. Then we’d try to find each other before one player destroyed the other. It was the most fun I’d had playing a game with someone in a long time.

I’ll always remember Robotech: Battlecry, not just because it was a fun game, but because it brought me and my sister together despite years of practical silence. To this day that game has helped me foster relationships with people who I now consider my friends, but I value the friendship it helped build between me and my sister the most. I still don’t know anything about Roy Fokker or the Zentradi, but I know that I had fun playing a video game with my sister. That was something more unreal to me than giant robots or wars in space.

How Fallout 3 Saved my Life

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 15:31:16 -0400

Jett discusses how Fallout 3 helped him emerge from a depression instigated by an alcoholic father and incessant bullying at school.

I entered my sophomore year of high school coming out of the aftermath of four years’ worth of bullying that I was thankful I survived. Those four years had been the most painful years of my education - and my life so far - and I felt that sophomore year would give me an opportunity to turn over a new leaf and be a more positive person. About a month into the semester, I learned that I wasn’t going to get that opportunity.

I started to get bullied again by the students who had followed me through the years and hadn’t yet grown out of the habit of picking on me, my parents put our house for sale for fear of foreclosing, and my dad began nursing an increasingly serious drinking habit and an unhealthy fascination with the Biblical end times that eventually got so bad I would skip meals and stay locked up in my room to avoid him and his ranting. Between bullies, school, my parents, and their palpable disappointment in me that I wasn’t “saved”, I fell into a crushing depression in which I felt hopelessly worthless and that there was no hope for the future, exacerbated by my dad’s comments of how bleak the future did in fact look. I became quiet, lethargic, and withdrawn, both at school and in my own home, my friends began to worry about me, and a rift had opened up between me and my parents. I began experiencing the beginnings of suicidal thoughts.

So it’s ironic that the game that saved me from this depression was Fallout 3, a game that pretty much screams that the future doesn’t look too good.

I had gotten Fallout 3 over the summer but hadn’t played it yet, so one day I popped it into my PS3 and found myself totally immersed in the experience. I felt the joy of every victory, the sting of every tragedy, the thrill of every escapade, and the camaraderie between myself, the characters, and my companions (you know who you are, Fawkes and Dogmeat). Every day, I would wake up early before school just to play a little of it, then immediately delve into the game as soon as I got home. For months, Fallout 3 was my virtual escape from my gloomy mindset and I was more than glad to partake in it. I even made a few friends over a shared love for the game and was able to buy the Game of the Year Edition off one of them, furthering my time with the game for another few months.

Looking back on it, I know without a shadow of a doubt why Fallout 3 pulled me out of my depression. It wasn’t because it helped me escape from my troubles, although I do credit it for that to a certain degree - it was because it made me feel like I was worth a damn. That in this period of my life when I felt like a piece of decaying organic waste, I was still able to hope, still able to achieve, still able to do anything. That even when times were hard, I, as a person, was actually worth something, even in a future that was hopelessly deadlocked in a constant cycle of survival and conflict (which my dad feels could be the imminent future of today’s society). I was saving people, changing lives, and vanquishing evil - I felt like someone worth living as, and this translated to my real life and gave me a more optimistic outlook on the future. While I was able to resurface from this horrible slump in my life, the same thing was happening to my parents - in a kind of renewal of spiritual faith, they stopped our house’s sale and my dad gave up drinking cold turkey. While he does still have this annoying tendency to rant about the end times, I’ve learned to accept him nonetheless, to which I credit my Fallout 3 Dad for helping me understand a little better that he only does it to keep my mom and I prepared in case bad times come around.

I am currently halfway through my junior year of high school and haven’t touched Fallout 3 since beating it nearly a year ago (or maybe I didn’t beat it…it kept freezing on me). I haven’t been bullied in months, I’m closer to my parents, and I’m not the antisocial introvert I was last year.I credit Fallout 3 for helping me through this dark part of my life

Tracing Boundaries

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 23:56:14 -0400

Ted discusses how video games helped him come to terms with the expansiveness and uncontrollable nature of life.

