Created by Ashley Burch of Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin’, How Video Games Saved My Life is a web page that collects personal stories from people that have had their lives positively impacted by video games.
Since launching the website last month, Ashley has gathered four pages’ worth of testimonials. Ashley herself kicks things off with a discussion about her health-threatening anxiety and how Harvest Moon helped her overcome it, setting the stage for story-after-story about how Zelda, Tetris, Pokémon, and more helped people cope with everything from the death of a loved one to coming out as gay to one’s parents.
It’s a wellspring of feel-good gaming stories, though very few are actually about saving a life, and those that do feature lifesaving are rarely directly video game related. Saying Suikoden II saved your life because you were awake playing it instead of asleep in bed when a fire broke out is a bit of a stretch.
You’ll read about a couple bonding over Mass Effect, someone using a PlayStation during recovery from cancer treatments, and a guy that kept himself from committing suicide after a bad breakup by creating his girlfriend in The Sims 2 and setting her on fire.
An anti-gaming pundit could easily argue that most of these stories are only gaming related at the surface level, but that’s not the point. The point is these people associate video gaming with these major changes in their life. To them, gaming has that magical power.
Maybe it will to you as well.
How Games Saved My Life [Website]
THXultra
Saturday, September 10, 2011 at 12:24 PMBalance is returned to the universe, without balnce, we would not exist, or something…
Quark
Saturday, September 10, 2011 at 5:24 PMI got so nostalgic when I saw the Suikoden II pic in the thumbnail!
mm
Saturday, September 10, 2011 at 6:05 PMgaming gets me through my week, without it i would be a very different person i think
Joe Mama
Sunday, September 11, 2011 at 4:23 AMAlways see these house wives whining about how they have nothing to do, cleaning the house spotless everyday, getting a job because they’re bored or cheating on their husbands.
And they call video games a waste of time though, I don’t even.
Stephen
Monday, September 12, 2011 at 12:05 PMPersonal perspective:
Asperger’s, absolutely awful coordination. Video games improved my coordination. Helped develop problem-solving skills. More importantly, helped develop social skills in online games.
There are plenty of arguments for the positive influence of video games – the argument that they improve problem-solving is probably the simplest to win.