There’s no denying that video games have had an impact on many authors in today’s world. How big an impact varies, of course, but it’s safe to say that most writers below the age of fifty have had some level of interaction with games at some point or other. I myself am as guilty as any. But to what extent is this gaming experience helpful to writers, and at what point does it become more harmful to our output?
Video games are a double-edged sword. They can introduce us to many ideas, worlds, and concepts that we might not encounter otherwise. There is something to be said for having an immersive experience that you yourself have a certain level of control over. This is admittedly something that even books cannot deliver in most cases. And this can be a great thing! As writers, we should be willing to take in as much as we can in our search for inspiration and new ideas.
On the other hand, gaming can also diminish our capacity as writers. The most obvious way they can do this is by luring us away from our true calling. A really good game can while away hours of your time if you’re not careful. This is precious time that we could be spending to do other, more productive things…like working on our next manuscript or pursuing more tangible sources of inspiration out in the real world. It can be all too tempting for us to pursue that false sense of accomplishment and instant gratification offered by completing a few levels in our favorite game than to pursue the more long-term, hard-earned goal of getting our next book complete and published. This is the biggest danger, as it can keep us from ever getting anything done in the first place.
There is also something to be said for how games tend to take away the need for visualization. You don’t have to picture things in your head if they’ve already been pictured for you right down to the finest detail. Thus, while it can be great to draw some inspiration from landscapes or characters we encounter in games, we shouldn’t become too reliant on this method, lest it lead us to stop exercising that most fundamental tool of every creative writer: imagination. And as any muscle, if you don’t exercise it, it will become weak and limp.
So, perhaps the best conclusion here is to say that there is nothing wrong with playing video games by itself. It can be a great way to unwind after a long hard day of writing (or anything else, for that matter), and can even serve as a source of inspiration for our own creative endeavors. But approach it with caution. It can just as easily turn into the bane of your writing career if you let it eat up the hours indiscriminately. Sometimes you’ll come across a more slow-moving game that allows you to write a few lines in between moves, but this kind of split concentration is not the best way to go about either task. I would say the key, as in all things, lies in moderation. How that moderation looks will vary with the individual, of course, but in 95% of cases, this probably means cutting back more than anything.