Video Games Saved My Life

I am an avid video gamer in my twenties who also suffers from depression. I have been playing video games for most of my life, often for long stretches of time taking up entire days. I have also long since lost count of the times my favourite pastime has been blamed for crimes ranging from theft to mass murder. This article feels like throwing a grain of sand against a grand tidal wave of negative press but in a way that justifies the need for it even more. Consider this a piece of much needed positive coverage for video games from someone who has actually played more than one.

The main fear I see portrayed on news reports and discussed on panels of exclusively non-gamers is that gamers will lose the ability to differentiate reality and the world of the video game they are playing. Many people seem disturbed by how immersed gamers can become but I see that and instead think “good” Good that they lose themselves inside video games so that they have a respite from the real world, which I have observed to be more sick, deranged, violent and poisonous than any video game I have ever played.

The thought of witnessing all the injustice, cruelty and random merciless chaos of life relentlessly without release, without break seems more likely to drive a person insane and dangerous than the most realistic, immersive video game I can imagine. People blame video games for crimes committed when in fact I wager that they have delayed or even prevented far more.

During my childhood I was frequently bullied both at school and at home and often the only thing I had to look forward to was the unrivalled blissful escapism of video games. Forgetting who I was and losing myself in these worlds where things were simpler, fairer and more controllable. As a teenager I became severely depressed and this would go undiagnosed until my early twenties. Years of crippling self-hatred, constant doubt and an inability to enjoy life made me thoroughly miserable and I have plenty of memories where I’m surrounded by friends, partaking in some leisurely pursuit I should have been fully enjoying and instead of fun or happiness I simply felt empty.

How does one escape from something that is tied to your very being? A nightmare in your veins? A slow draining rot of the mind? Films, books, television and music work to a certain extent but nothing could match the immersion and scope of video games. Amongst the upsettingly few memories of times I have genuinely enjoyed with friends are also a great many memories of adventures taken, emotions experienced, connections made and satisfaction gleaned from achieving something which I knew was ultimately meaningless but found immense pleasure in all the same because I was immersed. For a while I could feel that my only problems were the challenges faced in video games. Challenges I could actually succeed in.

Forgetting who I was, losing that reference point for all my loathing and self-destructive impulses and instead believing I was an acrobatic time-controlling prince or a cybernetic commander of a cutting-edge spaceship or even just a quick little blue anthropomorphic hedgehog, was often the only release I got from the crushing paralysis present in the rest of my life.

Which brings me to the point of this article in which I confidently state that video games have not only saved me from the darkest, depthless emptiness I’ve ever felt but they have given me some of the happiest times I can recall in an existence otherwise starved of such sensations. I would wager that many people in similar positions would claim the same. There is no news to be found in people who are content with something, so the vast majority of gamers go unheard, primarily because they haven’t broken the law.

I don’t believe the media and politicians are completely devoid of logic in their distrust of the medium of video games ( just mostly) but I ask them to broaden their thinking in that a person who cannot detach and dissociate themselves at all from such an experience is in need of help far more generally in life. An inability to separate fact from fiction can prove problematic and potentially dangerous in all walks of life not just in the context of video games. Essentially, someone capable of the crimes often causally linked to video games has far bigger problems than what video games may or may not contribute to. 

Someone of that disposition is at equal risk in any activity, from video games, to paintball to driving a car, so instead of looking for easy and simple targets to blame, censor, and ban, take up the harder, more complex but also more pressing task of improving mental health care for people with these conditions you are seemingly so fraught with concern about.