As many of my generation, I grew up playing video games. The first game I ever played was Donkey Kong on my cousin’s NES. I can’t begin to count the hours I must have spent playing Super Mario Brothers after we got an NES of our own. My mom says she used to hear the noises of jumping and coins in her sleep. Even simple games like the ones I played back then had a way of becoming part of the fabric of my life - the terrors and the joys I experienced in the game were just as powerful as those in real life, and they seemed to intertwine. I became familiar with the feeling of a screen that would never scroll left, and a princess just out of reach.

Games became personal for me when my parents were divorced. I was young and confused. I remember moving away with just one of my parents, clutching a red pillow with Christmas embroidery. I traced the candy, the house, the sleigh, over and over. It was like a game. It made me feel whole. As I grew up I played Final Fantasy games, walking to the very edge of the map, tracing the boundaries of the game just as I had when I was a child. In hindsight that’s all I ever did with games - tracing boundaries so I could feel complete. Possessed by completionism, I had to see every story branch and collect every possible item in the games I played. It wasn’t a particularly healthy mindset.

Eventually the boundaries of game spaces became too large for me to trace, which changed the way I played games and the way I thought about life. Mass Effect had more branches than I could follow. Red Dead Redemption’s random encounters were too open-ended to force me to reload from a save point. Slowly, I came to the realization that I couldn’t experience every possible scenario in these types of games. The same was true for life. I will never know what it would have been like if my parents hadn’t divorced. There are countless things that I will never do or have or be, but perimeters don’t frighten me anymore. Games taught me to be okay with finitude and not to obsess over what could have been.

XBL Gave me the Friend of a Lifetime

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 23:53:11 -0400

Chandler discusses how XBL introduced him to one of his closest friends, whom he has known for two years now.

At the age of 12, I was a rather awkward child. I was always paranoid of peoples thoughts, and I tried to be someone I’m not. I always looked up to my older brother, and wanted to hang out with his friends and be cool. They never liked that. My brother had an Xbox 360, but I claimed it as my own considering I would play it much more than he would. I convinced my parents to preorder the limited edition of Halo Wars for me, and on March 3rd, 2009, we went buy my local Best Buy and picked up our copy. The ride home was filled with excitement.

I got home and immediately redeemed the codes for a flaming warthog and honor guard wraith. I felt amazing. I went into matchmaking and started playing 2v2. I tried to be nice and communicate with my teammates, but it turns out no one wants to play with a 12 year old, and they get extremely jealous when they see that 12 year old got the limited edition. I continued to play despite their resentment.

A couple days later, I finally had a good teammate. Shadowray12. He was nice, he wanted to win, we communicated, and we both had the limited edition. Best of all, he was 16. I finally had an older friend! We immediately hit it off, and added each other. We won and continued to play.

Two yeas later, in this current day and age, we have been going through some problems. Including his most traumatic break up, and the loss of my grandfather. We continue to play daily, we even skype and play PC together. Despite this 2000 mile distance, from Florida to California, we’re the closest friends can be.

How Halo Helped Me Through Chemotherapy

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 13:33:09 -0400

Ken Berthelette discusses how playing Halo was the only thing that could help distract him from the pains and embarrassments of chemotherapy treatment.

Last year I was diagnosed with a type of lymphoma. I had surgery on my neck to diagnose me, which left me in mild discomfort and gave me some serious scaring. I went through chemotherapy over the holiday season. My first chemo session was the day after Thanksgiving and my last one was the day before Christmas.

Needless to say I did not have a good time during that season. After chemotherapy, I underwent radiation therapy which was every day for three weeks. During radiation my mouth was irradiated and I had extremely bad mouth sores. The pain just from drinking a simple glass of water or milk was so bad that I did not eat or drink for almost two weeks after radiation stopped. To top off all my ills, I lost all of my hair which made me feel even more defeated.

During this entire ordeal my family asked me what I wanted to help make me feel more comfortable and how to get through this. I told them in very simple terms, video games. My family responded in the best possible way. Once my chemo started I got all of my Christmas gifts early. I received Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, Halo 3, and Halo 3: ODST. Needless to say I was very occupied during all my trials and tribulations. The video games kept my mind off my cancer and pain as I fought wave after wave of covenant and flood enemies. I made it through my problems with a DMR in one hand and a gravity hammer in the other.

The video games I received gave me an escape hatch from my life. They allowed me to dive deep into another world where the only problem is finding ammunition and a health pack. My worries melted away as I sniped my enemies and made my way around the alien planet. Video games saved my sanity during my cancer and made it possible for me to stay strong and work my way through it.

