Culture & Society

Living A Double Life Through Games!?

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Hi gaming community, and happy new year!

For today's topic, we wanted to cover something we found very compelling, which is how people live double lives through video games! Yes! We said it living life through a game. Now a lot of us in the gaming community tend to have high hours logged into our gameplay time because quite frankly instead of doing some other pass time activity, gaming seems to be our calling. This topic of leading a double life through a video game stumbled upon us while running an MMORPG last night, known as Final Fantasy a Realm Reborn, as the new year settled in. What we were trying to do with this game was to investigate just how similar to real life traditions these games are implementing these holiday special patch notes, and what we mean by that is, for example, how for Halloween they redecorate main safe zone towns with Halloween decorations and special holiday items, or with Christmas, in almost all of the towns it was snowing and they all had Christmas lights and decorations.

Now, in running this MMO we were hoping to see fireworks in the skies of Eorzea to prove our theory correct. Although our theory came up short, what we did come across was even better; people were gathered in the main towns doing a countdown and when the new year arrived everyone displayed their flashiest skills nonstop as a sort of substitute fireworks, and we all know how flashy Final Fantasy has always been when casting skills.

After the amazing displays of flashing lights had settled down we stumbled upon a "/Yell" chat going on where a character was telling another character that, this might be his last bitter, yet sweet log in, to this wondrous game. Before I continue, the "/yell" chat is an in-game chat where you can type any message and it is seen by everyone in the game that's within that certain location within the game. As we read on to see why such a high leveled powerhouse looking character might never come back to this game, everything became clearer. This man was explaining to a fellow Free Company member (guild member) that the reason for why he might not be coming back was because while instead of spending a bit more time with his family in the real world during and after new years eve, he spent it with some of his friends online in the game. Following after a supposed dispute with his real-world wife, his real world wife found out that he has another wife as well, BUT, this "other woman" was his in-game wife, and that other player character mentioned earlier, was speaking to was his in-game "adopted son". So this man was living a double life through a game, go figure. Now marriage in this game doesn't actually affect gameplay what so ever besides getting a few stat boost items and a double seating mount, so to what real extent was his devotion to these two other players, to the point where he had to lead a double life in a game?

Could it had been that this game was his secretive means to keeping in contact with two other actual human beings outside of the game? Maybe, or maybe it was just he felt like a different person in this game since this is a Role Playing Game and you are forced to take your role very seriously while in-game. Anyhow, what ever the case of that person may be, it's not like we haven't run across other similar situations. Let's take this to Instagram. Our team Brothel Gaming plays this game as one of our featured titles for our YouTube gaming channel, along with some other ones. We tend to post in game screen shots of whatever game it is we are playing and of course that includes our Final Fantasy main characters, Ninspeed and Renegade Justice from time to time, to keep almost like an archive of what we've done since the game is so huge. When we post anything relating Final Fantasy on Instagram, we get many likes and followers from this Final Fantasy community, but when we go into their profiles to thank the person for following us and that we may follow them back, it turns out that it is actually an Instagram account for that person's Final Fantasy main character.

Now, we are not saying that this is frowned upon, and if we may add there are some amazing screenshots out there, but as we click on these photos to like and see what's going on we read on their captions, and some captions throw us off. Some say "Glad to have these people keeping me company through this Christmas Eve!" or "Best new years eve party, couldn't have wished for a better group of friends or family to have spent it with."

There are many more accounts with very similar posts. One thing if we may add, is that we have to also take into account that many of these gamers put their time, efforts, and money into making a character or account that our team Brothel Gaming and many other like minded people, do call "works of art" because after all, your mind, creativity, and soul do create and customize the characters and their story with the tools provided to the player within the game. With that said, we would like to know how other gamers feel about this. Is this a concerning thing, or this a good thing, where people live a different alternate life through a game, including some more than others to the point where they appreciate their in-game experience better than the real in life experience? What could it be that causes these gamers to take such measures and become so attached to their characters, not just in this game, but in other MMO game titles as well? Are morals and values affected because of this? Do these add-ons that cause gamers to dig so deep into the game, make the game a good game or bad game? Which is the real person; The IG character, or the player? Which is the real you?

Comment bellow! Thank you guys for reading!


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Brothel Gaming

We are Brothel Gaming. A team dedicated to reaching the max potential of what the gaming industry has to offer being through creating great in game content, game testing, development, game art, competitive gaming and live streaming. Please enjoy and feel free to engage in anything game related with us!

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