Is Gaming Only Gaming or is it "Just Not Real Life"

[Jack7]

I have a little problem. I've been seeing people say around here that gaming is not just gaming, but more like "not real life." While others say, "nothing about real life is even slightly like gaming, but the opposite is never true, except on the weekends when it ain't." (And who could blame anyone for reaching that conclusion even though it is patently absurd. Yet, just to be honest I don't really think anyone has patented absurd yet so it's probably still an open market. So we'll let that one go for the moment.)

Others have been saying, "there is no game at all, it's just a simulation." Still others, "the Sims is not really a game either because I met my second cousin, first removed that way." And this could very well be true, I've seen that happen before, though the after dinner DNA testing was mostly inconclusive.

Of course nobody really says these things because this is a message board and oddly enough that preludes auditory messages. For the most part anyway. Sometimes I imagine I can hear people's voices on the internet but that's usually just my ironing getting done. (That's an old CB radio joke - for you younger folks.)

But back to the subject: If gaming is imaginary then that takes real effort to happen, but if it happens only in the imagination well then, I think you see the next step. Whaddya call that? I call it imagination but I think a better term would be, "not really real to anyone without one."

Then again I think if you have no imagination then this whole debate is pretty much unimaginative to ya. Or at least academic, which is the same thing in most colleges nowadays.

See I have this theory that Hobbits were once a real species that interbred with Hyperboreans to produce the IntervestigialHyperHobboreal (that's why the Picts talk funny to this day), but I could never sell my paper to Soziologie und Arbeitensticken im Da Vaterland. By the way I'm pretty sure they went out of business not long ago, but if they didn't then let that be a lesson to ya. See, now we're right back to academics again. And it's a shame we gotta go there, because that's not my idea of how things work. At all. But it makes for great sitcoms.

Anywho I forgot what I was saying.

Which just goes to prove what I meant in the first place. Or did it?

 

[RoryN]

To take on the idea philosophically, one could paraphrase René Descartes' famous quote "I think, therefor I am" by saying "I game, therefore I am...or I am not." Role-playing is taking on the role of another person, creature, or hunk of metal that can talk or whatever. But is it real? And if it isn't, is the person playing real?

As for imagination, I have met many people who have been "gamers" who had absolutely no imagination. It just doesn't appear to be very imaginative to me to "Kill orc with sword" or "Shoot badguys with gun." Just stay in the cave where it's safe and you don't have to learn or think.

However, there are games that are simulations which simulate life as we know it, life as we want it, or life as someone else may know it, but these aren't so much games as they are distractions from doing what you really need to do in your life to have it be like it is in the freakin' game!

So, in closing, the answer to your question appears to be: Gaming is gaming, real life is real life (or at least what we percieve as "real"), and the 2nd one always seems to interfere with the 1st one...or is it the other way around?

 

[Jack7]

I didn't think anybody would go for the Hittites.

But just you watch now...

 

[Stormonu]

Yes.

Actually, the Discordant Society made me say this. They threatened they'd use the Boy Scouts with the aid of the Post Service to Neutralize the Wargamers and let the Assassins get another Violent group under the wing.

But really, I'm hoping the Bermuda Triangle will be able to blow one of their groups out of the water with the Orbital Mind Control Lasers once they get that transfer from the Gnomes of Zurich.

 

[Jack7]

Stormy, I think you've got a real case here.

Calling in the Postal Service was totally uncalled for.

My advice is Sue, my friend, sue early and often.

I'll see if she'll give you her number. She works down by the Lobster docks, but don't let that throw ya. She's awful good at what she does.

 

[S'mon]

The Realm of Man is Narrow and Constrained. Always the Forces of Chaos press against Her borders...

 

[Virel]

Face to Face table top gaming is an excuse have your friends over, have some fun, have some snacks & socialize. The rest is just hype describing how you have that fun.

 

[Gentlegamer]

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.​

 

[Relique du Madde]

Its ffunny... there are people on [a certain connspiracy website] who believe that the simple act of playing a Steve Jacksoon game [name redacted] is like giving the world a tarrot reading. If you believe in such things, then you prodably spend too much time searching the world for the hidden fnords.

-Sent via Tapatalk

 

[Jack7]

I agree with everything pretty much said so far. And if it's not that pretty then we can do better folks. And if not, well then, there ya go...

And to all the ships at sea, good night.