EggXpert

Why do we play? Why do you play games? Write your opinions here… Created by Archive , 10-23-2007

I play to have fun and un-wind after a long day at work. Also love playing at LAN parties and on XBOX live you get a chance to interact with other people that have the same interest as you. Also gives you a chance to test your skills against other people in the world while playing online. Also the love of playing games ever since you pick up first controller or first used a keyboard to play a game you are hooked. It takes you away from the real world temporally to escape the madness and forget just for a moment whats going on in the world or in your life.

I play primarily because it's entertainment.  There are many games that can inspire the very same feelings that a movie or tv show or a book can inspire.  Fear, hope, excitment, love, grief, all feelings that video games can potentially produce and that is a fascinating aspect of this medium.  I really like how auden put it: "It’s like reading and writing a story at the same time."  This is so very true; combine that concept with the tactile sensation of using a controller or a keyboard and you have a very interesting social phenomenon that spans throughout the realms of culture.  Perhaps my favorite video game genre in Survival Horror, not because of the quality games that make up that genre, but because these games can inspire genuine feeling of desperation, fear, anxiety, and sometimes grief.  Video games have mastered this genre far surer than the film industry ever could, because video games of course have an interactive aspect to them that definitely adds an extra variable to the experience as a whole.  Think about the Silent Hill series, these games are, in my opinion, the best of the genre because they put the player in dire situations that seem hopeless.  You may not have any ammo in your only gun when you are forced to fight Pyramid Head, an intensely scary looking creature with seemingly no motive to the atrocities he commits and that you unwillingly witness.  Your injured, about to bleed to death and there is no form of medical kit around, so you have to be extremely careful when traversing the pitch dark, unusually thin, long hallways of a very run-down hotel.  Killing your enemies is no easy feat, you are not a super soldier, and you do not have tons of ammo, you are a normal human, that is untrained to fight.  The fear, desperation, anxiety and grief that this game does so well to inspire all help to immerse the player into the experience, making it that much more frightening.  I am a huge fan of big games, what I like to call an Epic;  A game that tells a deep story and is able to immerse the player into that world, some examples are Indigo Prophecy, Breakdown, Mass Effect, Half-Life, Shenmue, BioShock, Final Fantasy, or Advent Rising (I wish that trilogy would be completed).

I also play for sheer entertainment factor.  Most of the games I play are RTS's or historical MMORG's.  I like to learn new, old ideas, and history.  TV/Cable bores the **** out of me so I turn to PC games.

I play video games because they are a way similar to music that allows you to get away from the stresses of life.  But there is much more than that, probably the most important is that they provide something for the imagination to run with, lots of times they spawn from stories, history and myths which subsequently spark my interest.  I cant tell you how many times that I finish a game and then I hit the bookstore to find something on the game i just completed.  For me video games are educational, look at Civillization series for example, the civlopedia in itself is a historical resource.  Now with the advent of MMORPG's theres the added element of community which is largely the reason for my playing of those games.

I play the games to escape from reality like most of us and to blow off some steam.  I mean c'mon, the only time you can legally blow  someones head off is in the digital world.  Games give you freedoms to explore and do things otherwise impossible in life for some of us who want to fly jets, drive tanks, shoot masses of people.

Plus games are cheaper than Drugs

I play for the false sense of accomplishment, for entertainment, and to fill the void thats there when i'm not playing. I love games with random-item generators that make for rare drops from monsters, (like Diablo 2 has). It's alway kool when you can sell items on ebay.

I play when I'm bored...

Oh, yea and like everyone else here for a way to get away from the stresses of life...And Otherwise...

Oh, and cause it's fun! Forgot to mention that... :P

Respectfully,

PROACEX1

MMORPGs like WoW are simply the perfect type of game, because you can pick them up and commit 15 minutes of play time or commit 5 hours straight. I enjoy playing games that fit IN with my lifestyle and don't cause my blood pressure to rise too high.(see any of the Halo Series)

I play because video games allow you to do what we can never do in real life. For example, I think a zombie apocalypse would kick all kinds of a**, but unfortunately it will probably never happen in real life. So, I look forward to games like Left 4 Dead. Games that are immersive enough to make me feel like I'm really doing those things that are impossible in the real world.

No, most of us aren't going to become ruthless assassins trying to avenge our pasts, but with games like Hitman we can at least pretend. It's almost like a glorified and technological version of cowboys and indians. When we played that as kids, we were pretending to be citizens of the rugged old west - something that could never actually happen. But, just pretending was exciting enough to keep us occupied for hours.

Now, as adults, our imaginations aren't as powerful as they used to be, and we have neighbors who would probably call the police if they saw us play cops and robbers. So, we turn to video games. Immense alien worlds are rendered before our eyes. We get to drive that Ferrari we could never afford in real life. We get to kill the bad guy and save the beautiful princess - while our wives sleep soundly in the other room. We get to be fighter pilots, WWII veterans, members of an alien resistance, and anything else that could possibly be imagined. The impossible becomes possible, and the unbelievable becomes reality. I think that's why we play.