The Video Game: The Importance Of Video Games

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Gaming has been a popular pastime both adored and loathed within our society for nearly eight decades, beginning around the 1940 's. A wide variety of these games harbor the ability to heighten skills such as manual dexterity and decision making otherwise attained through real world situations. However, games are not only utilized to achieve greater skills, but for pleasure as well. Steven Johnson argues that the subject of a game isn 't what attracts players, it is the reward system that captures the players attention. Video games carry with them a psychological appeal that no other form of entertainment can. When a player logs a few hours of game play a feeling serenity washes over them simply for the fact that they have advanced in experience. "People like to feel successful, and we like to feel like we 're growing and progressing in our knowledge and accomplishments" (Reeves 6). Human beings have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, painstakingly reaching for a firm grasp on new …show more content…
"Life is crap, and it 's full of pain and suffering, and the ONLY thing that makes it worth living the ONLY thing that makes it possible to get up in the morning and go on living is play. Art, and play" (McGonigal 42). People use games to retreat from the rubbish they endure each day, finding tranquility in their favorite fantasy world. Countless others escape into the gaming world to nurse their depression, anger and many other emotions. Games take away the pain the humans receive from others or mental afflictions. What one may see as adding to the unhappiness of unfortunate circumstance, another will see as taking the edge off of their daily lives. Psychologically, games also appeal to players as an escape from that which they do not wish to face. While a gamer is in the zone, he or she forgets what had been afflicting them, rewarded, as already stated, with an

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