Research: Gaming - Living Another Life

As I said in an earlier post, gaming is a gateway to another world, or another life. This is in no way suggesting gamers are sad lonely people, on the contrary I find that gamers are some of the most interesting and creative individuals due to their broad minds.
But some games do allow players to live an alternate, digital life, and I myself have succumb to them.


The Role Playing Game (RPG) has been around for a very long time, but until development meant that games developers could introduce a deep enough story and an incredible amount of variables and in-game options, they were pretty basic.

Skyrim, 2011, Multi-Platform

One of the latest RPG's to grab the attention of a huge audience is 'Skyrim'. Players create their own fully customisable character, choosing a race (including elves, orcs, humans etc), gender, and appearance. The game is then played out depending on how the player chooses to play. If they prefer to use magic, they can level their character to cast spells to defeat enemies, or they can use ranged bow and arrows, or old school sword and shield combat.
Despite the missions being pretty much set, it is very unlikely that any two people wold have the same experience playing this game, which creates a unique bond between player and character.

Sims 3, 2009, Multi-Platform

The Sims puts the player in control of the lives of a number of characters. Whilst the player doesn't physically control the characters, they can tell them what to do, such as cook, eat, get a job, dance, ect

Players must look after these characters, otherwise they can die. The player must also build and decorate the house the characters live in using the money they earn from their jobs.

Mass Effect 3, 2012, Multi-Platform

Mass Effect, my gaming weakness. Mass Effect follows the story of Shepard, a human who must save the galaxy from a race of synthetic beings called Reapers. I'll not get into the story, because i'll waffle on forever because all three games are HUGE.

Again, the player can customise Shepard; gender, appearance, equipment and class are all variables. However, Mass Effect is heavily based on giving the player the driving seat. Everything the player does has a consequence to the story. If the player wants to save a civilian from a burning building and risk losing an escaping enemy they can. Or, on the flip side, they can be a renegade, and leave the civilian to die for the good of capturing the escaping fugitive. All actions have consequence, and the way the player interacts with NPC's (none-playable-characters) decides how they will react towards you. What is amazing about the series is that such consequences from the first could have reactions not only in the same game, but the next (or third, ect).

This whole ideology enforces an emotional bond with all the characters. Without giving anything away, I was so upset when my favourite characters died (which again, depending on play-style they could live or die).

It is games such as this which allow gamers to escape reality and enter a world where they are in charge, they decide what happens, and they feel they can really do something important.