Being a Gamer

[SkyLion]

The thing is...I love gaming almost as much as life itself.  Stories make me giddy.  I'll get choked up and start to cry during some movies/games/shows.  Not because I'm sad but because what I am seeing is just so conceptually awesome that I'm moved to tears.  Pen&Paper RPGs (can we even really call them that anymore?  With PbP my main format I can't really say "Tabletop" either.  So what then...Imagination Engines?  Like a computer engine, but for our minds, the game systems and settings provide the framework for a variety of virtual experiences) and video games especially, though certain shows (Game of Thrones, Fringe, The Last Airbender series, the recent Thundercats remake), and movies (V for Vendetta, The Prestige, Scott Pilgrim vs The World) will hit me like that.

[AceWildcard]

I agree. Some things just speak to me. I love an good story. It's rare, but some games/movies/books do hit me as awesome in concept and play out. They may not be all well like movies/game/book but they hit me and I like them.

[darksol-aeternium]

I find a good game to be inspiring, it's an observable response as I'll end up generating a mass of drawings or paintings from the material presented in the game.  I end up running more than i play, but that's probably because i also enjoy creating a world from scratch.  Between the various mediums you've listed (movies, books, video games,) I would still prefer a tabletop game.  Only in a tabletop game is the setting and plot ever entirely under the control of the players.  A videogame has set boundaries, even huge ones like the Elder Scrolls series, Final Fantasy, or WoW.  Movies are like short books that you don;t have to read, none of them really going past 3 hours.  Movies and books can both be extremely moving, but they're linear.  You are only a spectator in either case.

[Eldrid]

On 7/4/2014 at 5:12 AM, SkyLion said:

The thing is...I love gaming almost as much as life itself.  Stories make me giddy.  I'll get choked up and start to cry during some movies/games/shows.  Not because I'm sad but because what I am seeing is just so conceptually awesome that I'm moved to tears.

I feel you. I spent my whole childhood reading books, gaming and being a roleplayer without really knowing what a roleplayer is at the times. There is nothing as wholesome as a good story/game scenario. Hell, I cried at the end of AC:Brotherhood. Even the stupid stuff Rexzilla uploads on Youtube, him and his buddies fooling around in Star Citizen, moves me sometimes.

[francisbaud]

To make use of our imagination, I guess there's nothing comparable to PnP RPG... or story telling/reading, and also non graphical Multi Users Dungeons (MUD). I've only played once to PnP RPG and I enjoyed the experience. Video games nowadays do not foster the use of imaginations that much: the story is already written, the path the players will follow is already decided by developers, the 3D environment does not really lay room to our brain capacities to imagine the surroundings. The creation process seems to be all in the hands of the game developers rather than the players. Only a few games (Minecraft, for example) allows players to be really imaginative and creative.