How Games Got Me a Best Man

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 13:28:00 -0400

Derek Chen discusses how League of Legends helped heal the wedge driven between him and his best friend because they loved the same woman.

There was a girl. Isn’t there always?

I loved this girl; I loved her more then ANYTHING I had ever loved, and hey, she loved me too. She loved me. But not as much as she loved my best friend.

Eventually she ended up talking to me about it, and I was official in the friend zone. I mean she asked for advice for Christ’s sake.

To add insult onto injury, they decided to try and hide their relationship from our tight knit group of friends. And of course, it didn’t work, and as a result we slowly grew apart; and so did everyone else from my friend. EVERYTHING changed, he started ignoring us, he stopped talking to us, sometimes he was even bitter towards us.

Talk about bro’s before hos amirite?

But, there was one thing that NEVER changed, every afternoon at 6pm, I would go into our skype chatroom and say “ranked game guys, get on.”

Then that magical moment would happen, when he accepted an invite on League of Legends, and we had a good time, just like always. Just then, JUST then, everything would be all right. And eventually, we started talking to each other in real life, not about problems, not about the weather, not about politics. But about games, good ol’ league of fucking legends. And now, I’m typing this a week after my honeymoon, where my good friend was my best man, and where his wife bought me a killer toaster, and we still lose horrifically every day at 6 pm with our favorite characters, in our favorite game, League of Legends.

Thanks Swain, for always being there for me.

Not a story, but a pretty impressive breakdown of statistical...

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 13:38:02 -0400

Not a story, but a pretty impressive breakdown of statistical evidence of the positive impact that video games can have.

How My XBOX 360 Saved My Life

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 13:33:48 -0400

Allyx discusses how her XBOX 360 helped her contend with the aggressively debilitating side effects of cancer treatment.

When I was 17, at the beginning of my senior year of high school, I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma; cancer. While one of the more curable forms of cancer, the treatment for Hodgkin’s is very aggressive (a nurse once told me she always felt sorry for the Hodgkin’s patients, because we receive the most amount of chemo in the smallest amount of time) and left me incapacitated, unable to do much besides lie on the couch and watch TV.

And, luckily, play my Xbox 360.

The console soon turned out to be a lifesaver. At a time when I had no control over my life, my 360 allowed me to find satisfaction in one of the few things I could do. I made life or death decisions and saved the galaxy as Commander Shepherd. I helped John Marston find redemption in the wild west. I saved Ferelden from the Blight as a Grey Warden. I restored order to Arkham Asylum as Batman. I did all this while puking my guts out, unable to do things as simple as walk on my own, or decide when I wanted to eat. I was able to save the world while crippled by pain and sickness.

Video games did more than give me something to do; they kept me sane by allowing me to feel achievement. I’m now 19 and have been cancer-free for months. I don’t know how I would have gotten through the last two years without my games.

My Little Story

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 13:30:21 -0400

TJ discusses how gaming helped him cope with the onset of his grandmother’s Alzheimer’s.

I have been playing videogames for as long as I can remember. I have also been pretty depressed for as long as I can remember. Gaming has always been a way to help me escape the darkness that closed in on me. It turns out that I have bipolar disorder with major depressive symptoms and that the only things that really kept me from suicide were gaming and my grandmother. Not too long ago my grandmother suddenly developed severe Alzheimer’s Diease and I had an extremely hard time coping with that. I watched her quickly go from a sweet older woman who raised me and taught me stuff like how to cook or that I’m as special as anyone else to a quiet, forgetful, child-like shell of the person I used to know.

It felt like the world was shutting down even though there were others in my life. At first I couldn’t even understand how to treat her, but more than anything I didn’t feel like it was worth living a life without her the way she used to be. I went to a really dark place in my head. I wanted to suffer, wanted others to suffer. I had simply stopped fighting to keep myself going like she would want me to. People in my family didn’t understand how I felt so I couldn’t talk to them so instead I played games. I have been playing fighting games for years now, but this was the first time it meant anything more than just a few hours of fun. Street Fighter, Guilty Gear, etc. all felt like a struggle I was having with all the issues I have been going through. Every time I won for a moment if felt like she was helping me win. So now I play with my grandmother close to my heart. Cause if she could she’d fight just as much as the characters I play.

