From the First Person

suppose we all want to be kids again at some point or another. Recalling the afternoons spent playing "cops and robbers," "don't touch the ground," "doctor," and a myriad of other imaginary roles, we lament the fact that as adults, it is unseemly to "play pretend." We've learned to let the lighthearted go to make room for that which is "deep," "meaningful," "useful." And when we play video games, we are often accused of being childish, of squandering our precious time on mindless entertainment.

Why do we play games? Is it merely a form of escapism, a coping mechanism to escape from a world rife with stress and sorrow? I for one would like to believe there's more to it, that the active use of imagination is itself a worthwhile goal, and that there are some truths we cannot get at without "playing pretend."

But, I've been told, don't kid yourself. Games stifle your imagination. They limit your potential to think outside the box. You and your friend inventing a scenario in the back yard is totally different. Why, then, do we encourage kids to read? Is it the imposition of someone else's narrative structure that stifles creativity? Or are we simply assuming that the interpolation of a digital display robs narrative of its power?

Some argue against gaming along similar lines as the dying fight against film and television. The difference between games and reading, they say, is that when reading you are forced to visualize the entire world of the book, whereas in gaming you are told what to think. This thought pattern is then used as the basis for an assumption that reading engages the mind while gaming rots it away.

Is it the imposition of someone else's narrative structure that stifles creativity? Or are we simply assuming that the interpolation of a digital display robs narrative of its power? To some extent, we must accept as true the premise (if not its hasty conclusion). Yet where the medium limits imagination in terms of mise en scene, it makes up for it in terms of narrative. For, when you read a book, or watch a film, you are given a concise beginning and a concise conclusion, and a quite rigid line connecting them. The story you experience is the one which the author designed for you to experience; there is no "wiggle room," no chance to question the behavior of the characters in terms of your own interpretation. Notwithstanding the "choose your own adventure" genre, which has never achieved much literary or social respect, other storytelling media are incredibly passive experiences.

Gaming changes that. Gaming encourages us to engage ourselves in the story, participants in the unfolding narrative. When we speak of the events of a good game, we speak in the first person: "I escaped The Library. I defeated Sephiroth. I saved the princess."

Yet the medium offers an even greater leniency to player choice when we abandon the old notions of storytelling altogether in favor of the open "sandbox" experience. In games like The Sims and LittleBigPlanet, the story being told is your own. Indeed, as such games grow in complexity, and as map editors proliferate, the potential creative power in the hands of a gamer far exceeds the output of imagination that any past medium has been able to invoke.

When you pick up a book, you are choosing a genre. You are choosing a set of characters and plot points created by someone else. You are choosing to have a story told to you. Gaming is the book that could never be: a story whose path you direct, whose characters react to the decisions you make, whose genre is determined by the way you choose to tell the story.

Gaming appeals to the child in us all and gives us the chance to see and hear the ideas we used to have in our yards and forests come to life in a vivid and exciting way. Now, I'm not saying games can or should match or seek to replace the sheer power of a young unbridled mind. Nor do I think we've come close to the full potential of the medium in terms of player power, particularly in terms of story-driven gaming. What I am saying, however, is that gaming affords us an opportunity we'd otherwise be without.

It is a chance to be kids again, a chance to free our minds, and a chance, just maybe, to remember something about ourselves that we've long forgotten.

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