Author: the Encaffeinated ONE (---.unb.ca)
Date: 08-06-2004 08:20
If there were one feature of a gamer that I would point out as typical, it is their level of imagination and willingness to suspend disbelief.
It is not necessarily that a gamer has a richer imagination than a non-gamer, but it seems more likely. Even a gamer with a narrow imagination, however, is willing to entertain the ideas of someone else, to delve into them and use the same faculties once devoted to mythmaking, religious belief and studying the natural to apply to the fantastical, the impossible, the improbable, the imaginary.
Fantasy literature has always appealed to the imagination. (Arguably, I suppose all literature does...) Good fantasy is compelling and revealing and appeals even to those with small imaginations, because it itself is so imaginative. Spectators and readers can feed off the imagination and creativity of the film-makers and authors, and become, in a way, a "passive gamer".
Fantasy is the crossover medium, but a real gamer goes beyond the merely passive activity of observer and consumer and moves into the more active role of creator, manipulator, builder, mythmaker. Granted, not every gamer is good at it, but that doesn't really matter: it is the willingness to explore and try to create that is more distinctive than the quality of the finished product.
So, where does that leave filmmakers, authors, actors and other people involved in the creative area? Are they gamers? Well, they might be gamers -- who've never gamed! I'm sure most have met those people, the ones where they would be so right for gaming, but for some reason (perhaps stereotypes about the hobby, or fear of the really hardcore gamers) they have never gamed? Often, I suspect that it just takes the right game, the right medium for them to express themselves gamingwise...
(Science fiction can also arguably be placed alongside fantasy; it just doesn't have as long a tradition, and is grounded (at least to some degree) in the established rules of science.)
Just my thoughts. I look forward to your observations, but I'm starting to feel my age when you say you've been gaming half your life, and that's just the time since I was an undergrad.. ;)
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