You've read the title, you know what this is. Here are 5 POSITIVE effects gaming has had in my life:
It improved my English. Growing up my sole access to the English language was cable TV (for which my parents paid a hefty sum for, as cable in the 90's was expensive) or English class at school. Nobody in my class spoke English to me. But all my video games were in English, so that was another resource for me to learn that language. But because voice acting in gaming wasn't yet a thing, I had to read in English for me to understand what I was playing. At first it was a little hard, and at ages 6 and 7 I could barely understand what my games were saying. But by the time I was 9, I was reading and writing in English like a pro! I've got games to thank for that.
It fed my creativity. When I was 13 I started writing my own stories. Got a real kick out of it, and entered a story contest. I got disqualified because my story didn't have hand drawn pictures. But the kids who read my story thought it kicked ass, and that made me feel good about myself. Anyway, two years later I entered another writing contest, writing a story inspired by EVO: The Search for Eden. Amazingly, I won. Video games have strongly influenced my story telling abilities. In fact, some of the BEST stories I've ever read or experienced in my life have come from games! A future blog will be dedicated to discussing the top 11 BEST stories I've ever had the pleasure of seeing in a game.
It helped me form a solid career path. My fascination with history began when I was 12 years old, when I first played a little game called Final Fantasy Tactics. When I played the game I became obsessed with two things: history, and teaching. I wanted to be like the in-game tutor, whose lessons were all simple and easy to understand. I dedicated my teen years to learning as much history as I could, and my young adult life to becoming a history teacher. It didn't quite work out how I had hoped, but I like to think of it as I had achieved my dream for two years and am now free to pursue a new dream.
It healed my loneliness. There have been many a lonely night for me. Nights spent wondering what the hell I was doing with my life, why I wasn't trying harder, etc. Games helped me ease that pain, that specter that haunted me nightly and would not allow me to sleep. There were nights where I would try to sleep, only to lay wide awake at 4 AM, not having gotten a wink. It was at its worst in 2010, when I would spend many nights in a row wide awake, feeling so terrible about the life I was living: grad school student with no job, no girlfriend, and being a financial burden on the family.
I met some of my best friends ever thanks to online gaming. And I won't expand on that, as I've spoken on it previously here: http://vidgameanalysis.blogspot.com/2016/08/five-video-games-that-changed-my-life.html
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