Not everyone is particularly drawn to the genre of video games known as Role Playing Games (RPGs). RPGs are sometimes viewed as for nerds who love living in their own fantasy world where they can climb to the top ranks of a civilization and rule the world with an iron fist. However, every once in a while an RPG breaks the world sales charts because they happen to capture a much wider audience, usually through dumbing down the experience for the lay-gamer (see: Oblivion and Fallout 3) or because they are a series so entrenched in culture they will never fail except by a massive apathy from the developer (see: Final Fantasy 13).
For me, I have an experience with RPGs akin to that of the stereotypical nerd. I love leveling up and becoming stronger than everything else in the game world. I love slaughtering dastardly foes and the occasional innocent NPC. However, I was thinking recently, there must be more to my infatuation with RPGs, something a little deeper that may play on the real outside world around me. So I got to thinking and below I will lay out what I pondered, whether it is right or not.In almost every RPG that exists, one of the main ways of progressing your character is by gaining experience killing monsters and completing epic quests leading to a stronger character. Once one gets a certain amount of experience, usually denoted by experience points, your character gains a level where skill points are then given to you and you can allocate them to various skill trees to better your characters strength, wisdom, or swordsmanship, depending on how you wish to play the game. This progression of skill and gaining experience is what has always intrigued me about RPGs and why I am drawn to them more than sports games and FPS games.
A (rather simple) skill tree from Borderlands
Why gaining experience and building my character to godhood so fascinates me is probably for one reason: the sense of achievement as compared to how we achieve in our real, daily lives. You see, in a video game, you can usually experience something, which you yourself control, which will take you across continents, worlds, and sometimes galaxy, all in an 8-40 hour experience. We can go from a tepid boy to the hero of fictional world with all that comes in between.In a well-crafted game world, you never need to travel that far to come across a person that needs help. Once you talk to the character and get the details, it usually takes 30 minutes to complete the task, after which you, in real life, feel some accomplishment. In recent years, with the advent of near photo-realistic graphics the immersion factor of games has increased dramatically, helping game developers convey a grander experience, and pulling the player deeper and deeper into the world. The more I have been drawn into the world, the easier it is to feel the impact of my accomplishments and transgressions and how they effect everyone else.
I set apart RPGs from other games because in an RPG your character progresses levels and ranks noticeably, usually visualize by numbers in the stat menu or graphs on a website. Zero to hero is nought but taking a few days to go into the game world and have at it. You become stronger than the monsters and more adept to fighting and magick than any NPC could wish upon themselves. Eventually, depending on the game, you can attack once formidable foes and kill them with one strike. Rising through the ranks in an RPG is noticeable and usually necessary to get anywhere in the story or to even enjoy the experience.In the real world, we all accomplish things also. However, I think we accomplish our goals and tasks in less propinquity than we do in RPGs and video games in general. In Oblivion, you start out in the Imperial City prisons and end the game the hero of the land, a strong and hardened man or woman. In the real world, you have to go to school for 12+ years just to graduate and try to be somebody. There is no guarantee you will ever be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company or become President of the USA no matter how hard you work. In an RPG, if you do the quests and kill the monsters, you will level up and you will progress the story as long as you perform the necessary actions for that is the nature of the entire experience. Some games it is very hard to reach the end level, but it is always necessary that you reach it if you perform the correct actions, no questions asked.
YES! Level 99!
Hence, generally in gaming, the sense of accomplishment is ever present. Almost every game is split into several levels all requiring me to meet a certain criteria to get to the next one and every time I complete a level I am awarded with something of value in the game, some sense of accomplishment to keep me going. Real life is of course not so. There is little back-patting and every action is irreversible in the span of time. There are of course accomplishments abound to be had and a lot of them trump anything that we will ever experience in games (having kids, getting married, completing college). Yet, being in the game world and delivering the head of a criminal to the authorities is an accomplishment just as reaching level 99 in Diablo is. That is why I keep coming back to RPGs (and video games in general) for more and more.
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