The Virtue of Oblivion

I value games for a lot of reasons. They are engines for social interaction. I enjoy the way good game mechanics fit together. Some games provide aesthetic satisfaction just from the way they look, or the materials they use. I appreciate games for the competition they make possible, and for the narratives they sometimes create.

But the best thing about a game, at least about a good game, is that they can completely dominate my attention. When I am deeply involved in a game, I lose track of time, I forget about problems at work, and the only thing that matters is the game and the people in it. If there is narrative and theme, then the game can become a kind of virtual experience, a transport with friends and opponents to a different time and place. But even if there isn't a theme, there is a kind of welcome oblivion that comes from being lost in a game.

For me, games provide some of the virtues of meditation. They are a shortcut to an alpha state, a way of being entirely "in the moment." I don't think games provide any deep insight on my own condition or subconscious, but I do find it refreshing to concentrate without distraction on the concrete and comprehensible universe of a game. It is a dive into a pool of total focus, and the well being that results can last for hours or days in the more fractured and uncertain world of every day life. I do know that just a little bit of gaming can dramatically improve my mood. And I know that if I go too long without playing a game that I can get depressed.

I can achieve similar total concentration by more extreme means ... I can ride a roller coaster, or get roaring drunk. What is remarkable about getting to this place of oblivion through games is that it happens so quickly, and without having to resort to extremes. It really is a shortcut to some better place. I don't want to be in that place all the time -- games may be an escape, but that doesn't mean I am eager to escape life. But it is nice to be able to punch my ticket for that land of oblivion for such a marginal cost. And it is nice to be able to take that journey with special people who might want to come along.

I think this is at the root of why I find gaming at conventions to (usually) be an unrewarding experience. I game to escape, sometimes alone but better with good friends; the mechanics of a game are less important to me, except inasmuch as they support the theme (which improves the quality of the escape). Games with strangers are almost always about mechanics, or competition ... things of secondary importance to me. A convention game is good for test driving something new, or, rarely, for meeting new folks, but it will rarely provide for the kind of transport a good game with familiar opponents can provide.

Something I can't quite figure is why I don't get a similar buzz from role playing games. On the surface, RPGs would seem to be even more purpose-built to transport a group of friends to another time and place. I think it has to do with control ... or the lack of the same, inasmuch as RPGs can, at best, be a shared journey, but more often are a kind of directed make-believe, a sort of experience of imaginative compromise where the bubble must not be broken or else the entire game experience will collapse. I also find that RPGs require more effort just to keep them going. As open-ended systems, RPGs are more fragile. Often players must serve the game, or forfeit their own desires in the interest of preserving the game itself. With a boardgame, the possibilities are more limited, but you can bang up against the walls of the thing with little fear of shattering the experience, and the solid structure at the center of a boardgame will carry you through to the end with the kind of certainty than a system administered by gamemaster fiat cannot hope to match.

And videogames take me to a place of oblivion, too, but I find it less rewarding, as it is so infrequently a shared experience. My favorite videogame experiences have all been co-op, or head-to-head, or a few rare moments on Xbox live. If it's just me against the machine ... well, I have gotten lost in a good racing game, which has some of those same moments of total concentration, but it is a different kingdom than that strange place I get to through boardgames.