Dear Escapist Magazine,
Nearly three years ago I was completely blindsided by the death of one of my closest friends. While on his way to class one morning, he was involved in a fatal car accident. As an 18 year-old kid who had just started college it was the first time I faced the stark realities of life, but it would not be the last. This past May, another one of my closest friends passed away after struggling with cancer for roughly six months. Once again I was tossed into a sea of misery. Even with my previous experience, nothing I did felt quite right. Well, except one familiar pastime of mine that had helped me the deal with death the first time around: video games.
Mainstream media has not been kind to games or gamers over the course of their existence. Even with the medium becoming more and more accepted by society, recent events have only spurred more talk about games and their effects on the psyche. As someone who has had gaming help him come back to the real world on two separate occasions, I can’t help but be offended by the vitriolic comments. Without the help of video games, I’m not sure where I would be today.
What I’m proposing, is a feature on my experiences with death and how games helped me come to terms with not only the passing of two close friends, but with my own mortality. I want to show how games can have a significant positive effect despite of all the supposed negatives. I intend to do this by discussing how I felt during these traumatic times and then explaining how specific titles helped me overcome. For example, I had been nagged into buying Fable III just a couple weeks before his passing, but we never had a chance to play it. When finishing it a few days after his funeral it was a surprisingly cathartic experience.
I feel my personal insights, like the one I just briefly described can help shed light on the many benefits of gaming and I hope to aid in helping the industry get the respect it deserves.
Thank you for taking the time to read this, I hope to hear back from you soon.
Sincerly,
Jamison Miller
Nearly three years ago I was completely blindsided by the death of one of my closest friends. While on his way to class one morning, he was involved in a fatal car accident. As an 18 year-old kid who had just started college it was the first time I faced the stark realities of life, but it would not be the last. This past May, another one of my closest friends passed away after struggling with cancer for roughly six months. Once again I was tossed into a sea of misery. Even with my previous experience, nothing I did felt quite right. Well, except one familiar pastime of mine that had helped me the deal with death the first time around: video games.
Mainstream media has not been kind to games or gamers over the course of their existence. Even with the medium becoming more and more accepted by society, recent events have only spurred more talk about games and their effects on the psyche. As someone who has had gaming help him come back to the real world on two separate occasions, I can’t help but be offended by the vitriolic comments. Without the help of video games, I’m not sure where I would be today.
What I’m proposing, is a feature on my experiences with death and how games helped me come to terms with not only the passing of two close friends, but with my own mortality. I want to show how games can have a significant positive effect despite of all the supposed negatives. I intend to do this by discussing how I felt during these traumatic times and then explaining how specific titles helped me overcome. For example, I had been nagged into buying Fable III just a couple weeks before his passing, but we never had a chance to play it. When finishing it a few days after his funeral it was a surprisingly cathartic experience.
I feel my personal insights, like the one I just briefly described can help shed light on the many benefits of gaming and I hope to aid in helping the industry get the respect it deserves.
Thank you for taking the time to read this, I hope to hear back from you soon.
Sincerly,
Jamison Miller
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