People who play videogames aren't escaping reality, they're simulating having meaningful participation in a society. If anything, gamers crave reality. An example of escaping reality is wearing noise cancelling headphones on the train so no one talks to you. Gamers are trying to simulate a reality where the work they do has tangible meaning. You do this dungeon and you get a new item, which you can use to do new dungeons. In reality, you do a job, and you get a paycheck, which you can only use to continue doing that same job. There are obviously meaningful jobs out there, but many, many people are being denied them, relegated to alienated labor. They are being denied access to community, relegating them to lonliness. The labor in videogames isn't alienating since it's meant to achieve a purpose and meant to advance you and grow your character. Jobs and a lot of what "society" these days has to offer just.... don't do that. It's all about PARTICIPATION.

    • infuziSporg [e/em/eir]
      ·
      1 year ago

      The foundation of anti-gaming criticism is: Man makes games, games do not make man. Gaming is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce games, which are an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Gaming is the general theory of this world, its encyclopedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its virtual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against gaming is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is gaming.

      Gamer suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Gaming is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the Oxy of the people.

      The abolition of gaming as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of gaming is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which gaming is the halo.