Social Gaming

We talk so much about how gaming alienates us. We talk about how we separate ourselves from family and friends, even general society, by playing games. We even make divides between other games: Casual and hardcore, Sony and Microsoft,  Nintendo and Sega. But games don't separate us, they bring us together. Why? Because games, at their core, are experiences. They are something that we literally live through. They're also mechanics and visuals and everything else, but those things come together to create an experience. And experiences, by their nature, can be shared. Don't you feel an instant kinship with someone who likes games, particularly the ones you like? If you meet another person who is into Minecraft or Skyrim or The Sims or whatever, don't you instantly start swapping stories and showing off scars? Single player games create stories, and stories can be told. Have you ever rekindled a friendship because you both happened to be on Xbox Live at the same time? Multiplayer games are a shared experience. They're something that we do together. We briefly become artists. We craft and shape an experience for each other. Whether that crafting is driven by competition or fun or a genuine desire to make an experience better for other people it is something we create. Even playing games is a kind of social interaction. Games are something that people make, something that they can pore their soul into. When we play games, we are getting to know people. So, what's the point of this? What does this knowledge give us? First, a defense against those who claim games are anti-social and cause loneliness. Yes, there are people who are anti-social and/or lonely that play games, but games do not cause either of those things. I suppose they could feed into those emotions in the proper context, but that is a big shift from causation. Secondly, a warning of responsibility. If someone feels alienated from games, it's our fault. Games are inherently social, but that potential community, that space of play, is created by us. We make it what it is. So let's make it something great.