My apologies

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 13:26:10 -0400

It has been a long, long time since I updated this, and I’m terribly sorry. I have been jet-setting all across the country! I am going to attempt to follow a regimented updating schedule, which means I will post two stories every Wednesday until there are no more to post.

Games are great.

You are great.

Making Fantasy my Reality

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:34:00 -0500

B’Rock discusses how Final Fantasy helped keep them stable in a family that suffered from a variety of mental disabilities.

Mental disease is strange, and when you grow up in a household where everyone is crazy its tricky to see anyone having a problem. Being the youngest I never saw any of my family members as crazy, just different. I never knew of a time when my house wasn’t overloaded with junk. I didn’t understand what a hoarder was. I never knew how much alcohol was okay for a grown woman to drink and that you couldn’t just attribute it to the fact that she’s Irish. I didn’t know what it meant to be bipolar. I didn’t know what social disorder was, or why my brother had to be home-schooled. I didn’t know what schizophrenia really meant, or how it makes you lose your sister.

What I did know was how much I loved Final Fantasy.

Making friends was hard. People always made me uneasy, or more accurately I made them uneasy. I didn’t know how to engage or make friends since my only models were a family full of neurotics with their own host of problems. But when I wanted to escape I would run home, go to the basement, and find myself in front of the PS1 I bought for $30 in change. I played FFVIII and was awful at it. I didn’t understand the junction system (who the hell did? much less a 9 year old) but was desperate to leave. To escape, to go somewhere where the strange and bizarre was standard. Where my fantasy WAS reality.

I stole a copy of FFVII, and got FFIX as a birthday gift. Every game would keep me company, and offer more then the world around me really could. I don’t think I could have survived growing up if I didn’t have a world to escape to. I was young, a Jew, a sexually confused one at that, that lived in a tiny town that was quick to remind me of my differences. I used to fantasize about summoning Ifrit and Shiva blowing away my enemies or mumbling “Aero 2” every time I glanced at how dirty the house was. I always would replace one character in every Final Fantasy game with my own name to embrace the fantasy entirely. FFVII I was Vincent, FFVIII I was Zell, FFIX I was Vivi.

I think having those stories kept me from creating fantasies in my head. Delusions that most likely would have occupied those spaces instead of a harmless video game.

I think these games kept me sane, when the world around me spiraled.

I’m 21 now, traveling a lot. Still running I suppose, but chasing real fantasies not just ones that were given to me by storytellers. Mental disorders are higher with those who have family histories, but there is plenty of research saying that it is stronger and more likely in those who lack outlets, or don’t willfully resist them. My sister lost the will, and took her life three months ago. I think that shock, snapped my family to the reality they are not part of. We are sending my mother to rehab and addressing all of our issues.

I finally got my brother to come out of his shell and meet my friends.

I feel like a rock now, and being a gamer did that. Who would’ve thought?

Interactivity Helps me Cope With Chronic Apathy

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 14:49:21 -0500

Whodin discusses how, after suffering from depression and apathy in his childhood, video games were one of the few things that could make him excited again.

While I wouldn’t outright say that video games “saved my life” (even though they pretty much were the only thing helping me stay sane through most of my childhood thanks to a spectacularly volatile home situation), as much as I would that they /gave/ me one. I have in retrospect discovered that virtually all of the things that I am interested in today stem from video games.

Due to childhood PTSD, I suffer from severe bouts of depression and, more importantly, apathy, to the point of rendering me almost mute at times, and when this happens, I find it difficult if not impossible to motivate myself to do anything - even play video games. But my love for the medium has kept me going, kept my spirits high, and really allowed me to function even with this problem through most of my life. Video games have given birth to so many sparks of interest, so many buds of hope that otherwise would not have flourished.

I have been teaching myself music, both composing and performing, thanks to the works of composers like Nobuo Uematsu, Yasunori Mitsuda and Akira Yamaoka, as well as more recent music games such as Beatmania and DJ MAX. I became interested in foreign languages and linguistics, which is now my major field of study, thanks to a strong desire in my teenage years to learn Japanese so I could play all of those amazing games that Japan was “keeping all to themselves.”

