How Gaming and Desgin Can Effect Peoples Lives

By Tanner Fred

Most people use gaming as something fun to just pass the time, something they enjoy doing when there is nothing else to do and want to kill some time. Then there are some people who take it a bit more seriously and care about the games they play, try to best their very best at every game that they play. There's a level above that of people who adopt gaming as their livelihood and put nothing else above it. There are two different categories when it comes to these types of people, professional gamers and game designers.

Professional gamers are those who play esports, most popularly, Smite, Call of Duty, League of Legends and CS:GO. These people are mostly in their mid to late 20s and have been play competitively and when you get to watch them play it almost seems unreal about a person could be that good at a video game. The way they are able to maneuver characters in ways that don't even seem possible to the common player. But a lot of these players devote their young adult lives to playing these games and even go as far as to move from their own homes and live with the rest of their team. Most of these people walk away from professional gaming and move onto normal jobs or continue their gaming careers on youtube or twitch.

I personally think that game designers are much more devoted and invest a bigger part of their lives to gaming. There is a game that one of my friends encouraged me to play and I have recently played it with him. It was unlike any game I had ever played because in itself, it really wasn't a game, it was a story. The narrator tells about his friend Coda who was a game designer and used to deign very obscure games where the motivation and objective of the game was often unclear or nonexistent. This lead the narrator to believe that Coda was becoming deeply depressed and his work indicated that he may have been correct. To avoid spoiling the ending of the game, this caused a split between Davey, the narrator, and Coda to the point where they no longer speak. When being a game designer it takes a lot of time and effort to go through and make sure that every detail of your game is exactly how you want it and the frustrations of that can sometimes appear as depression. Designing something that intricate can take a lot out of somebody and can cause those around them to appear as if they are depressed or losing motivation, but rather that is all just part of the process.