For a long time, I didn’t play many games. I didn’t grow up with enough expendable income to afford a large game library, and spent much of my childhood playing and replaying the few NES and Super Nintendo games I had—Super Mario Bros., Donkey Kong Country, and movie tie-ins of Toy Story and The Lion King.
These stories were familiar if they were good, practically non-existent otherwise. I liked them, but not in an attached way—I played them because they were there, mostly, and because somewhere I got cheat codes and I liked the weird Doom-esque level of Toy Story. They were things to do on rainy afternoons, not things I got very invested in.
It wasn’t that experience that kept me playing games. I liked the feeling of playing with friends—we’d make our own characters in wrestling games or spend entire afternoons sunk into Toejam and Earl, always looking out for secret levels. Books were where I found stories, were where I really connected, but games were social. We’d laugh about the ridiculous things we could do in games and spend time getting nowhere just because it was fun.
“I had never connected with a video game character, because I wasn’t a plumber or a lion or a bear with a bird in my backpack.”
And then: Final Fantasy X. I had never played an RPG before. I had no idea what to make of turn-based combat, which I found boring at first. I had never connected with a video game character, because I wasn’t a plumber or a lion or a bear with a bird in my backpack. This was the first game I’d played with a story—a real story, not a connecting thread like a kidnapped princess or stolen banana stash—and I was hooked.
Spira was a world as rich and complex as anything I’d read in a book, and once I made it in I couldn’t put the controller down. I played it until I fell asleep fighting Sin’s fin, controller still in hand. This was what I wanted—games where I could lose myself as completely as I could in books. Games where I could sink myself into them, finding things to admire about the characters. They weren’t like me, but they had traits I could aspire to—Yuna’s vulnerability and compassion, Rikku’s undying humor and levity, Lulu’s general badassery and caring beneath all the belts. I cried at the end, something I’d never experienced before—the only tears I’d shed at a game were of frustration when I couldn’t beat M. Bison after hours of trying.
“This was so far removed from my initial gaming experiences that it didn’t feel like the same medium.”
“For me, it’s never been about reflexes or high scores or beautiful graphics.”
For me, it’s never been about reflexes or high scores or beautiful graphics. It’s always been story and characters that pull me in, letting me really live life in others’ shoes. For a girl from a small, conservative town with nothing more entertaining than a dinky movie theater, games were and are a place to sink myself into stories not in a passive role, but as a participant. It’s something no other medium can do in the same way, and that’s what keeps me playing.
This is very much my experience with games too.
I grew up with a computer or games console, so I only played games when I visited a friend’s house. When I was 16 I borrowed a PS1 and played my first real game: Final Fantasy VII. And I loved it. There’s nothing like stepping into another world and inhabiting a character.