I got into writing, as embarrassing as it may be, from an interest in fan fiction, and later, scriptwriting. I became interested in software development when I learned more about AI in video games, and wanted to come up with innovative ways of improving them (though this obviously never panned out). Even sociology and psychology became interesting subjects for me after playing MMOs and experiencing the ways in which people communicate and behave differently in such settings.

Of course, there were other things that supplementarily got me interested in the above. Books (particularly high-fantasy like Tolkien, which really helped kickstart my language fetish) and anime among others have further expanded my horizons, but none have affected me so thoroughly and deeply as have video games. They have taught me about love, prejudice (and being an LGBT person such lessons are invaluable), the human condition, and emotions that I probably would have otherwise not known that I had the capacity to feel.

When I say “I don’t know where I would be without them,” I truly mean it, and I can say so proudly and without shame, because I know how powerful they can be, I know how important interactive media is to the world. I always get infuriated when people dismiss video games as a whole medium as being a “waste of time”, because they simply refuse to accept the fact that video games have affected the lives of many, many people throughout the world, and in some cases, saved them. In my case, I would not have a life without them.

I cannot put a quantity or a value on how video games have enriched my life, far beyond the world behind the controller. It seems that almost every day I discover yet another little thing that video games have done for me, and it always makes me smile. I just wish I could give back to the industry even a fraction of what it has given me over my almost 22 years of existence.

Why It's Important to Read

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 13:15:41 -0500

Trey Smit discusses how his brother learned the importance of reading through playing The Legend of Zelda: The Adventure of Link.

My brother couldn’t have been older than four or five when we would take turns playing The Legend of Zelda: The Adventure of Link. Often, especially Saturday mornings we would sit together eating cereal and playing. My brother could read somewhat, but not enough to always understand what characters were saying.

At some point I decided that there were other ventures that needed my attention on Saturdays and I left our routine. My brother came to me and said “But how am I going to know what they’re saying? How will I know when all else fails to use fire? Or that Goriya of Tantari stole the trophy?” (Ok he might not have asked those last two parts.) I told him he would have to learn to read himself, because he couldn’t always depend on other people to read for him.

Later when he went to kindergarten and was being taught the alphabet his teacher asked the class why it was important to know letters. My little brother immediately spoke up saying “Letters make words and you have to know words to be able to read. If you can’t read then you can’t figure out what you need to do in video games because your older brother isn’t always going to read them for you.”

A Day in Sim City

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 19:44:43 -0500

Lauren discusses how, on the day she planned to commit suicide following years of living in an abusive family, The Sims helped distract and comfort her, preventing her death.

My family was the poster family for instability. One day our mom would threaten to leave us and the next she’d apologize, only to find herself arguing with our mentally ill father. It felt like a day couldn’t go by without them arguing themselves to sleep. I was only 8 when they asked me who I wanted to live with once they divorced.

They didn’t go through with the divorce, but their endless fighting persisted. I sometimes heard screaming and smashing things in the kitchen, but my 10 year old mind had no idea how to react. So I ended up growing into this twitchy kid that was struck with severe anxiety at every turn. Once I was forced to switch schools, I started being bullied by a good part of the class, who couldn’t stand that this new kid that had suddenly entered their territory. Whenever I’d ask my parents or relatives for advice on dealing with my growing social anxiety I’d always get the same answer: get over it. This constant rejection just made me more and more wary of people.

But I did my best to just ignore the problem. Whenever I was at home and things got out of hand, I’d just play Tomb Raider 2 on my dad’s ancient PC. My parents despised video games, and TR2 was basically the only game I had at the time. I didn’t mind replaying that game over and over again because, for a few hours, it helped me forget about everything.

But once high school rolled around I was a bumbling mess. The constant fighting was still going on in the family and that just added to the tension building up. I don’t remember how it happened, but one day I simply shut down. I slipped into depression and for almost an entire year all I did was sleep, go to school, then come home and stare idly at the wall behind the TV. I even started skipping classes and my grades slipped, but my parents didn’t even notice. Soon enough, my motivation for anything just disappeared, even my TR2 replays.

