 RPG
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 Aug 23 2007, 09:20 PM
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Role Play Games
So interestingly enough in my human relations class we were going over resolving problems in the work place and it said the most common form of resolution is role playing senarios. The most popular is team building and moral, but the most common is asking people to put themselves in someone elses shoes. That got me wondering, why in a professional setting is role playing for work place resolution ok but role playing as a recreation tends to be frowned upon by the main steam?
Lets look at role playing. What is it? Basically it's putting yourself in someone elses shoes, trying to see things from a new perspective, philosopy, etc. So those shoes happen to be on elf who's dealing with damage to his home forest, or a dwarven warrior protecting the integrity of his clan name. Is that really so diffrent from real life senarios? What's the hot topic with politicians and the media right now? Global warming a.k.a. environmental issues. Sound like an elf we know? Kids get into fights in school yards all over the country because someone called his/her mom a name. I know I did. Sound like a previously mentioned dwarf?
Why is it "wrong" to be an RPer then? Well.... it's not. Like any other recreational hobby it has very possative benefits and oppertunities such as expanding social, tollerance, communication, and problem solving skills. The problem is that people perceive role playing as an escape from real life problems. From my personal experience over many years of table top and online gaming it seems the perception is acctually the rarity. Most gamers have more than one character, ie. they enjoy seeing and solving a problem or an issue from more than one perspective. How is that a bad thing? Isn't that something we're encuraged to do?
Yes there are gamers who "escape" into their characters, who do some really unhealthy things for their addiction. And yes I call it an addiction, but keep in mind, not everyone who drinks is an alchoholic, not everyone who works out does so complusively. We know that in moderation alchol consuption has benefits, this has been medically proven. We know that exercise is good for us, but over doing it is detrimental to our health. The diffrence is with other addictions people know that the object of the addiction is not the cause of the problem, it's the person with the addictive personality disorder who has a problem and needs help to moderate or abstain from the object that stimulates their addiction.
This same distinction doesn't seem to be made for games, especial for role playing games. People want to classify gamers as out of shape, fat, anti-social, yada yada yada, and say that gaming or role playing is the cause or that it encurages unhealthy habits. It's not, people had unhealthy habits before MMO's were realessed and they'll continue to have unhealthy habits. Walk into any office building, resturant, or park in the country and you'll find people who don't game with the same 'problems' that is currently being blamed on the gaming instustry. The games are not the problem. It's the abuse of these games by a small percentage of gamers who have a problem. Passing the buck is not going to help them. I feel that's a destinction that needs to be made, not just because it'll help gaming addicts get the help they need, but because in theory it will help keeps game from being dumbed down or ruined for responsible gamers. You know, those of us who have jobs and mow our lawns and manage to have social lives off line as well as online.
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Blog created: Feb 27 2007, 05:33 PM
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