I Am A Gamer
I
am a gamer. I spend my evenings and
weekends holed up in cavernous basement rooms consulting sourcebooks and to-hit
charts, or running around parks and community centers in full makeup and
costume playing rock-paper-scissors at various intervals. I spend my paycheck or my allowance on the
latest games and supplements and mounds of polyhedral dice which have a way of
turning up in the oddest places around my house or apartment. I have hundreds of stories about games I
have played and characters I have known, some of which are actually interesting
and funny to other people. I am a
gamer, and this is how I spend my free time.
I
am a storyteller. I practice a dying
art. But my stories are even better
than ghost stories around a campfire, because they are completely interactive. My friends and I play Let’s Pretend, just
the way we used to as children—we become the intrepid hero, the plucky
princess, the wise old man. They let
people live another life and, in the process, discover things about themselves. So the tales I tell are always about Big
Things: the fight between good and evil, a battle for the future of the world,
the struggle against the darker side of one’s own personality. I have things to say, and by God, I’m going
to say them. I am a gamer, and I bring new
(or simply forgotten) things to the world.
I
am unique. I’m not necessarily smarter
or better than the rest of the world, but I have a way of looking at things
which gives me decided advantages. I
would rather participate in the world that sit back and let it pass me by, even
if the world in which I excel is an imaginary one of my own creation. So even when I’m not gaming, a part of my
mind is always in the game, thinking about what I’ll do next session, what past
events have taught me, and how I can apply it to the real world. Some people call this foolish escapism. I call it creativity in action. I have strange and unique interests. My style, my behavior, and my manner don’t
fit the cultural norms. I am a gamer,
and I possess qualities that few others have.
I
am misunderstood. In the best-case
scenario, people think me geeky and eccentric and tend to smile nervously and
look around for the nearest exit when I begin to talk about my hobby. In the worst-case scenario, I am blamed for
the rise of “satanic cults” and the moral decay of the nation by promoting
violence, magic, and sin. I am
suspected of being incapable of distinguishing fantasy from reality. I am accused of driving teenagers to suicide
by encouraging them to become too attached to their characters. That last one makes me smile, because I know
that in reality gamers actually have a suicide rate at least 300% below the
national average. I am a gamer, and I
understand perfectly why this is.
Because
there was a time when I was awkward and shy and even (God forbid) nerdy. I knew all along that I was different from
most people, and that truth turned me quiet and introverted, sure I would never
fit in or find anyone like myself. But
then a funny thing happened. I went to
my first gaming session. Suddenly I
found a whole room full of people like me, who never felt they were entirely part
of this world. Naturally, we bonded,
and I made my first real friends. But
another funny thing happened while we played our game together. As my character learned how to interact with
others and solve problems and fend for herself, so did I. I learned how to function in the society
that had shunned me. I was happy
again. I realized that I had a rare and
special gift, and that it was my duty to use it to make my real life as desirable
as the one in my imagination.
I
am a gamer. I have something that most
people lose before the age of ten—a sense of wonder. I’m always discovering new worlds through my game, so I’ll never
be too jaded to drop my jaw from time to time and allow myself to say, “Wow.” I put magic and color back into a world that’s
too often content with bland mediocrity.
I am a gamer, and I am not alone.
We
are gamers. We are your children, your
relatives, your friends, your co-workers. We’re the smart but quiet girl on the school bus holding a
dog-eared copy of The Hobbit; the man browsing the shelves of the
science fiction section at B. Dalton, leafing through a Star Wars novel and
muttering about how he could do better; the hard-working guy two cubicles over
who always seems to be looking at something far away, something you can’t
see--yet. We create worlds together,
and our lives are changed and improved by these things that we imagine. We know better than to say, “It’s just a
game”—not because we can’t distinguish fantasy from reality (we do that quite
well, believe you me), but because this game has helped us in ways we never
though possible. We are gamers, and we
have the power to change the world.
Just wait. You’ll see.
Copyright (c) 2000 by Beth Kinderman. This is my original work, so please respect it.