The Point - Gaming Through Your Stress

Thanks, Danny.

Since unemployment hit post college, I've been playing a looot more games than usual. It's got its pluses and minuses, but gaming's always been a big part of my life ... busy, stressed, bored, wanting an escape from and an escape to, it doesn't really matter; there was always a game and an experience for me to get into.

In the minuses bracket however, I probably have spent a little "too" much time gaming (hence current unemployment). :)

Amen to that brother. Awesome piece and spot on! Definitely a driver for why I play games. Peace.

This is excellent. I'd never thought about it like that before. Cheers.

This was awesome.. Seriously well done and hit home for a TON of people, me included. The way you present your shows and the content you have is on a different level than what you find almost anywhere else. This was VERY well done, I hope you never stop making segments.

This must have been a really hard article to write for Danny, being that he works in a non-stop video game environment only to come home to play more video games. Danny, how do you relieve your work stress when video games is your work? Hmmmm?

Fucking nailed it Danny

This was awesome. I could relate to every single point you made man. Danny *IS* Gamespot. Loads of love from a fellow Irelander (Northern albeit but the appreciation's still there mate!). Keep up the good work.

Yeah, we all want to be heros, champions or villans, but without the negative side effects and without the problems of the real world.

Long live gaming! :-P

I think when you're in your teens and twenteens, you don't have many financial resources to travel the world and escape at will. You get locked into some bad jobs or grinding work hours. I remember when I (gladly) bought my $279 Diamond Monster II 8mb voodoo2 graphics card, and suddenly -- there was Quake 2, Half-Life and Unreal -- all of the exotic, colorful and wonderfully lit worlds for me to explore and tread with the exhilarating risk of death/respawn around every corner.

These worlds and their valleys, hallways and pathways seemed as visceral and memorable as any real-world experience without all the traffic lights, speed limits, physical exhaustion(lol) and pesky obstructions of annoying day in/day out monotony.

p.s. You have a knack for hitting veins of truth Danny.

S and P lost 3 percent last 3 days. 3 per frickin cent: I'll be gaming this weekend and NOT looking at my Etrade account.

The end of this episode left me in tears... literally i'm crying back here...

So many hatred channeled relatively safely away... so much pain released though the left click followed by the soothing sound of someone disintegrating after being hit by a railgun slug...

So many happy moments, so many sad moments.

Thank you danny for making this.

Naz.

Eh, I don't play games to forget some kind of emotional distress, or a traumatizing event in my life, more so because I've always been terrible at making friends, and relationships. I'm very social once you speak even just one word to me. Yet if I'm the one who has to make the first move, unless it's a situation where I'm well aware I have to, then I simply won't. Lost a lot of potential friends, and relationships because I couldn't take the initiative. With games, especially games like DA:O, and the Mass Effect franchise, you feel like the characters in the game ARE your friends. You have conversations with them, fight with them, see them die, and so on. You feel important to them, and vice versa. You connect with them through all these tragic, meaningful, melodramatic experiences that make real life just seem boring in comparison. They seem much more unique compared to the people just passing by in life. Most of all, it's selfish, but you always feel like the main center of attention, which is gratifying for obvious reasons.

That's about it for me, besides gaming just being fun of course.

When I want to do something productive in real life I give my life lists that I can tick off and it makes it feel like progress. Just like sitting and clearing areas in games, or cleaning viscera off of a FPSs hallways, it feels good because it feels productive.

Same feeling you get when a massive task from the day gets an big tick next to it, like some big sexy thumbs up saying "Yes you will be able to chill the hell out soon and just forget for a while".

I would say that its the least clear to me that people "play games to get out of their world and into one to escape from problems".. even if its meant so they take something back from their game experience to improve their problems

usually I think people just have "no clue what they're getting into" and come to be blown away by what the game is. if that's the case then it isn't the game necessarily - but the act of escaping *before the game* which is responsible for cutting stress.

or, we somehow know what we're getting into and feel like the game simply holds promise. in that case, it's usually very natural, obvious and clear and it when it happens, its usually not a mystery whatsoever why we are no longer stressed.

thank you danny for another incredible deep video!!! i love the way you deliver interactive entertainment journalism,,,

Best show on Gamespot.

Or maybe if you're so unhappy, quit gamespot and do something else?

Great Music at the end. anyone know the name?

My nostalgia in games comes from when I played split-screen for hours on end with my seven brothers, nothing like getting through a long winter day with family and of course hours of Super Smash Bros. :)

Brilliant episode :D

When I was a kid I spent most of my downtime playing Gunstar Heroes with my brother and PC games like Blood and Duke3D which helped me decompress.

