Becoming a Frag Doll Part 3: Why games are awesome

Comments

• Mochan Philippines

  April 2009 edited April 2009

  Your viewpoint is not that unusual; a lot of gamers, myself included, see gaming as far more than just something to do when we come home for work. You won't last decades of being a gamer if you don't put it on some sort of pedestal as a holy relic to be worshipped.
  
  I personally found a lot of games to have great artistic and literary value, especially RPGs. I'll admit though that the idea that MMORPGs as a good show for literature really does go way over my head as well. I'd be interested to hear about the ideas of your friend Mr. Meyers there.
  
  Regardless I think you do indeed have that fresh exuberance that decades-long gamers may have lost already. I think that should be a crucial part of your strategy to get into the Frag Dolls.

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• kryyst Ontario, Canada

  April 2009 edited April 2009

  Interesting read. But there comes a point when I think people try and analyze games to much. There is a time when a game is just a game. Video games are another medium and there are lessons to be learned from the medium itself. The artistic merrits and interaction methods are worth studying. As is the lasting effects and addictive qualities that can come with an immerse experience that continue to linger when the person is no longer playing the game.
  
  But I'm seeing it as a stretch in seeing a MMORG as a format for delivering literature or as being a literary context. I can seeing them, well any online game really as being almost it's own new language though of broken backwards and half-spoken english. Something that I see more and more every day as I start to see nephews hit that age where they suddenly speak less like people and more like text messages.
  

  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 don't disagree with this. But it's not at all uncommon or a new concept. Any sort of grouping has their own common lexicon that they can use. Video gamers, Board gamers, Role Players, Skaters, Computer programers, Dr's, engineers, mechanics etc.... Every kind of sub grouping will havea common lexicon that they can draw on when speaking with others in the same grouping. It's not new and now a soul property of gamers, it's just the specific terms they reference from that are unique.

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