I felt like there was no point in going on, and my head was soon filled with thoughts of suicide. I spent about a week thinking of a method to kill myself that wouldn’t cause too much mess, and I eventually settled for drowning myself in the local lake. I had planned it for a Tuesday morning when my parents were both away from home. Two days before that, I woke up to see my cousin, who had come over to borrow my dad’s toolkit. Before he left, he handed me a CD case that read “The Sims”, saying that he thought I’d like it more than he did.

With zero knowledge of this game, I decided to give it a try. And once I did, time just disappeared for me. I was completely engrossed in this new world I had never seen before or thought possible. My family was just two members, but I was instantly attached to them and felt like it was my responsibility to take care of them. I remember even laughing for the first time in months because I thought I had installed the game wrong and all my Sims were speaking in Chinese. By the time my head was back into the real world an entire day had passed, and the clock showed 11PM.

The Tuesday I had planned eventually came, but I spent it all gaming.

The Strength to Choose Another Way

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 13:45:17 -0500

Joan discusses how Yuna’s bravery in FFX helped her confront her abusive husband and escape her marriage.

When I was probably too young to be making big life decisions, I got married. Unfortunately, I got married to a man that was emotionally abusive and manipulative, and had systematically isolated me from my family and most of my friends. All the while he made me feel as if this was how relationships were supposed to be, that all I needed to do was submit and it would all be fine.

One of the things I was allowed to do at the time was play videogames, because he himself was something of a gamer, particularly with RPGs. In fact, he’d introduced me to videogames before we’d gotten married, and it was the one positive thing that came out of that relationship.

I started playing Final Fantasy X the last summer of our marriage, as I wasn’t taking any classes at the time and I had always thought it looked pretty; what I didn’t expect was how relevant the game would be to my life at the time.

I immediately liked Yuna, though I didn’t realize why until the reveal at Zanarkand… but it became obvious afterward. Here was a girl who was doing exactly what people expected of her, with the end goal of her own destruction. Even if the game didn’t really say what was supposed to happen at the Final Summoning until later, the sense of dread and a choice which wasn’t really a choice stayed with me. I found myself living my misery through Yuna and the nobility of suffering. Good girls were supposed to smile and bear it, weren’t they? The best saints were martyrs, after all.

Then she rejected the Final Summoning.

It was a shock to see her deny it and go to save the world another way, a better way. My first reaction was betrayal; how could Yuna find a way out, when I couldn’t seem to get the courage to do so
myself? This girl’s bravery had gone from the kind that put up with things and accepted them, to the kind that was really brave; do something different, unknown. Scarier. And I realized I wasn’t being brave at all.

When I finished the game, I found myself crying at the end, not because of the sad ending FMV, but because I realized that I had to do something to end the death spiral I was on in my marriage. I could no longer just passively accept my fate. If Yuna—people pleasing and passive herself—could reject her path of destruction, I really had no reason not to do so myself.

It wasn’t immediate, my leaving. There were a couple weeks of indecision, a couple of things in my real life that needed to happen first. But I couldn’t help but think of Yuna, facing Yunalesca and rejecting the Final Summoning when I finally faced him, and told him that I could no longer live like I had been. And while the animation wouldn’t be able to show it anyway, I wondered if Yuna’s knees almost buckled too, and if her heart had been racing as fast as mine.

And maybe Yuna had the rest of the world to think of saving, and a team behind her, but we both saved our own lives in the end.

How WoW Helped me Through an Abusive 2 Year Relationship

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 12:40:44 -0500

Jo discusses how, while she was trapped in a mentally and physically abusive relationship, WoW was the only thing that helped restore her sense of self-worth.

Life had been going well for me since I was a kid. I had great parents, a caring younger brother, I did well at school and I had a great group of friends (who I still talk to now and again). This changed when I got to college (year 11 and 12 in Australia) and I met my (now ex) boyfriend. I was a bit of a rebellious teenager but it was never very serious until him.

It started out all nice and happy, but then he started getting selfish and possessive. He’d want me to miss classes for him or wear looser clothes so other guys wouldn’t look at me. In hindsight, I know that’s all bad, but being naive about relationships I thought I wanted it. Then his dad died in year 12. Sad I know, but instead of dealing with it in a good way, he just didn’t bother and blamed everything on everyone else. He changed for the worse, having violent temper outbreaks, self-pity episodes and was always going on about “poor him,” even though he pretended to everyone else that he was fine.

