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What makes computer games so amusing and fascinating? That’s the question I have to answer to several people everyday.
I’ve played videogames and computer games the most of my life and I’ve actually had the opportunities to play them in my upbringing as well, so it has always been a natural part of me. A computer game to me is a huge interest and hobby that I fancy just as much as a senior focusing his time and work on Chess. It’s a way of entertaining myself as well as a way to escape the daily world that we’re living in. Is it really so nerdy to play computer games? At least I don’t think so. We’re all humans and we have to occupy ourselves with something through all the years of life. When we were toddlers we played with rattles and stuffed animals. As years goes by we eventually start growing interests for sports, collectives, games and videogames. As the brain ages we start setting higher standards for what we do for our own entertainment. And that’s where I come in the picture! As many other teens and adults I’ve grown an interest for video- & computer games and I spend almost all my spare time playing them. I’m fascinated by the universe I escape into when I switch on the power to my screen. In these universes there’s no limit to what might happen and you always get sucked into the universe the game takes place in for some reason. You start to sympathize with the in-game characters and you really try to imagine yourself in their positions.
My favourite game or in-game universe would probably the new Japanese franchise called RPGs. It’s short for role playing games and the setting often takes place in a medieval universe with fantasy creatures such as elves, gnomes, dwarves, centaurs along with an endless list of imaginary created creatures. As well as a book, a computer game also creates a wide list of characters that you can either choose to sympathize with or dislike. The games always have a main character that you often play as and you follow the story-line through his eyes and the story is often told through the main character.

My favourite game is called “Tales of Symphonia” and it’s a fairly new role playing game released in 2004. The game focuses its story around the main character called Lloyd Irving who’s a high school student in a small village named Iselia. His mother was killed shortly after giving birth to him and his father’s whereabouts are still not clear as Lloyd doesn’t know his real father. A Dwarf, however, found this small baby near a river shortly before his mother died and promised the human that he would look after this child and raise it as his own. Lloyd is now sixteen years old and we follow him and a group of friends from the same village. The group of friends consists of Lloyd, a human, Colette a human, Genis a half-elf and finally Raine another half-elf. The opening sequel to the game is an over-world view of the entire planet as a narrator, which actually is Lloyd Irving’s father who speaks, tells the current state of the world. A holy tree that has withered and died no longer provides the flourishing world Sylvarant with Mana. A source of energy that’s even more important to life than water. An in order to revive the withered tree a chosen, blessed by the goddess must carry out a journey of world regeneration where she must give up her human existence in order to be reborned as an angel herself. This holy ritual will awaken the withered tree and provide the world with its Mana once again… however at the end of this long journey the chosen and her group (Consisting of Lloyd, Colette, Genis and Raine) soon discovers that it’s all a big lie. A group calling themselves the Cruxis has made up this twisted world in order to revive a girl named Martel. The man behind it has schemed this from the very beginning.
Although many chosens has failed, Colette’s group manages to get to the final chapel soon to discover the truth, however it is too late. Our job is now to reverse the whole angel transformation process and of course we succeed in the end.

Your role in the game as the player is to escort the chosen through the dangerous world and protect her from the danger that lies ahead of her, which is a variation of random battle encounters, boss battles and puzzle-solving. The universe itself is a magnificent piece of art. We live in this world of discrimination and slavery and we must fight for the people’s sake. Many organisations siding with Cruxis is using human-beings as slaves in order to create powerful gems that they equip their own army of angels with. These gems are called ex-gems and they’re created by attaching the gem directly to the human skin and awaiting the gem to basically drain the energy out of the victim’s body. Once that process is completed, the gem is attached to a key-crest and then attached to a weapon, a piece of armour or alike to increase the power of those who equips them. Our main characters are equipped with these gems as well as they got theirs without knowing of the creation method. Lloyd got his from his mother who was used in the same experiments and so on.

