My work

 I believe that there is some important sense in which despair, loneliness, emptiness, meaninglessness, or whatever is part of the human condition. I am an optimist in the sense that I believe humans can find answers to this problem. But I believe this problem is really tricky.

I think a lot of answers have been proposed for this problem. But I feel like the way this problem works is that you can take a lot of value out of other people's answers, and that is why books, movies, games etc have value, but at the same time the problem is tricky because there is no right universal answer, and even what works for a particular person on a given day often won't work on the next day, at least it won't work in quite the same way. I think this is the problem with organized religion and a lot of things that bill themselves as an answer. They might have been in some original sense, but it is all too easy for people to abuse these notions and their claims to being the one true answer and for people to fall into dogmatic obsessions.

So what I mean when I say that games are spiritual, or that they are art, is that I believe that games can be an authentic answer to this problem.

But there are some important caveats or like issues that come up. 

The first is the idea of distraction. Distraction is a negative reaction to this problem. It might work short term but that will only make the problem worse. So when games operate as distraction, they are worse than nothing because they just act as a papering over the problem which only makes it worse.

 So there is some important sense in which what is needed is someone who can talk about the difference between distraction and real answers to the problem.

 Another issue is that in some ways I don't really think games can be a pure answer to this problem in the sense of the only thing that works. What I mean is that games can be an authentic reaction to despair but that we also need other things in our lives like love, whether that be for family, or friends, or partners. I feel like it is dangerous to put all your eggs in one basket whatever that may be and that the real answers to this problem are like a network of related things like love in its various forms, different kinds of community, satisfying work, etc.

And in some ways I don't feel any answer can be given that is universally valid. What I mean by this is that there is no sense in which I am saying "everyone should be a gamer"... basically I feel like people have to find their own way and there is no such thing as a universal answer that works for everyone. Like I mentioned above, even what works for one person on Day A may not work on Day B so it can be tough to talk about this stuff.

 So what I am saying is that I think games can be deep and valuable in this important sense of being a reaction to the human condition in the same sense that like religion, philosophy, or art are. But there are also pitfalls.

So I guess what I am saying is that I feel like my calling is to talk about games in this deep sense of being a solution to despair rather than just being a distraction. But to talk about the pitfalls and the ways in which games or gaming can fail to live up to this notion.

So given all of this, why are games attractive to me... I have studied, science, literature, and philosophy. So why am I attracted to games most of all. And I think it has to do with the idea of fun. There is something really interesting to me about games being totally nonsensical in some ways but also that people care deeply about them. Although I have learned a lot from the different subjects I have studied, at some level I found a lot of them confusing and depressing. Part of me is really attracted to the idea of fun as the solution. I think I have a strong streak in me that takes things too seriously. And there is some feeling that games offer some corrective to that because in some sense they are the opposite of serious. That being said there is definitely part of me that is really attracted to "serious" games like chess or go. And in some ways, the path I have sketched out in the post is kind of a "serious" approach to games. But I think in some ways I would like to try to steer more towards the "fun" end of the spectrum.