The anxiety is returning, yet, at this point, I don't really care anymore. I have tried to recapture that euphoric escape that games used to give me, but I'm grasping at a concept that I have intellectually surpassed. I was the child who danced uncontrollably when he opened his Nintendo 64 on Christmas morning. I was the child who explained to his parents why purple was inferior, yet shed tears of joy when he unwrapped his grape-flavored Gamecube. I won’t beat around the bush; I was the child whose mother worried that the countless hours he spent gaming would have adverse effects later on in his life. Those key gaming memories were the moments where I told myself that I would be a gamer forever. Analyze whatever stimuli response theory you wish, games made me tick and provided me wonderful, imaginative worlds that were far more exciting than my own. They were as much a part of my life as food, family and friends.

Before I proceed, I feel that I need to divulge a few details about myself in order to effectively deliver my message. I am 23 years old, work full-time for the Government of Canada and really hate my professional life. I have a great family, great friends and a wonderful girlfriend who I truly love. I support myself and have done so the last year of my life. I also obtained my degree in August 2010, which greased the wheels for my intellectual fall from grace.

Stagnancy was there to catch me, as I came out of University with a degree, debt and a twisted social outlook of life. My studies focused on Social Sciences and I really learned a lot in terms of society, culture, human interaction and economic policy. I learned that the world is a messed up place. I truly learned of the selfishness that human beings are capable of. We live in a society that forces us to feed off one another, through social, economic and psychological means. We are forced to be so pre-occupied with our own lives that we fail to see the potential beauty that is all around us; the potential of human communication with one another through the many portals of interactive mediums that we have at our disposal.

My physical and intellectual maturing spawned a metaphoric black hole inside of me. To date, that depressive void has not been filled and I feel like I’m constantly carrying around a dark, subconscious cloud that only I can see, hear and feel. It’s an intellectual form of sadness that one could say is a form of depression. However, I would argue otherwise. I’m on the path to self-actualization and if anyone here has studied Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, you know of what I speak. I’ve evolved my creative capacities to a point where traditional games don’t quell my sophisticated appetite, which is the basis of this article: gaming needs to evolve to be able to deliver more powerful, meaningful messages. Change should not be feared. We all have messages to send and receive; do we have the mental tools to be able to so do?

This is my message to all gamers: Keep an open mind. Think beyond work and beyond your day-to-day life. We live in a culture that, through its capitalistic nature, forces us to have production and consumption on our minds at all times. For many, games are used as a way to escape and that should not be discouraged. Think about what you’re playing. Think about what the creator wanted to say to his audience when he came up with this idea for the game you’re playing. Human beings have the ability to consciously digest anything we could ever dream of. Yet from the beginning of our lives, that intellectual appetite is molded, warped and suppressed in the name of economic prosperity.

Finally, I wish to mention that I do not feel that I am better then you; I just don’t want to be you. I can’t and I won’t go back to who I was. I changed and I evolved, and through my inherent, ethnocentric, and selfish nature, I expected games to do the same. What I’m left with today is an Xbox 360 controller, along with memories of my past; a past full of gaming fulfillment and satisfaction. Gaming helped me become who I am, and I’ll be damned if I won’t give gaming the same chance it gave me.

I’ll be waiting, old friend.