When we’re discussing the world of computer games then it’s important to remember that the rules changes from game to game. Direct rules as we know them from real-life soccer and other sports don’t play such a big role in games. Rules are often only to find in sport computer games.
The type of games that I play the most which is the RPG games has evolved a unique system which actually is one big rule. This system decides how the battle system works, the character developing which is based on a level system and so on.
The level system is almost present in all RPG games. It’s a system where your character has been given a requirement of points called “experience points”. And in order to reach the next level these characters has to collect the amount of experience points needed to progress to the next level. These points are earned through battles against fiends and bosses. Once you’ve learned the basics about RPG games then you easily get hooked to the game.

Many RPG games are single-player only, which means that only a single person can play the game. The option to link up a second or more controllers and play as two characters is not there, however, Tales of Symphonia has a multi-player system where one or more players can link their controllers and control a character each in the battles.
I usually prefer to play single-player games since they offer a more focused game-play around the main player, and if you check the list of available games you’ll quickly notice that the majority of games available are single-player only.
There are consequences to these games that offer nothing but player options to a single person. You’re often glued to the screen at home in weekends and you often isolate yourself from everybody else, which easily can become an addiction if this continues for too long. Isolation, whether it’s a good or bad thing can be discussed as well. I personally enjoy closing my door and inserting a game into the computer as I live myself into the universe and completely isolate myself from the surrounding world. I don’t care about home works, job, daily chores, food or social issues. I just live myself into this fascinating universe of perfection and amusement. I see it as an opportunity to be myself and escape from everybody else, free of being judged by others.
As the years has gone by my self-esteem has decreased as well since I’m not social and I tend to avoid being around too many people that I don’t know very well. Some people might say that I have a problem and that I should stop playing computer games for so many hours, but in the end. What’s happiness? Happiness is occupying yourself with something that you enjoy doing and love spending time on. And for me, spending time on computer games is happiness and joy.
The computer has long passed the interest and hobby level; it has now become a part of me that I can’t let go of. When I refer to my computer as my life actually, then I’m referring to cyberspace and all the opportunities that come with it. The amount of time I spend on playing actual computer games is less than the amount of time I spend on sitting on the Internet.
To me, the Internet is even more real than life. I can be myself; I can chat with whom I want to chat with. I’m able to fall in love with persons I meet through the Internet. The computer has gone beyond entertainment; it’s actually a life-style now.

Luckily the group of friends that I’m around enjoys playing computer games just as much as I and we often hang out at a friend’s house to play together for several hours.
You probably ask yourself as the reader; “How can playing soccer on the computer be more fun than going outside and play it on an actual football field?” The smell of the grass, the feeling of progress that shivers through your spine as you kick the ball with all you’ve got, the joy that rushes through your body like adrenaline as the ball flies into the far corner of the goal and your friends screaming as you’ve just won the championship. The whole social part of being together as a team and as friends, how can the computer compare to such reality? My honest answer, I don’t know.

I believe that the computer will be the future of the world. The whole computer universe will continue to grow even larger and it might even end up replacing actors and newspapers and even replace human organs so we’ll be able to live longer lives.
We’ve seem endless attempts to create the “Virtual Reality” world and I believe that scientists will succeed one day. We’ll not only be able to live ourselves into the in-game characters, we are the in-game character. A game completely based on your judgement and decisions? Wouldn’t that be more entertaining than sitting down with a novel on a windy night a Saturday evening? We’d be able to be our own stars, we’d be the actors and we’d decide how the story is progressing. We’d no longer be the audience waiting to be entertained, we are the entertainers. Once we approve of such a world will be the time discrimination will finally end, at least that’s what I believe. I’m no philosopher, I’m not religious and I’m not superstitious. I believe in Science and I’m a truth-seeker. I believe in what I see with my own eyes and what I have in front of me is a large web of truth and realism as I browse through the endless edges and corners of the Internet.

I don’t blame people for not understanding the way that we think or the way that we see the computer, but neither do I blame them for doing sports and playing checkers or whatever. We are all allowed to do what we want and the computer is something that I have chosen, whether its computer games or the Internet, that doesn’t matter. To me, it’s my happiness.

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