How videogames changed my life and perspective

From creativity, imagination skills to decision-making

It should come to us as no surprise that we live in a time-driven primarily by technology. From the ovens we use to feed ourselves to the computers we use to perform our daily tasks, the world was taken over by this technological storm. Through technology, we have achieved the ability to access a thousand books and images right in the palm of our hands, and with that comes limitless opportunities. Opportunities to learn, to share, and most importantly to express ourselves. How many tweets today have you read? How many images have you liked? And how many people did you follow? There is no shame in accepting that we have become accustomed to this routine. I myself am victim to this also, and as I write this article I can’t help but check to see if my phone has any unread notifications. But that is of course beside the point, the point that I am trying to convey here is that even through small actions such as reading tweets, liking pictures and following people you can develop many things. By reading tweets, you can learn things the same you do from reading a book. By liking pictures, you can develop a visual taste for things. And finally, by following people you can better understand how society functions and trends. With all that being said; let me tell you how I developed all this through a form of technology most people today overlook: videogames.

First let backtrack than a decade; I was a young hyperactive boy running around while screaming on the top of my lungs towards everything that was in my way. Of course, at that time I was still discovering my senses of taste and enjoyment towards the world. Then I remember walking into the room and noticing my auntie playing the original PlayStation console. I calmly asked her if I could try it out, she passed me the controller and for the first time in my life the screaming and the hyperactivity began to fade away. This small process is none other than the process of “interest”. With every button I pressed, my mind began captivating like a magnet with more curiosities to attract. At this point, there was no stopping me and I kept playing more and more, and what felt like hours passed by within seconds.

It was not until the mid-2000s before my dad bought me my very own PlayStation 2 console. Through this console my mind began developing interest towards narratives and fleshed out characters. The more games I got into, the more I learnt about character development i.e. learning about agendas and the way people make decisions. This naturally helped me through a lot of social interactions especially during my final years of high school. However, something I learnt the hard way was that the difference between videogames and real life is that the real world does not give you second chances as easily as the restart button does. At first this seemed daunting, but in truth it encouraged me to learn more from my mistakes. I always think to myself after failing: If I were to restart this level, what would I do differently?

Towards the end of 2008, my brother and I, through our savings of Eid, bought our first PlayStation 3 console. Throughout that generation of gaming, the prices of games were consistently rising. As videogame developers begun using the power of that generation of consoles at their disposal, it was not that alarming for the prices to go up. Nevertheless, this created a bit of an unpleasant situation for me; since at that time I had no salary or access to easy funds. I was still an early teenager. This by any means did not stop me and I kept learning. I learnt to appreciate what I have, and make the best of it a little while longer until the right time comes to move on. This also helped me look at things in more than one perspective, since having the same game for months forced me to replay the same levels multiple times.

Videogames in the end hold a dear place in my heart. I was just a normal boy who walked into another room in the right there and then discovered my senses towards life. If it was not for videogames I doubt I would have been able to achieve my full potential. As a college student I am forever grateful for all the creativity and imagination skills I have gained from videogames. Because of videogames, I am able to climb mountains, discover lost cities, relive major events in history and finally make big decisions. Every time I start up my console and insert a new disc, then watch the loading screen appear, I know right there and then that I am in for another life changing treat.