Porque jogamos, ou não...

Um artigo na Revolution Magazine que começa com a seguinte afirmação "Why I Play Games", derivado de uma conversa sobre o potencial do acto de jogar, a sua envolvência e porque o fazemos, tendo em conta um carácter positivo, ao contrário de grande parte dos estudos da psicologia que se tem concentrado sobre os efeitos nefastos. E nesta conversa o autor opta por se abrir a nós e revelar algo devastador ao leitor e concretizar a sua busca com base nesse evento,

"This escapism has never been more prominent to me than in the last two years. In February 2007, my three-year-old daughter passed away as the result of a car accident. My life fell apart, and I was on a knife edge, ready to jump into a chasm. But I escaped. Picking up a controller allowed me to step away from these problems. I absorbed every game that was released at the time, and each one took me away from my problems and challenged me, albeit in a material and competitive way, giving me something to strive for."

O que é aqui descrito por Lipscombe foi já transformado em filme em Reign over Me (2007), no qual Adam Sandler sofre com a perda da amada desaparecida no ataque às torres gémeas no 9/11. Para colmatar esse sofrimento isola-se do mundo, fecha-se no seu apartamento e joga Shadow of Colossus (2005).

Ou seja, o que nos leva a jogar é um factor dependente de grande variabilidade, contudo a variável essencial continua a ser: porque dá prazer, gratifica, recompensa ou simplesmente estimula emoções. Ora o interessante deste artigo tripartido está na última parte com a entrevista a Michaël Samyn (co-autor de The Path (2009), intitulada Why I Don’t Play Games. Samyn refere alguns pontos nos quais me revejo por completo,

I don’t play videogames. I really want to. But I don’t. I often try. Again and again. But games cannot keep me interested for long… not to play videogames while really wanting to is strange.

…So why do I want to play games?

As time went on, however, videogames started to show some signs of maturity. …The interactivity was starting to be used to enhance the immersion, to drag you deeper into the fiction. I remember that at that point I had an outspoken preference for playing games as opposed to watching movies. I couldn’t bear the thought of passively sitting through a story.

As the medium became more commercially successful, the content that games dealt with became more banal… The stories became mere excuses for yet another round of patronising challenge-and-reward.

I don’t want to be a hero. I don’t want to be a champion… I want a real challenge. An emotional and intellectual challenge. A human challenge. Instead of some carefully constructed cat-and-mouse game that only exists to consume my time. Shock me! Give me something unexpected! Show me something beautiful! Seduce me! Confuse me!

…There is so much potential in videogames. So much potential for greatness. The medium of videogames is a godsend in these troubling and confusing times. Its intimacy, interactivity, non-linearity and emergence offer us the tool of choice for communicating about very complicated and fascinating contemporary issues.