The modern video game industry; a seemingly recession-proof money-making juggernaut that has managed to escape the ailing economy mostly unscathed, is an example of just how many people in today's society need games to relieve the tension of day to day life. The above statement can be boiled down to a far simpler and more digestible phrase that makes many reconsider gaming as a form of mainstream entertainment media: "Gaming is Escapism". To those of us who understand the word "Escapism", a shudder runs up our spines as the connotations of the horrifying Psychology term come boiling to the surface, like crude oil escaping from a sunken submarine. We use games as a means to escape (hence the term escapism) our everyday lives, leaving behind the menial and horribly mundane to dash off and save the universe, battle the hordes, waste zombies, and otherwise become that which we cannot be in the real world.
I've been self-employed for roughly a year now (Read: I've been out of work and struggling to make ends meet with temp jobs), and I have to say, what little money I end up having left after the usual bills and food almost always ends up being used for my gaming habits. A few dollars to Xbox Live so I can stay online and play my copy of Orange Box, blasting away people as a Engineer on Team Fortress 2, or some points to buy the newest songs in Rock Band 2, or to pick up the latest and greatest nonsense from the XNA Development people. It's actually exactly the same amount of money I used to spend on another form of escapism, American Cinema. As I sit here, writing this article and eating my discount mac & cheese, I realize that we are all guilty of escapism, and it's not just the Video Gaming industry's fault (nor was it ever). What we do daily is the same thing that movie buffs, gear-heads and tuners, audiophiles, and Internet geeks do every single day. We take our money and spend it on our chosen method of escape: Video Games.
Considering this, more people today spend money on games than on most other forms of entertainment (at least here in the States), it's easy to see why the industry has become what many to believe as completely recession proof, posting continuous profits despite the nigh complete economic downturn in the past year and a half. Even during the stock market free-fall of last year, they managed to come out with minimal decrease in overall sales, the many development houses posting limited layoffs across the board. In a time where everything seems to be falling apart, we as a people face this in the time honored tradition of our fore-fathers: We man up, face facts, cut budgets...then go do something more amusing for a while. During the attacks of 9/11, millions upon millions of Americans turned to a method of coping that I was all to happy to participate in at the time, Movies. They ran to theaters, posting more tickets in two days than our place had seen in about a year, seeing whatever they could to escape from the news about terrorists and falling planes. And now, in that same method, people are turning instead to the more social and entertaining method of escape, Video Games.
Now we go online, we talk to our friends over XBL while playing Call of Duty and Left 4 Dead. We drop money on downloadable content so we can tune out the worst of the news once we hear it, giving us time to cope with it on our own terms...after we waste that next boss in BioShock or complete the next assassination in Assassin's Creed. Think about all this the next time you go and look into your wallet, wondering if you're going to spend that last twenty you have in there on McDonald's, paying some bills, or buying 1600 pts in the Xbox Marketplace. Are you doing this because you have money to burn? Are you doing this because you need to get away from reality? Are you doing this because you want to ignore the fact that all around you, things are changing? Or...do you even care? I mean, hell, that new DLC for Left 4 Dead comes out on Apr 21st.
Escape away, you've earned it.
