Why Games?

Why Games?
Why do we play games? Sounds like a bad line in a dating profile “I don’t want anyone who is going to play games” Sometimes games have this false imagine of being children’s pass times. Yes they are that but so much more in addition can be discovered within our games. There are such a wide variety of games that there may truly be a game for every person anywhere.

You can command a company of tanks with infantry platoons in support trying to cut off the last remaining soldiers of Hitler’s 3rd Reich in the Table Top Miniatures Game Flames of War. As you refight world war two battles and test your hand against other table top generals learning the history of the war and perhaps you can even top Old Blood and Guts Patton himself. I can be a mighty gnome fire mage from Azeroth using my Mouse and keyboard to slay the vile horde Orcs and Blood Elves in the World of WarCraft MMO. You can test your mettle fighting against a terrible breakout disease in the board game Pandemic. Can you and a team of your fellow players save the world from terrible contagion?

Games can be competitive, cooperative or a mix of both. Games can be highly technical and elaborate or a few lines on a paper or even betting the serial numbers on dollar bills. Games allow us to travel to fantastic worlds, historical times, and take on roles we likely will never experience otherwise. They can test our skill, our memory, our wits, and sometimes our patience as one broken Nintendo controller from my teenage years would surely attest. But they mirror us as people an outlet for hopes, dreams, and teach us new ways to think and solve problems. Games can help us grow as people, relax and challenge us as we see fit.

Games are whatever we want them to be and with friends whether they are real or imagined they can make our lives richer. The only thing standing in our way is finding which games to play and those friends who make them all
worthwhile.

Eldon “Donny” Krosch Jr.