Gamers Anonymous

I had never heard about Role Playing Games before reading this article. No one I know plays this kind of game. Mostly they play Modern Warfare, my brother being one of them. I still don’t get the hoopla on video games, and now Role Playing Games.

I do believe that the extreme gamers tend to blur the lines between fantasy and reality.  In my previous English classes, we were presented with articles similar to this topic.  One of the articles talked about a young boy around the age 10, while playing a wrestling game on a playing system, beat a 6 year old girl to death while mimicking the wrestling moves. Yes it is not RPG’s, but it involves the same or similar concept how those games affect some people.  As the theorist Arthur Asa Berger said,  “Playing video games may lead to alienation; this alienation can often lead to a sense of estrangement from oneself…what is difficult to know is how being immersed will affect players. Will new video games become a kind of opiate for people who can find an outlet in simulations that seem better than those offered by their reap-life experiences?” (107-108) I get the need to find an outlet for the stress’s in life; however there should be a limit to how much some gamers dive into the fantasy lands.

One of the reasons I think people are obsessed with these systems is because they get a chance to be involved in things that are not possible in real life, do not have the means to, or is illegal.  It gives them a chance to go outside the “box” which is normal. To me it does not become okay when gamers apply fantasy to real life negatively.  For example if they drive around in a car trying to run over things for points or a similar example like that. I believe Role Playing Games or any type of those games/systems should be used in a healthy dose. Not to the point where the person can not sleep because they are thinking about their game or even dreaming about it. They should especially be careful not to mix reality with fantasy.