Gamer Life

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More than two billion people worldwide are estimated to play video games. But is it time well spent, or could something more useful be done instead of playing them? Are they not at best a waste of time that has turned an entire generation into a group of passive observers to life who are not interacting with the opposite sex and not forming families and getting on with the business of life? Is this not true of life online generally and are not video games an especially extreme form of distraction that even educational and edifying content won’t redeem?

My first contact with video games

Video games first arrived in my life when I was 7 or 8 years old and got my first videogame console. At that time the games were very primitive and consisted mostly in moving the main character around the screen, jumping and shooting and dodging enemies. Super Mario is a good example of such a game. There was little text and stories in them. Still I became immediately absorbed and spent many days and hours of my childhood playing those games, instead of learning music or how to work with my hands or do sports or something else that would have produced lasting values. In fact I think that the games encouraged this kind of narcissism, of having superpowers in the game, but because of the lack of practice and effort outside of the games, less and less in real life. Which in its turn drove me back even more into the game world, where I could have success that I did not have in the real world.

In addition to playing at home, I would spend many hours in “game rooms.” Those were places that included some screens attached to game consoles, chairs, and someone who was in charge of the place and would let the children and young people coming in to choose a game of their choice from the library of games in the place and play it for a certain time for a certain amount of money. I usually had little money, so I belonged to the group of kids who would hang out in the game rooms, sit beside other children who were playing and look at their gaming and comment upon it.

One day there was opened a new games room right over the street from the bus stop where I was supposed to get on the bus to get to school. The temptation was too great, I decided to go in just for 10 minutes while waiting for the bus and see what kind of games there were. And there I stayed until the evening. For the whole of that week, I was sitting in the games room with the other kids and youngsters and watching video games played on various screens. My mother thought I was at school. The truth came out at the end of the week. Some boys had been playing or watching violent martial arts games like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat and decided to try beating up someone weaker and smaller than they themselves in real life. I was one of the victims that was chosen one dark evening at the end of the week. The boys waited for me outside the gaming room door. I jumped out and ran as fast as I could past them, but they were bigger and quickly caught up with me. They did not really beat me, just humiliated me and gave me a few kicks. But for a small boy like I was, it was enough that I went home crying and told my mother. So Mom took me to the police to give a witness of what happened. The police received the witness and did nothing to solve it or find the ruffians responsible. Mom wrote an explanation that I missed school that day because I had to go to the police to give witness. The school teacher wrote back and asked where I had been the rest of the week. Then the truth came out. Mom wrote to the teacher that I had been playing videogames. After that Mom went to the two gaming rooms in our town that I had used to frequent, showed them my picture, and told them not to let me enter there anymore. The people running the rooms agreed: when I once showed up in the old game room I used to frequent (not the one I got beaten in) and asked if I could swap a video game with them, the woman in charge refused me and said I was not allowed in there.

So then I just played the video games at home by myself. At that time there was no function of saving a game and reloading it at a later time to continue. If the player wanted to finish a game, he had to play for hours from the beginning of the game to the end of it, and when he got killed in the game, he had to start all over again. I showed tremendous perseverance in some games and got killed many times and started over again until I finally made it to the end. That took many hours of effort. But the skills I learned from there were of little use in real life.

From video to computer games

When I was about twelve, we acquired an old computer and I transferred from video games to computer games. The more advanced computer games produced more good fruits than primitive videogames. I had to learn how to run the computer, how to install and uninstall the games, access the file system and so forth. Well do I remember how I was using the 1,44MB floppy disks to transfer the games I wanted to play from one computer to another. Oftentimes the games would not fit on one disk and I had to use several disks at once and compress the files in several parts, in a .zip or .arj file and distribute it on the disks. And then reopen them and install them on other computers. This was a complicated process and I learned how to boot and reboot the computer, how to organize files and other skills that have benefited me to this day.

