Video games and Escapism.

Is ‘escapism’ a fictional charge against video games?

It certainly is a charge raised against video games. That they are an escape into unreality, an active attempt to run away from the real and lived experience of the world. Perhaps you’ve heard it said or said yourself, “nothing but fantasy worlds”. So is the exploration of a fantasy world, engagement in the fictional and unreal programming of video games, an unhelpful escape from the world?

I think this depends on the motivation behind escapism. Thus it would come down to the particular case. Are we seeking an escape from reality because we don’t want to face it, because we think there is something better than reality, or because we are unknowingly deceived about reality? Those are problematic motivations for escapism.

However, escapism into another world can be more about enjoying a thought experiment, an experience of immersion and exploration, even a break for the mind from serious matters in the world – like a rest.

This kind of escapism is also not a denial of reality and can ironically be a great experience of reality in a sense. For the experience of escapism, or exploring fictional ideas in games, is a real experience anyone can have. But this comes with other issues. To trip on LSD is an actual experience but what you experience in the hallucinations are not themselves real no matter how real the experience of drug-induced hallucinations feel. We might say the physiological event of a hallucination is real, however, the content of the hallucination is not real. We might say it is the real experience of encountering the unreal.

So it is that engaging in the fantasy world of games is a real experience of the unreal. In this regard, I don’t think escapism holds up as an argument against video games necessarily. There is a joy in being spellbound as you are taken on a cerebral journey without ever journeying from the spot you are in, similar to a book of fiction, a movie, or a story told by another. In the exploration of imagination, there can be a wonder and awe of the God-given mind and its intangible creations.

Like most good things, the problem is in excessive escapism. Most people who take issue with video games apply a blanket criticism to the outcomes of excessive and ungodly actions. I am sympathetic to this because you need a broad canvas to capture the many many millions who are enthralled with the products of this medium. For this reason, it’s hard to see the medium as separate from the outcome. I might even have double standards. I don’t like social media for all the negative consequences, but those consequences are not essential to the medium. We are certainly responsible for our actions in this field as much as in video games.

But much like the last post, the indulgence in excessive escapism afforded through video games is like an explosive display of the human condition as opposed to the cause of the human condition.

Why is it millions seek to drown out the reality of the world in endless fantasy exploration that purposefully leads nowhere? Could it be that we are seeking to escape this world because we know there is truly something terrible about this world?

We endlessly fight make-believe battles on screen because there are real battles to be fought in the world which we feel powerless over, but desperately want justice. The stories are often also good vs bad, light vs dark. More than that though, we seek endless progression and enjoyment because there is true beauty we are seeking in the world.

Our desire to escape might very well point to a problem deeper within ourselves and a beauty beyond our grasp.

The world is broken, we want to escape. We are broken, we want to escape. There is beauty we wish to see and enjoyment we long for that the world provides in drips and drabs, we wish to attain the sublime beyond the tangible.

What we are really longing for is God’s redemption – an escape from the brokenness of the world – and an experience of his beauty, the enjoyment of the sublime. In a sense, video games and the escapism they provide is just another taste of the true experience we seek. At its best, it is a medium of art which is just another expression of our chase for God.