Playing video games has been a huge part of my life, from a time that I was almost too young to remember anything up to this point in my life when I’m nearly 30. It’s been such a large part of my life, in fact, that I would largely attribute a lot of the things I’ve chosen to do and say to video games themselves. There have been great things about them along the years. And there have been some negative effects. No matter what, though, video games have never caused anything to be out of hand like you would choose to believe had you read the latest piece of media demonizing the medium.
Ultimately, video games are an artform that happened to come much later than anything else in the world of art. While I’m sure it took film awhile to be regarded as art, at least it’s an extension of theater. But video games are an entirely different beast, and that’s mostly because the game is able to be played by someone. When a piece of art becomes useable by someone for a long period of time, people start to question whether it truly is a form of art or a negative tool.
Nonetheless, I never quite started seeing video games as a form of art until I realized how much music really made sense as an art. And then it hit me: there’s music in video games as well as amazing graphics.
What video games have done outside of provide me with many rich experiences and close friends: they’ve introduced me to a wide diversity of people. One of my closest friends, whom I met online playing a first person shooter, had an ostomy when he was just 5 years old. And since that point, he’s learned to live with it as if nothing was abnormal. In fact, nothing is abnormal for him. Practicing basic ostomy care has become second nature to him, and he actually finds normal (in terms of normal to the vast majority of people) trips to the bathroom to be interesting, since he doesn’t have to use specific parts of his body to use the bathroom.
So it’s funny how someone who has to do ostomy care every single day can make you realize how different all of our experiences are. And that allows for a greater feeling of community with not only those people but others.
