http://stadium.weblogsinc.com/joystiq/audio/PAX07-wil-wheaton-keynote.mp3
I just listened to this audio file this morning: the keynote address from Penny Arcade Expo 07 by Wil Wheaton. After listening to this, I cannot wait to have kids and bring them into my world. I met my best friends through my love of gaming, and I even met my future wife through gaming (I was her first DM ... awwwwww). I wish I could pull out essay length awesomeness, but I'm quite tired. Just wanted to share this with anyone who hasn't read it already.
Ask not what Gaming has done for you. Ask what you can do for Gaming.
I found that little audio gem on the web a few months ago. Its a damn good speech that really makes me appreciate what we as gamers really have.
That was so incredibly awesome. I must say that I take joy in the fact that my first gaming experience was Jupiter Lander and Pole Position on the commodore 64. My first console experience was on the SNES with donkey kong country and mortal combat. Good times all of them.
It's done lots and nothing at all at the same time... it's usually video games that inspire my worlds and my writing, but at the same time they hinder my ability to study everything I want to study (and I want to study a LOT). I want to be a rocket scientist... but sometimes gaming of the video and non-video kind keeps me dreaming of fantasy worlds all day.
What has gaming done for me?
I've avoiding the topic due to a lack of time.
I could write a small treatise using material exclusively dedicated to what the CBG interation has given me, let alone my 32 years of gaming.
As I get older, and as my perspective shifts and once-mutable priorities lengthen like September shadows of a lone tree in a field in the late aftenoon, I see so many things that I once thought critical that have been laid by the wayside. Tough choices were made based on limited time and nigh-unlimited wants. And still, from this retorgrade viewpoint, I see too many times I tried to do too much and got nothing done.
Gaming has been my main creative outlet, my muse, my canvas, my art, for over thirty years. At the same time, it has become the fabric of my of my social loom, sometimes both warp and weft. I have watched most of my companions and boon friends gone their own way, and the promises made in younger days of fidelity through life's journey have blown away on the winds of responsibility.
So as briefly as possible, Gaming has given me my main creative outlet, and has allowed me an excuse that still keeps old and older friends gathering monthly to share in that creative outlet.
I can't imagine what I would do without it.
And as an extension, it has facilitated my inclusion in the ranks of this August Body, this CBG, this worldbuilding, creationist, umwelt-making cooperative.
Well let me expand upon my thoughts on the matter. I am and always have been someone completely filled with an insatiable question and an unending wanderlust. For me the ultimate question, the one that drives me is what. What makes this function like that? What would things be like if this happened? All of these see me spending unending hours researching and asking questions. My wanderlust is interconnected with this. I want to experience new things, learn about them, interact with them.
Some people believe that an unending rest from work and suffering would be their ultimate reward. Others feel that being with their loved ones forever is the ultimate reward. For me, to never rest but to experience and learn about everything without ending, that is my ultimate reward. I read about strange worlds, created by the minds of brilliant people, and I want to visit them so desperately that I cannot even convey this. To be stuck here saddens me. I think if it weren't for my semi-lucid dreams I would have gone insane by now.
Yet you cannot always dream and so I seek often to experience new worlds and ideas as often as possible. To fill my mind with thoughts of strange histories and philosophies as well as ones far more entrenched in reality. I read books for plenty of this. However, when I want to just sit back and get pulled into a world, I play games. RPG games have been the best medium for such things though I have found similar solace in other genres. The fascinating histories, strange figures, and differing realities enthrall my mind. I read about sly bards, fungus people, and bubbles filled with twisted shadow... and I find some comfort in them. I cannot truly go to these places, but at least I can reach out and touch them in some way. I do not know if any of you here realize how much your amazing and strange creations bring peace to my ever frustrated mind.
...heh, I actually wrote an essay on this subject for my Creative Writing: Non-Fiction class. There's no short answer to the question - 8 pages in Times New 12 point double-spaced attest to that. Still, it is interesting reading everyone else's views on it. :)