On Gaming- A Guest Post by Runa Chatterjee

The post below is written by a good friend of mine and a fellow gamer, Runa Chatterjee. She’s been playing games her entire life and this is her take on gaming. As a gamer myself, I find there are points this article raises which are quite valid. Have a read, and welcome Runa to the blog people!

The Bilge Master

So I’ve played video games my entire life and it never struck me as something special. Not the playing video games bit and not the ‘girl-playing-video-games’ bit. I remember playing Prince Of Persia (the old ones!) with my father and then later migrating to different genres and different kinds of styles.

And that’s all it was. Just me and playing video games.

Later, this part of my life took on an importance I had never expected, both in my enjoyment of it and how others saw me doing it. I was a girl who loved playing video games, so many cried foul; and the other side, there were many who disdained the very thought of video games. Like, video games? Isn’t that what kids play?

God, I cannot tell you how tired I am of that argument. Tired of explaining myself not just as a woman who enjoys video games but as an adult who enjoys video games period. No, I’m not waiting for more ‘adult’ things to discover, I found what I love and fuck you for thinking I need more. Because seriously, random people who judge me, you need to check out video games.

Where you can be a sneaky assassin, teleporting through the alleyways of a steampunk-esque alternate London, a Ninja warrior from space, a white-haired gruff mercenary who rips monsters apart with the silver of his blade. A farmer in a small country town, raising her plants and maybe having a romance or two, a woman trapped with a crazy AI in an underground scientific lab forgotten to man, the second-in-command to an Evil Emperor who is plotting to take over the world. You can love, hate, fight, destroy, build, create. Video games are breaking barriers previously known only to your imagination, taunting the very narrators of their stories (check out The Stanley Parable y’all) and building a rich sense of history and culture within individual games (check out the history and lore of the Warcraft, Starcraft, Guild Wars etc universes)

When I’m happy, I played video games because I’m happy and it’s perfect. When I’m sad and I needed to hide, I found Geralt of Rivia (of The Witcher fame) waiting for me under the long shadow of an unknown wood, with a monster to slay not far away. For many of you (us) who are readers and book-lovers, we know this feeling and it’s an intoxicating feeling. But the problem with books is, lovely and amazing and wondrous as they are, all good stories come to an end. As they should.

And video games too come to an end, but not before endless hours of fun in between. Hours spent doing what you want. Hours you can only imagine between turning the pages of a book.

(Seriously, as a voracious book reader, let me tell everyone that comparing a book and a video game is pretty much impossible since they’re very different genres. I’m bringing books her as an example of so called ‘high art’ as compared to the ‘low art’ of video games.)

So guys, those who ‘mistakenly’ disparage people who love video games: How about you don’t and maybe find a game or two and see what they love about it so much? Maybe you’ll find a whole new world. Jussayin’.