I am a gamer. I was raised in the era of the Atari 2600 and I owned  almost every console that existed when I was young. Now that I think of it my mom certainly indulged my gaming in my youth. As an adult I played several PC games until I discovered MMOs(Massive Multiplayer Online games). My first MMO was the Matrix Online which picked up right after the Matrix trilogy of movies. The writing  was intense and the game gave you the real feeling of being in the matrix world, even to the extent of running from agents who were many levels higher than you and gave you a mini heart attack every time they appeared. After the Matrix Online I discovered City of Heroes/ Villains. The game was a great adventure. I played it for seven years until it was shuttered by NCSoft. I made real friends who i am still in touch with today. After City of Heroes I took a hiatus from games since they are huge time sinks. For a short time I played The Secret World but found it became too much of a grind and left it. Its very hard to understand the motivation to play games if you dont play.

What primarily drives me to games is the story. I will play an awful game if it has brilliant writing-yes I’m looking at you Bloodborne. In this context awful refers to the steep learning curve and the punishing difficulty of the game. Playing games can be a challenging exercise in both the mental and physical realms. When I discovered Destiny a year ago, I found a game that was hybrid of several games. It had aspects of and MMO together with a FPS -first person shooter and and RPG – Role playing game. Making it the first MMOFPSRPG.

Now why do I play this game. Aside from the fact that the game is amazing to look at the game-play itself is top notch. It requires real skill to play. Who knew first person shooters required you to have actual aim?  You also need to know how to work as team with other players working towards the same goal or objective. My reason for playing this game is my son. Unlike me he has real skill in this game and it serves as a time for us to bond and some good natured ribbing. He also gets to show off his skill ( of which he has an abundance) and we get to share these adventures together.

While playing this game i have made some good acquaintances,  and some I can even call friends even if its only in a virtual sense. I think if you dont engage in gaming you are outside of this world looking in and wondering how anyone can spend so much time with something that isn’t real. On one level this is very true, this is a virtual reality that exists in a pixellated world. On the other hand for those who game, the world, its achievements and challenges are real. There is a sense of satisfaction from defeating a particular difficult boss that you and your friends joined together to fight.

So why do I game? Simply it allows me time with my son and its fun. Do we do other things together? Sure, we both spend time together at the dojo on almost a daily basis. But he is getting older, has a girlfriend and his time is getting more and more limited. This is the natural course of things and as a parent I understand this.  So if we have another expression of spending time together Ill enjoy while we still have it. The time may come when we will just reminisce about the days we played Destiny together.