In addition, I learned a lot of English from computer games. Some games like Duke Nukem 3D or Doom were 3D action-killing games with little text and I learned nothing from these, unless I had wished to become an American military drone pilot. But there were a lot of games with interesting storylines. I remember especially one adventure game where the player not only moves the character on the screen, but also types in the commands that the character should accomplish: “Look at the wall.” “Sit down on the chair.” “Talk to the man.” “Use the key with the door,” etc. The answers also were given in text form, accompanied by actions on the screen. One game I played when I was 12-13 years old was from 1987 and from that time I still remember phrases like “The password is: Ken sent me.” I had just begun to learn English and practiced it during the game. I still remember how I had to give to the character the command “Break the window with the hammer,” and kept getting responses, “What do you mean?” because I had misspelled “break” and had written “Brake” instead. I finally learned what the correct spelling was.

Children Wasting Their Time

Another game of the same genre was “The Adventures of Maddog Williams.” That was much better and set in a fantasy world with knights and wizards. But I only had access to the demo version, so I never played through it. Nowadays adventure games no longer require typing in anything, the characters are just moved around the screen and given commands with the mouse. That was actually the case already in 1991, when the first “Monkey Island” game was released by LucasArts. I and my school friends were playing together at home “Monkey Island 2” and discussing the interesting storylines and how to solve the puzzles. We would joke between ourselves and quote sentences from the game such as “I want be a pirate!” or “I don’t want to be a Peeping Tom!” The Indiana Jones film merchandise was also made into such games. I played “Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis” almost to the end. I really learned a lot of English from those games.

My two other favorite games at that time, between 12 and 15, were strategy games Heroes of Might and Magic 2 and Starcraft. Those games had an interesting storyline, especially Starcraft, and a lot of text on the screens. I also played some online multiplayer games. These were the ancestors of the later Runescape and World of Warcraft games. The games were role-playing games based on the Dungeons and Dragons systems, with characters using magic and sword-might to battle each other and the monsters in the fantasy world. At that time the Internet connections were slow and there was no videos or pictures in the games at all. All the activity was done by reading the texts on the screen and writing the commands what to do: “Consider the troll,” and the computer would answer “Do you feel lucky, punk?” signifying that if you attacked the troll you would likely be killed. Or if you were stronger, the computer might answer “A perfect match!” signifying that you actually had a chance of victory. The games were called “MUD”s, standing for “Multi User Dungeon.” I played StackMUD, Stonia (the first and only Estonian MUD) and MUME (Multi User Middle Earth) based on Tolkien’s stories.

From those games I really learned a lot of English. However, if English had been my mother tongue, I would have learned nothing language-wise. And even with learning English, the fact is that all my energy was put into the games and not in learning any other skills that a child could acquire. I was a weak and geeky boy with glasses, whose world was just computer games, movies and fantasy or science fiction literature. I made no lasting friends online either. Looking on the positive side, I did make a number of friends among my classmates and other youngsters who were playing computer games also and those friendships provided lasting values. Sometimes video games or role-playing games when played with friends would cause quarreling and dissension; sometimes they were dull and boring; but oftentimes it was a social activity that built up ties of friendship. Even the 3D-shooting games like Unreal could be a lot of fun when we were sitting with a group of friends together in the computer classroom in the school and competing against each other. Those are actually fond memories and some of those friendships have endured until the present day. Even playing primitive video games as a younger child led to friendships with my schoolmates. In a lot of games two people could sit behind the same screen and each hold their own joystick or video game controller and compete against each other or learn to collaborate in controlling their characters and fighting computer-produced enemies. Even in those kinds of situations the love of friendship could be born. My old friends and playmates I remember in prayer until now, though with most of them we never discussed or thought anything about religion at the time I knew them. I have not seen some of them for more than 20 years and may never meet again. At that time I was a fallen-away Catholic myself, or rather a young child and teenager who had not been properly instructed and kept mostly away from the church if he could help it.

