We have all heard it at one time or another: the quick jab thrown at gamers by the media in which video games are claimed to be an evasion of real life, as if the very act of picking up a controller represents a shying away from mature social and professional obligations. Playing games is just that, avoiding serious responsibilities.

Now I certainly will not deny the element of escape to any mode of entertainment, but I am also convinced that the aforementioned perspective on gaming is far too simplistic. It basically boils down to the superficial binary between work and play. Our 21st Century society is entrenched in an old concept that has shaped the modern world: individuals must divide their time between earning a living and the free time they have on specific days of the week. In a nutshell, that is how we organize our weeks. You guessed it: week and weekend. Work and play do not mix in this modern conception. It is either one or the other, but never both. You can only play on your free time! Eventually this black and white perspective transforms the act of playing as an escape from the mundane repetition of work. It does not matter whether you like your work or school, just bear with it and take a breather every once in a while playing whatever you like. Playing becomes synonymous of evasion. Games are just that, toys to help the young and old shy away from a stark reality that is literally and existentially boring. But nothing in this world is black/white...

Whenever I hear someone assert that gaming is an evasion of sorts, my mind starts racing. Just like the plumbing tubes in Mario offer an underground path to some other isolated place, so do games supposedly transport us elsewhere, far away from reality. To that I say, bullshit! Far from becoming 21st Century Don Quixotes, lost in the fictitious worlds of comics, books, movies, and games, there is a dimension to gaming that many just do not consider. Wait for it. Games empower.

Few people outside of the gaming community realize the groundbreaking role of video games in cultural history. First came the Gutenberg press, allowing for the widespread dissemination of manuscripts to diverse audiences. Literature was no longer the sole property of scholastic and elite individuals. Then arrived photography through the daguerrotype, which allowed the technical reproduction of images beyond museums. The movie industry took it one step further and generated moving images that captivated the world over. Yet all these mediums of artistic and imaginative expression left their audiences in a passive condition. Yes, you can try to imagine what the book describes or what a photograph portrays, but you remain a passive bystander. The artistic vanguards sought to make the audience more than a passive spectator. But no matter the artistic techniques, audiences were limited in the way they could interact. They were restricted and bound by the asymmetry between creator and spectator. In contemporary terms: the producer of a product and the consumer.

Gaming, however, has brought about a new era filled with possibilities. Gamers are not simply passive consumers of products, but can indeed become active users. I admit most of the gaming industry still treats gamers as mindless consumers, willing to dish out wads of cash simply to play the next iteration in whatever franchise they choose. But not all games are as such. Take the Minecraft phenomenon, for example. Why is it so popular? Sure some claim it is an escapist sandbox dream. Yet could it not be that gamers become empowered through such games? They are not simply spectators, watching a prefabricated narrative drizzle down on them. Rather they engage and transform a fictitious world. Given the tools to alter pixelated environments, gamers become users actively engineering a virtual landscape.

Virtual engagement is not actual transformation, many will say. Altering a fictitious worlds does not change anything in reality. Or does it? Well here is the thing: changing the real world requires ideas, requires imagining different possibilities. There is a stark difference between what is and what could be. Gaming reinforces that gap, instead of justifying reality and accepting it on face value. The binary between work and play legitimizes a conservative view of reality. Accept reality for what it is and play on weekends to help you swallow it. But engaging in the transformation of virtual realities may indeed pave the way to steering away from such a worldview. The world can change and is always changing. Gaming may empower people to actively engage in changing that black and white illusion of reality. Just as performance artists have asserted in the last decades, a play is a rehearsal of change. Gaming is yet another step in that direction. Remember: Don Quixote did not remain aloof in his household--he went out and risked changing the world.