GamePolitics has another take on the recently released (and much discussed) British Board of Film Classification report on gaming, results culled from interviews with gamers and non-gamers alike. One of the interesting (if very broad) conclusions they reached was that

People who do not play games raise concerns about their engrossing nature, assuming that players are also emotionally engrossed. This research suggests the opposite; a range of factors seems to make them less emotionally involving than film or television.

I watch little-to-no TV, but this did get me thinking about my emotional involvement with games, films, and literature - and while I can get very engrossed in a game, perhaps alarmingly so from a non-gamer's perspective, my emotional ties to my favorite games do tend to be much shallower than with my favorite books or movies.

I think that is partially due to the time issue: games tend to be much more languidly paced, or at least the plot is spread out, whereas I'm done watching a film in 2 hours. Even the time commitment required to read some of the hefty tomes of yesteryear (War and Peace, I'm looking at you) is less than spending 80 hours on Final Fantasy. Some of my favorite movies took me repeated viewings to really fall for - I simply don't have the time to spend 40 hours plus playing through a game, again, if I had a lukewarm feeling the first play through.

And with the exception of a couple of friends who are rather avid gamers themselves, beyond recommending a title, my sense of immediate satisfaction in sharing something I really love is not really extant in my gaming life. It's easy to lend someone a book or suggest watching a film together - it's a lot harder to plunk someone down halfway through a game and expect them to get what's going on and why you're all fired up about it.

So while I hate to put down much-loved titles when I finally reach the end, I suppose I do have to agree with the conclusion that (for me, at least) games are less emotionally involving. I can only imagine what some corners of the anti-video gaming league are going to do with such a conclusion, though. Maggie Greene

Research Shows Varying Perspectives of Gamers, Non-Gamers [GamePolitics]

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