I play probably even more games as an adult now because many of the problems you face as an adult you can't fix right away and gaming is a great escape from life's many stresses. Sometimes to the detriment of getting things done (looking at you Dark Souls 2), but mostly it's still a great way to feel completely in control of the world you are in, which in most cases is impossible in the real world.

Great video as always, Danny - keep up the great work homie!

Jrpgs actually helped me going through puberty. Showing me every obstacle can be beaten and that even if I am "useless" now I can work on myself to become better. It is hard to explain but I am pretty sure without jrpgs in my puberty I would not be the person I am now

Ironically, games can help me when I can't get to sleep. I have enough trouble sleeping as it is, but when I'm feeling nervous about the next day I lie there for hours and hours. So when I play a game, I'm able to forget all about it, and meanwhile I'm getting more and more tired until I can turn it off and fall asleep.

For me it's that feeling of being all-powerful or being able to explore or win or whatever that I like about video games. That's also why I don't like super-challenging ones. I play video games to relax and unwind and dying a thousand deaths, seeing game over screens is not my idea of a great time.

My god, Danny, you're just too awesome to be real!

This episode is a prime example of why I love The Point so much. It's smart, it's original, it's personal and it's... well, on the point.

required viewing for non gaming adults.

Really like this show!!! I always felt like that about video games: that it can get you through rough times... I had a similar experience associated with video games. I got kicked out of the house at 19... had to quit college to find full time job to pay the rent... I was so frustrated at that time with my situation... Then my friend lent me his Sega Saturn with the game Dragon Force... I saw all the endings with all the characters... Everytime that I played I felt like I could forget my situation for a couple hours a day!!!

I'm now 36 and when I think about that time I'm not angry and that game doesn't remind me of a bad situation... on the contrary it makes me remember that it helped me get through it!!!

I had a really bad night about a year ago, personal stuff that I won't go into, but the point (haha) is that I couldn't sleep, because my mind kept drifting back to it. Eventually, frustrated, I get up and sit down at my computer. I booted up Guild Wars 2. I'm not even that big of a fan of the game, but I just played it for a little while, and after about 45 minutes, I found that I was almost completely calm again.

Went to bed again, instantly dropped into sleep.

When life sucks, games are always there, to expel every ounce of negative emotion within you.

This is something I have wondered for a while. It's surprising just how much emotion and stress can physically exhaust you.. My theory is that, by playing a video game, you effectively focus on the game and it absorbs your thoughts, therefore changing your brain down a couple of gears and stopping all the external thoughts whizzing around in your head constantly. If that makes sense?

Focusing on being still and shutting out external thoughts is a big part of meditation.. I wonder if playing a game has a similar effect on the brain.

Damn some of those comments at the end really got to me. I'm in a rough spot at the moment and what I would give to be able to wander through the lands in Oblivion for the first time again, soaking up that amazing soundtrack. VIDEO GAMES

Well put Danny. I am in Grad School and if it wasn't for Diablo 3 this semester I would have gone nuts. After weeks of trying to sound smart and grappling with ideas that are really complicated and don't always make sense, it is great to just come home and know that I hold the fate of thousands and thousands of monsters in my hand. When I am done playing, those things that were piling up and seemed insurmountable just seem like more monsters to kill.

PS - Thanks for wearing pants.

I went through a pretty tough break up that could have easily featured on Jerry Springer. Red Dead Redemption got me through that Summer. I spent so many hours hunting and gathering in that game just to keep my mind off things. Weird thing is I never want to play that game ever again because it will just remind me of that shit. Same goes for when you associate a song or an album with a bad memory.

I still remember my grandpa jokingly making the noises in Mike Tyson's Punch-Out while I played, especially the one when you scored a knockdown and they went flying. A little thing from over 25 years ago, but it has helped me remember him.

I was playing the original Silent Hill when the call came to go to the hospital for my first niece to be born.

Games are fun, nostalgic, and give us a guarantee we never get in real life: we are handed the controls and assured that if we use them right we will get the ending we want.

Gaming does not alleviate my stress, it precludes real stress from ever setting in.

Some really great personal stories on this thread. I definitely use games to escape from the stresses of my life (especially because they are active rather than just staring at a television show). However, the game has to be just the right difficulty. If a game is too challenging when I'm upset, it just makes me want to rage instead.

nice episode Danny

I like this quote "Games still there for us"

When my dad died when I was 13 I played a lot of counter strike which really, really helped me go through it, as I played hours and hours with my friends who were also there to support.