I do not play video games frequently, but when I do, it is a big ordeal. Typically, I only play with my friends. Usually, it starts as an innocent match of Fifa, but it always turns into a full-fledged tournament, which brackets and the whole nine-yards. Like books, my friends and I would get lost in it. However, the main difference between a compelling novel and Fifa is that you do not read to beat others. You do not read to score a goal in the last twenty seconds. You read to take yourself to another realm. I play video games to quench the competitiveness within, meanwhile, I get to maintain a sense of laziness by not having to move. The staticness of video games is very similar to that of a book. And although I can get equally lost in both, they are both clearly different. The types of video games I play are only related to sports. There is no such video game where a white man takes on the court case of an unjustly accused black man, like in To Kill a Mockingbird. But there are video games that appeal to these same senses in which Harper Lee targets. For me, video games are about forgetting about the hardships of the world and more about letting my mind go numb. I play these games to have good times with my friends and to enjoy the competitive environment that surrounds it. So, although I can lose track of time equally for both books and video games, each serves a different component in my daily life.

When I was younger, in about 4^th grade, I was really into playing the game Club Penguin. I would play for hours with my best friend Skylar. We would call either other and hang out in the Club Penguin world. I played the most during the summer since I would play for hours at a time. I played so often that I was a Club Penguin member, which means that my parents paid club penguin a monthly rate so that I had special privileges in the game. Typically, I played after camp until dinner time. I can’t remember one specific moment where I got lost in the game since it happened so often. First, after logging in, I would have to select a “world” to be in. Each “word” had a silly, artic-themed names like avalanche or iceberg. There was a surplus of worlds to choose from, but everyone wanted to play in worlds that had the most people online that way you could meet more penguins. Conveniently, the worlds had a popularity rating next to it so you could tell how many people were in each world. The most popular worlds had five or four stars next to them. Avalanche was always a very popular world to be in so that’s the one I often chose. After selecting a world, I would spend hours wandering around mingling with other penguin players or playing games to earn coins.

Club Penguin doesn’t really have a real goal, therefore you can’t really “win” the game. I think that’s what it so addicting for me. Since there was no real way to win, you could play endlessly. The only semi-real purpose of the game was to earn as many coins as possible, but you could still hang out a do a lot of other things on Club Penguin without coins. They were not required, but if you earned coins when playing the various minigames, you could use them to buy the coolest new clothes, igloos, or furniture for your igloo. Most of the entertainment came from other players. That’s why everyone wanted to go the popular worlds. The most fun part was dressing up and going to various places around on the map and meet new people. Sometimes people got so into the game that they were in penguin relationships. I can’t remember exactly what drew me to this game since it was so pointless, but I do remember how much I loved it.

My most memorable and immersive gaming experience happened on Minecraft when I was in 7th grade. It was around the time Minecraft had began to pick up momentum as more and more Youtube gamers were getting into the game. I had only seen a handful of videos, but decided to try out the free trial anyway.

The first day mainly consisted of me running around and picking up flowers. At the time, I didn’t know you had to hold down your mouse to break blocks so the only things I could pick up were flowers and mushrooms (which broke in one hit). By the time that I had figured out how to punch out blocks, the sun was setting and I knew that monsters were near.

Armed with a few dirt blocks, flowers, mushroom, and sand, I made a small pit to shield myself from the darkness along the shore of a frozen beach. It went as well as you’d expect it would. In the course of the night, about 20 minutes or so of real time, I defended my makeshift sand fort from spiders, skeletons, and zombies. By the time the sun had come up, the beach was littered in bones and blood, some of which were mine and most being the monsters. I was pretty damn proud.

Those early days playing the game were the peaks of enjoyment for me. I had logged onto this completely foreign world with no idea how game mechanics worked. I didn’t know what items went with which to create what. I didn’t know wood was a necessity. I definitely didn’t know “creepers”, suicidal green phallic-looking monsters with no arms, could explode and ruin your hard day’s work while simultaneously killing you. The point was I enjoyed being lost.

By the time I was in ninth grade, my passion for the game was gone. I could log into a fresh, new world and have a small house along with basic armor and weapons within 25 minutes. Maybe less if I had spawned in a location with a lot of natural resources nearby such as trees and mines. I was no longer an excited, lost noob, but a bored veteran. By now, Minecraft had gone through hundreds of updates and changes. The once simple feel to the game is lost amongst all the new updates and returning to it wouldn’t be worth the effort of trying to catch up. These days there are too many online guides and youtube tutorials. Sometimes, not knowing what’s next is the best part.

One of my favorite video game series is the Fallout series. I first started playing one of the iterations in the series (Fallout 3) about three years ago, and I’ve been hooked ever since. Fallout is an RPG, with a massive and wide open world space. You are encouraged to traverse and explore this wide open space at your own time and pace, although there are main and side objectives for you to complete and a story to follow. This meshes quite well with the other defining characteristic of Fallout – its setting. All Fallout games take place in a “retro-future”, the future (about 2270) but it’s the future that the 50’s and 60’s imagined. Robot butlers, laser and plasma weapons, nuclear energy that powers everything from houses to cars, vacuum tube technology, even powered suits of armor used for warfare. In 2077 nuclear war broke out and modern civilization was ended for the most part. Radiation now covers the barren and destroyed landscapes. Fallout 3 takes place in the ruins of Washington DC, and you are dropped right into the middle of it two hundred years after the nuclear war. You must deal with mutated creatures, radiation, hostile raider groups, new towns and civilizations that have popped up, various factions and their goals, and you must utilize both old and new technology to stay alive. All of this transported me to another dimension, another world that I was sucked into. I wanted to explore everything – the landscape, the weapons and tech, the remnants of familiar landmarks now scarred and the new places that have been built, the alien and sometimes horrifying creatures, all while struggling to survive and thrive in a hostile environment. I would play for hours on end, and whenever I finally came back to the real world, I had a mix of emotions. Sometimes I would feel bored, or anxious to get back to the Fallout world and continue my travels. Other times, especially after long playing sessions, I would actually feel relieved. I would start to feel bored and pointless while playing Fallout, and when I stopped I felt relieved to do something else. Eventually though Fallout always called back to me and I felt the itch to explore the Capital Wasteland once again.

