I. On Videogames
Why do we play videogames? For some people, the answer is easy. We know why the average smartphone user plays Angry Birds: To pass the time between subway stops, or to make dinner with the in-laws less painful, or because they’re bored in a doctor’s office. (Remember when you were a kid, and your parents took you to see a pediatrician, and all the kids in the waiting room were playing with that weird magical wooden play cube, with the geometric blocks you could push back and forth on a roller coaster wire? Angry Birds is the Magical Wooden Play Cube for adults.)

And we know why the casual gamer plays Wii Fit or Dance Central or Sports Champions: Because it’s a fun way to spend half an hour, or because the party was pretty boring before the host broke out the Kinect, or because it’s the only thing to do at the retirement home. And we know why a nation of mostly-males plays Call of Duty and World of Warcraft: Because it’s fun to compete with people you don’t know against people you don’t know in a game you enjoy, and because contemporary hobbies are only fun if they present the illusion of achievement, and because Activision Blizzard is the crack epidemic of our generation. And of course, we know why people play Kinectimals: Because they are too young to speak, and thus, they cannot complain to their parents that Kinectimals is the most annoying videogame ever made.

But why, fellow gamers, do we play the long, intensive, single-player videogames: The 40 or 50 or 100-hour experiences that transport us to a fascinating new world, a vividly realized reality — and why does it not bother us that we are the only living person in that reality? Why do we play Final Fantasy? Why do we play Super Mario? Why do we play Gears/God of War? Heck, why do some of us still play the campaign mode of Call of Duty — and why do the makers of Call of Duty feed us with celebrity voices and bang-you’re-dead twists and characters who are just two-dimensional enough to care about? What is so lacking in our real lives that leads us to spend hours, days, months out of our lives in front of a TV set, tapping a few ridiculous buttons to explore better worlds than these?

Why, in short, did I spend 50 hours of my life over the course of two weeks — ignoring friends, family, and household chores — playing The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword? Let me try to explain. READ FULL STORY »