There are two stories the press loves to report when discussing how video games affect us: someone's gaming is linked to a violent action, or new scientific findings about the link between gaming and violent behavior are discussed and commented upon. The reality is that video games change us in a variety of ways, many of them positive. These stories simply don't make for splashy headlines.
Ashly Burch is one of the stars of the popular Hey Ash: Whatcha Playin' Web series, and her newest project is a blog that collects stories detailing how games have helped those who play them. The name How Games Saved My Life may have started as hyperbole, but as submissions came in Burch realized the moniker was surprisingly accurate.
So why create this blog now? "I did it because games aren't taken seriously as a medium, and they need to be. There's this stigma that's just clinging on for dear life that games are adolescent, violent, dangerous, et cetera," Burch told Ars. "What's more, even within our own community, there's this persistent sentiment that games can't be art."
Burch wants the blog to be a part of this conversation and offer first-hand accounts of how games are powerful experiences that change people. When you give the people who play games a voice and a place to share their experiences, you can see just how important gaming has become not only in popular culture, but to individuals as well.
The stories are varied, and they describe how games helped people get through hospitalization, or how giving an RPG character the name of a girlfriend who was lost in a car accident helped someone come to terms with his loss. There are stories about learning to be at peace with you who are, or in the case of one touching story from a victim of abuse, who they aren't. Allow me to quote at length from one man's playthrough of Final Fantasy Tactics:
Ramza said, “Names don’t matter. What’s important is how you live your life.” It was like a flash, like those moments in movies. I put the controller down in my lap and just stared at the screen. It really didn't matter. I was associated by name, yes, but it was just a word, I had finally realized. It didn't control my life, it didn't preordain who I would become. Right then was when I decided, I was never going to turn out like my father, I was never going to be cowardly or abusive, I was never going to abandon people who needed me, I was never going to be cruel or hurt people just because I could.
That author of that piece is in his mid-twenties and is now married. "I've never put a hand on anyone just because I could, I've never abandoned anyone who needed my help, family or otherwise," he wrote, and he credits that game for helping him realize what not to do with his life.
What's also striking are the games that people reach for when bad things happen. While everyone has talked about the death of Aeris or killing the Collosi as events that trigger an emotional reaction, reading about Porky Pig's Haunted Holiday being comforting to a child on the night of their mother's suicide attempt is haunting and raw.
Burch says she didn't know what to expect when she started asking for stories, but she's still surprised by the content that comes in. "How Games Saved My Life as a title is a sort of deliberate exaggeration—the aim of the blog is more to capture any way in which games have positively affected the player," she said. "But some people's lives have literally been saved by games, as a few submissions have shown. It's remarkable, and wonderful."
I've spent the past few days reading the site, and it's an amazing collection of stories. Some of the experiences are silly, and others are deeply moving. This is the reality of why we play games; we're engaged with an art form that has changed our lives and how we see ourselves and others. Even games that may not seem like "deep" experiences on the surface may reach someone at just the right time.
I encourage you to spend some time on the site and, if you're inspired, share your own story. Games change our lives in many ways, and more often than not those changes are for the better. Ashly Burch is helping to get that message out to a wider audience, and the results are inspiring.
Listing image by Photo illustration by Aurich Lawson
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