I have been lost in video games many times but it happens quite often with a particular game; candy crush. This simple iphone game can take your life over. Every minute you are just thinking about swiping candies in sets of 3. Candy crush is a great time waster.

The aim of candy crush is to combine different colored candy into sets of 3 or more by switching adjacent candies. The visual appearance of the candies is aesthetically pleasing. It is fun to look at, even as you lose. Each time you make a successful switch it makes a very satisfying sound and if you get several at one time a deep male voice says “delicious” or “tasty”, which can be a bit creepy but is still rewarding.

Candy crush is a naturally addicting game as each level doesn’t take long. This allows you to do a lot in a short amount of time causing you to lose yourself in the world of candy crush and forget about the real world. This makes candy crush a great game for places where you are doing nothing such as in a waiting room or a bathroom. You can spend so much time on candy crush rather than sitting doing nothing.

Every time I stop playing candy crush, I realize that I spent too much time on my phone and I feel like I just wasted a lot of time. This is not a good feeling when I know that there is work that I could and should have been doing. But other than that I am totally fine being addicted to candy crush.

When I was in 8^th grade I played Skyrim, and it blew my mind. I did not know a game like Skyrim existed. Where the map was seemingly endless, the graphics were amazing and the gameplay was unique. I was obsessed. The day my brothers and I got the game I watch my older brother play it for hours upon hours. I could not wait to play it for myself. Once I got my hands on the controller and started a game of my own all my free time was gone. I explored everything I could find on the map and tried to have my character mimic what my actions would be. For months I invested my time into my character and was very, secretly, proud of him. It was strange feeling envious of a fictional character that I created and controlled. A weird reversal of power for the player to wish he could be the character. Despite this I kept playing until I beat the main story, but even then I wasn’t done, for I created a new character and did it all again. With time I grew tired of the game. The magical feeling of a massive new world was gone, I was simply repeating stories from my previous game. Though I was still discovering new ways to play and places to explore it wasn’t the same. Subtly at first and then very abruptly I grew tired of the game. My love and nostalgia for the game still exists today, but my temptation to play it again has long since died. I blame this on the fact that I kept growing and the game didn’t. It grew old to me and the excitement that drove me to put so much time into was gone, and there was no way to bring it back. When I stopped playing I felt sad yet content, I felt as though I had done all I could, yet I wished I could find a way to revive the game and make it all new again.

At a young age I always believed that I would become a NBA basketball player, an NBA star. I had posters of Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, and Larry Bird hanging on the walls in my room just above my bed. Growing up in Athens, Ga, I had always been able to attend the UGA Mens Basketball games, and I found many role models. As I became older I realized that my lack of height would be a major factor in preventing me from playing professional basketball. Luckily, NBA 2K15 has a MyCareer feature that allows you to create a player and become a professional basketball player. Everyday after school I would go home, turn my game system on and play until dinner time. This was my form of “practicing to become a professional basketball player.” I named the player after me and changed his facial features to match mine. The mode starts off in high school and it is up to the player to earn his way to college and then to the NBA. I played my heart out every single game because I wanted to be the number 1 player in the NBA draft. After every game you were featured in the media and they would comment on how they felt about your play. Draft day finally came and I felt as though I was the best player in my class. I was drafted second and I was so disappointed in myself. I felt as though I worked harder than any other player. This put a huge chip on my shoulder and I felt as though I had a lot to prove. Everyday in the NBA I continued to play my hardest and eventually won the championship my rookie year.

Playing 2k15 was an outlet for me. It gave me the ability to become someone I had always wanted to be. This was an alternate universe where I was able to live my dream. This made the game addicting for me and very enjoyable.

When I was in primary school, Gameboy was a trend among the students. We talked about games for Gameboy between classes nearly every day. Among all the video games I played with my Gameboy, Pokemon was the most memorable one. The rules are simple. The player will choose Pokemon in the beginning of the game and try to defeat other pokemons in the battles to gain more advanced skills and higher levels. The player can go from one city to another to complete missions and catch varises kinds of pokemons. The setting is a mimicry of the real world. There are towns consist of households and flower shops etc. The player will engage deeply in the game because the setting evokes a sense of belonging. Moreover, there are infinite numbers of challenges in each town. Even the play has all the pokemons with level 100, he or she can still continue playing the game because there are always more tasks to accomplish and more enemies to defeat. This feature of the game intrigues me and I am totally absorbed into the game. Everyday after I finished my homework, I would play this game for hours until my mother rushed into my room and yelled at me: “you have been playing for three hours! Did you review for today’s class!” Boom! The time went by so quickly when I was playing. Three hours feel like three minute. The game is designed for long-term play because there is no end to the game. Training my pokemons takes a lot of time. It is hard to stop at a certain point because there are no limitations. I always want to gain more experience and achieve higher levels, so I keep playing and is so immersed in the game world, resulting in the unawareness of the real time.