Okay, so maybe I got started a little late in life...
Since I began the application process to become a frag doll, I have often mourned the fact that I came to gaming so late. It means that I don’t have the background that many gamers have–I won’t be able to write on my application that I’ve played every major PC game since Doom. It also means that my learning curve is slower than that of other players, since I only have a few years of experience to draw upon, and I don’t have all of the reflexes coded the way that many of my friends do. I know that if I had started playing younger, when my brain was more adaptable, that I’d be better at FPS’s.
But I think that the fact that I started so late (at age 19) also gives me a different viewpoint on games than most other gamers. Since it’s something that I came to much later than my peers, and something I wasn’t really exposed to when I was younger, it’s something new and strange in my life. I don’t take it for granted as something that has always been there. I marvel at things that my friends don’t think is strange at all.
I think that this viewpoint, one in which games are a unique and unusual thing, is a good one. I think that it has allowed me not to only see games as a place for entertainment, but also as a potential jumping off point for the furtherment of education for today’s children, and also as a form of literature in and of themselves. I don’t think of games as just something for me to do when I game home from work, or (hopefully), as my work, but as a new realm of inquiry.
Part of the reason that I feel this way is because of my exposure to the thoughts of Jonathon Meyers, a graduate student at Illinois State University, and the leader of my guild in Everquest 2. He is examining MMORPG’s as literature in and of themselves, and the inner workings of virtual worlds. A lot of what he’s investigating is still very new, very theoretical, and very over my head, but talking with him has shown me how video games are a whole world onto themselves. Since he became my friend, examining how people interact in virtual worlds, why they do so, and how they process the information presented to them has become very interesting to me. Someday, I hope to be able to create my own virtual world, and examine how others process the information that I show them. Can I create a world that people can lose themselves in? In terms of education, can I create a world in which students can learn and not know it? Can they learn in despite of their own desire not to participate in school?
Knowing how to play games doesn’t just make you a gamer–it means that you have a type of literacy that not everyone has. I am interested in seeing how that type of literacy will change and shape the world as time goes by, and I think that being a Frag Doll can help with that. Being a Frag Doll will put me at the forefront of gaming and the gaming community, giving me chances to see and experience things at a rapid pace. I think that this will be the doorway for me to begin my exploration of virtual worlds.
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