From role-playing games to computer RPGs

Heroes of Might and Magic

Computer role-playing games started out in the 1980s as board-based role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons and were later transferred on computers, the human game master being replaced with AI. The problem with them is that their game systems are largely based on sword-and-sorcery fantasy genre, which includes a lot of use of magic and worship of pagan deities, who in real life would be evil spirits. All Catholic priests who are trained as exorcists, for example Father Chad Ripperger, Father Gabriel Amorth and Father Steve Rossetti, testify to the fact that one of the most common reasons for coming under the influence of demons is through the use of magic in real life, through activities like ouija boards, tarot cards, spiritism, reiki, etc. The 1994 Catechism of the Catholic Church states:

2117 All practices of magic or sorcery, by which one attempts to tame occult powers, so as to place them at one’s service and have a supernatural power over others – even if this were for the sake of restoring their health – are gravely contrary to the virtue of religion. These practices are even more to be condemned when accompanied by the intention of harming someone, or when they have recourse to the intervention of demons. Wearing charms is also reprehensible. Spiritism often implies divination or magical practices; the Church for her part warns the faithful against it. Recourse to so-called traditional cures does not justify either the invocation of evil powers or the exploitation of another’s credulity.

Secondly, Saint Aquino Thomas and Saint Francis of Sales have written about the value of games as recreation and warn against games which require too much attention, because they stop being games and become occupations. About role-playing games, I do have some fond memories of playing them with my teenage friends. But in those games, the players invest a lot of time into developing their characters and achieve higher and higher levels. When the player leading the game, called dungeon master, puts the other players in a situation where their characters get killed, quarreling may result. I remember well how once, when I was the dungeon master, in one session of the game a character played by one of my teenage friends got killed, and how angry he was at me later.

How I stopped playing video games and began living real life

At the age of 15, I had turned my back to the Catholic faith that I was baptized in and had burned myself out completely. My world was rock music, bands like Metallica and Nirvana, the forbidden alcohol that we with our underaged friends still managed to get ahold of, computer games, role-playing Dungeons and Dragons games, fantasy movies and literature. This all turned out to be unsatisfying and I spiraled downward into a dark depression. Until, after the darkest hour, my Mom told me I had to change my way of life and gave me a book to read: How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie. The main theme I got from that book was that being religious is a good value and the only way to be happy is to do good to others. I realized that I had lived too self-centeredly and that I need to change my life. And then the computer games and role-playing games proved to have had some beneficial effects in inspiring me to choose my path in life. I would not go to the Catholic Church or any other church, because most Christians I knew or could think of were not consciously battling against the Powers of Darkness and lacked the spirit of Church Militant and the medieval crusading spirit that was inspiring to me. But in the computer games and role-playing games the characters of medieval knights and crusaders were present. Even in the science fiction game Starcraft the alien Protoss race has Templar warriors and is led by a governing body called the Conclave, clearly a derivation from the Conclave of the Cardinals of the Catholic Church. Whatever the religion or the lack thereof the creators of a lot of the games have, they are not able to hide their admiration for the bravery, nobility and fortitude of the Catholic military orders such as the Knights Templar or the Knights of the Round Table in King Arthur’s court. For example in the Heroes of Might and Magic games, the player can build a cathedral or a monastery and from there recruit paladins, crusaders, monks and priests for his armies. A cloud castle can also be built and from there angels and archangels can be recruited for the armies of the player to battle the armies of the opposing players, whether AI or human. The crusaders and angels do extra damage against the undead warriors and devils. The problem with the games is that the player can also play evil characters and recruit an undead army of zombies, skeletons, vampires and bone dragons or a demonic horde of imps, hell hounds, devils and other monsters. Also the players, when they occupy the town of another good or evil faction, can recruit soldiers from those towns and then have devils and angels or crusaders and zombies serve together in the same army. All in all, however, the crusader ideals had been impressed in my mind by those games and also by the stories of the Knights of the Round Table and the literature of Tolkien. So I decided to imitate them as best as I could in real life. One of the first steps in this was that I understood that if I want to resemble the heroic medieval knights, I have to drop computer games and instead concentrate my efforts on physical, artistic and intellectual training of the body and the mind. This is what I did, by doing sports, practicing music, learning sciences and literature, participating in the school theatre, learning how to work with my hands – and in the end I discovered that all the values I had been inspired to follow were contained in the Catholic Faith, although nowadays one has to dig deep to find it….

 

[…] This is just an excerpt from the May 2024 Issue of Culture Wars magazine. To read the full article, please purchase a digital download of the magazine, or become a subscriber!

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Reviews

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(Endnotes Available by Request)