Escapist Media

In a world that is growing continuously nosier with benign stresses of the modern life piling up, we look for escape. Escape from our daily lives that have grown ever so mundane. Escape from the worries of future obligations and the thoughts that just can’t seem to stop flowing but server no useful purpose. Your life sucks. You know this, but yet you look to hide rather than to fight the problems at hand. Media is one of the greatest tools we have to hide from or decompress from our lives. Video games are my go to media when I no longer want to be in this world and that’s quite a bit. Specifically survival/crafting video games that can take you back to the true essence of what it meant to be human. Escaping from reality through video games has positive as well as negative effects on individual’s lives. For the positives you have, stress release and forgetting about your problems, living a different life and having a splendid time as well as time going by quickly. The negatives of this escape rout are, wasting time, not dealing with your problems, isolation (god and bad) and staying up way to late when you have school or work the next morning.

My favorite video game currently is called Ark Survival Evolved. It is a survival video game that puts you into a world with between 1-70 other real people. You can choose to work together or go at it alone and fight other players. Oh did I mention there are dinosaurs! What makes this game great for escape is the amount of time and dedication it takes to play it. This isn’t a game where you can do everything in 8 hours or less. I’ve put in over 300 hours and I still haven’t done everything. There is no set linear story in the game so everything is created by players leaving endless possibilities to what could happen. If anyone really wants to escape for a long long time, check this game out.

Escaping from reality has its perks but it must be done in moderation or everything that is good about it is lost. There’s nothing like coming home from a long day and taking out your stress on noobs. Killing other people in game is a great way to release anger because it is still directed at another human being but it is done in a way that isn’t harming anyone physically. Although putting someone in a cage and extract blood from their body while they beg to be let go could have scaring mental effects on the 12 year old German kid you are torturing. 

The greatest part about Ark as a use for escape is the fact that you get to be someone else. Its not like an adventure game where it tells you who your character is and what they HAVE to do. In ark it is all your choice. Want to build a great fortress? You can do that. Don’t want to tame a dino for three hours? You don’t have to. Want to create Guantanamo Bay and capture all the inhabitants of the island? Good luck with that. Ark is life. This allows for more creativity and freedom of expression resulting in longer hours played and in my opinion more stress relief!

As I said earlier, everything in moderation. If you spend too much time away from the real world it starts to affect you mentally. The problems or the stress that you chose to escape from become escalated and are harder to deal with. One of the biggest problems using video games or any media for that matter is a waste of time. It’s not a waste of time when your having fun of course but life isn’t all fun and games. Media hinders you from being productive. It is a very passive way to escape. This passivity if used too much puts our brains to sleep and lowers our drive to want to do a damn thing. There are more creative and active ways to escape from life such as art, poetry, exercise or learning for fun.

Not dealing with your problems and always looking for an escape is a weakness of character. It shows that you are scared and don’t have the ability, or the care to make things better. Video games and other media makes us ok with our problems and puts them on the back burner. This can be good sometimes because problems can be solved by the subconscious and will naturally work themselves out. But if you have serious physical problems to deal with escape is not always a good thing. Say you have bills you need to pay or your dog needs to go outside or your running out of food in your house. Escaping makes you forget about all these things and most problems won’t be solved until they reach the crisis state or your life just crumbles in front of your eyes. Take this blog for example; I’m doing it last minute!

Isolation is a slippery slope when it comes to video games as a form of escape. I love coming home from a long day and just being alone killing hundreds of dinos and people. Dat stress relief doe. When people are isolated for an abundance of time it gets harder to be comfortable in crowds of people and further drives the want to isolate. Ark has a flip side to this isolation as it is a team building game and almost forces you to interact with other people for help. Players use microphones in game to talk to others creating “friendships” and the feeling of not being alone when you physically. I’ve had times where my teammates aren’t on and I want to socialize but I have no one to talk too. Except for real life people but who needs real life when you live on an island full of wilderness and adventure. Who needs sleep and food when its not in a game? #wiredin

When used in an appropriate dosage video games and other medias are a great tool for escape. When used to much it has serious detrimental effects on your real life even more than your stresses did in the first place. Stay gamin’ and stay sane peoples.