The number of sales that a GTA (Grand Theft Auto) game gets might be alarming to responsible adults who wonder why players take glee in shooting people and taking money from their corpses. Similarly, playing a game where you continuously camp the enemy respawning area, kill spawning players, and then teabag their dead bodies might seem like a bad use of time. But we’re here to talk about what video games do and how they have a relationship to how life works and what makes it interesting.
First and foremost, video games are a means of escape out of the ordinary world and into the extraordinary. Like a movie, television show, book, or stage play, it is a means of getting out of your own life and experiencing something different. In that comes a slew of potential benefits. It can help you learn about yourself, the world, morality, or how to handle real-life situations. It can keep you optimistic about life by seeing the protagonist succeeding and the happy ending (with the occasional power fantasy from having superhuman capabilities). It can take your mind off daily life issues, improving your mood. Getting away from the problems of the world can be therapeutic as well as educational and motivational.
Additionally, video games tap into humans’ inherent growth-seeking behavior. Role-Playing Games (RPGs) have experience point systems that mimic real life where if you complete a task a certain number of times, you get better at it. City simulations allow you to grow populations and foster a thriving economy. Most games follow a trajectory where at the beginning you are relatively slow and weak with basic capabilities, and by the end you are able to fly, shoot cannons, and take down bosses with 1,000,000 health points (HP). It feels meaningful and rewarding as you see your character grow. Even the most basic game on the internet where you click on a picture of a cookie and it increases the counter feels like progress and scratches that progression itch in life.
Third, video games are a creative outlet. Unlike the more passive mediums listed earlier, video games are an interactive medium where you explore the world or participate in the work toward the goal. It’s not about watching the protagonist encounter obstacles on their way to achieving a goal; it’s about being the protagonist and completing the tasks to achieve the goal. Whether you are building a city, taking down a terrorist cell, or stopping an army of orcs from taking over your castle, you are taking action, solving problems, thinking of new strategies and approaches, and experimenting to see what works.
Finally, video games tap into humans’ competitive nature. Humans like to test their skills against others and love to win. Whether it’s beating the “bad guys” or winning in Peer vs. Peer (PVP) competitions, players love to not just get better themselves (i.e., the growth-seeking behavior mentioned above) but also like to test their skills and prove their worthiness against players of similar abilities.
So why do games require bad outcomes to be fun? After all, you can take one of the most addictive games in the world and, if you give yourself infinite health in it, you could go from loving it to getting bored with it pretty quickly. Why? Because it’s too easy—there’s no risk of a bad outcome. As such, your gameplay doesn’t mean much. Yes, there are ways to take a game series like Kirby’s Dream Land where it’s difficulty is low and give it more challenge by speedrunning it or trying to beat the game without getting hit, but most games need negative consequences or they will not feel very rewarding. It’s why people who are addicted to gambling can’t appease themselves by playing with fake money—something has to be at stake.
(Side note: one of my favorite interactions from one of my favorite movies, Let It Ride, is about this exact insight: “I don’t see why you people can't just watch the horses run around the track and not bet on them.” “There is no racing without betting.”)
Additionally, video games are designed to match the human need for a meaningful story, as famously discussed in Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. In his famous mythology, the hero has to have a call to adventure, have a mentor, face adversity, and overcome it to achieve the goal. No story feels fulfilling if it’s just, “The person woke up, had a sandwich, and it was great. He lived the rest of his life happy after having that sandwich.” Nothing happens. There has to be conflict, adversity, and difficulty. That’s why video games often involve teams of people with guns shooting each other: it represents the real-world conflicts that occur and not only helps people to prepare for them (video games develop teamwork and other skills) but also gives them simulated challenges with no risk of harm in the real world but still feels fulfilling from completing.
Yes, there are plenty of games that are about exploration and storytelling without much in the way of conflict (genres include “walking simulators” and point-and-click adventure games), but many—if not most—of the most popular do. It’s not because everyone is secretly a murder inside—no, GTA’s popularity does not mean that everyone is a psychopath, just that they like pretend to be powerful characters—but rather because people like to play games, have new experiences, compete, be creative, solve problems, get better, and escape from the real world. They don’t all involve violence, as you can stick to puzzle games and racing games, but bettering ourselves and overcoming obstacles is in our DNA, and that’s why they manifest the way that they do.
So, if you’re worried that you or someone you know liking video games is some red flag, it is not. It’s just humans being human. Take those positive reasons (escapism, growth-seeking, creativity, and competition) and leverage them so that you or the person you care about continues to live and thrive in the best way possible. Hurting others in a virtual world is just a safe outlet for a variety of real-world situations and doesn’t translate into real-world harm. Like anything in life, you can use it to make your life better or worse. If you use it to make your life more enjoyable and develop some transferable skills, it’s positive; if you use it to get away from facing real-world problems like finding a job or living your life, then that’s when it becomes a problem.