Then he turned abusive - physically, mentally and emotionally. He’d think it was funny to try and make me cry, completely lose it and punch me repeatedly over some random thing he got angry about, and eventually broke my DS and then my laptop.

I felt absolutely alone. I didn’t want to tell anyone; not my parents, not my brother, not even my closest amazing friends, for fear of confrontation, fighting and making a scene. I always HATED big yelling confrontations and I was afraid of the contempt or disgust I thought everyone would have for me. By that time I was hating myself and thinking about just committing suicide to escape it all. He didn’t want me having friends that were guys apart from him; even girls were a no go. The only thing that I could escape into was WoW and computer games.

In WoW, I met a close friend. When I was asking anyone and everyone in all chat if I could get a run through a dungeon, dartamoor, a lvl 70 warrior volunteered. His reason: I’d asked nicely! After that he helped me level up to 70 and then we’d do every dungeon and quest together. When things got tough for him or anyone in our guild, we’d all help out. The guild he started turned into a great group of friends from all over in all situations. We’d help each other out, and it didn’t matter if you hadn’t been online in ages, they’d say hello and get right back into questing with you. They gave me back my self-confidence and feeling of self worth. I got myself out of that depressing relationship, got back on good terms with my family and got my grades back up again.

Now I’m at university and life is great. I have a great bf and I get along with my parents and brother, I still play lots of computer games like League of Legends, Counter Strike Source and Kingdom Hearts games, and I believe I always will. I don’t play WoW anymore as I just don’t have the money for it, but I’ll always remember those times playing WoW with those friends with a smile and happy memories. I know that it was because of those people that I got through those 2 years (thanks guys)!

Do I blame the ex for how he acted and what I went through? yes and no, yes because he should of known better than to do what he did, and no because not everyone can cope through a loss like that or deal with it in a good way. I just don’t feel anything at all for him; not anger, not hate, not pity, not anything. I do hope that he’s a better person now than he was then, but I don’t really care to know.

Cultural Identity Issues and Gaming

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 14:36:14 -0500

Charlie Appleton discusses how Saints Row 2, and other games that allow character customization, helped him reconcile his Korean and British heritages.

Being born to a British father and a Korean mother while being raised in a Chinese city I felt I didn’t belong to, led to some well realised identity issues as I’ve gotten older. As a teenager, I more closely associated with my father. I felt and still feel very culturally British, something that my inability to speak Korean has only contributed to. Yet, I’ve always resembled my mother. From an early age, I’ve looked much more Asian than Anglo-Saxon, something that has made the occasional queries from strangers as to whether I am Chinese or even in one extreme case, whether I was adopted, all the more disheartening. Unlike one’s desire to be slimmer or stronger, looking like an ethnicity I don’t ‘feel like’ is something that I’ll never be able to properly change. And that has been a hard pill to swallow.

It was around the same time that I’d been playing “Saints Row 2” though that this issue really became something that preoccupied me. For the majority of my time in the world of Stillwater, I’d been playing as the default character that had been set by the game. I can’t remember whether it was some obsession with the developer’s portrayal of the character or simply creative bankruptcy on my behalf, but for some reason I had chosen to play as someone that just ‘wasn’t me’. Once this occurred to me, I decided to remedy it. After an ungodly amount of time at one of the game’s many plastic surgery clinics, my character had come out looking a lot more like… well, a cross between myself and my father.

As I moved onto other games that featured character creation (Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Fallout 3 etc.) I began trying to recreate myself in the way that I’ve always wanted to look, resembling the man that has played the biggest role in my life: my father. As I’ve matured, I’ve come to terms with my appearance and my own cultural identity. I feel confident in my ‘British-ness’ even if I know that my physical appearance may never reflect this. But whenever I return to the world of gaming, I’m allowed to look like the man I want. Though that may never be able to extend to the real world, for the time being I’m okay with that.

Metroid Changed my Life

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 20:46:53 -0500

Michelle Perl discusses how creating a cosplay replication of the Zero Suit Samus outfit motivated her to lose over 100 pounds.

See Michelle’s feature in Nintendo Power Magazine here.

Interested in joining a video game-inspired charity organization? Michelle is also involved with SOS Gamers. Check them out here!