Hills of Victoria Peak

 In Landscapes, Travelscapes

“The virtual world can never be a substitute for real world experience. And the more it takes over our lives, the more we forget to feel the sun on our skin, the more we forget that there is an entire universe to be discovered even during a 10 minute walk to work.”

Keri Smith

I used to be an avid gamer. Actually, I love video games so much that it was one of the main reasons I became an artist many years ago. I started playing games when I was little and somewhere along the way, I was intrigued by the cinematic quality that games like Final Fantasy and Diablo were able to put out. The idea of being able to re-create whatever is in your mind and onto the screen is so captivating. I love the idea so much that eventually I dropped my career in the Navy and flew to San Francisco to learn how to do it.

Things have changed a lot for me since I was working in the video games industry. One of the things that I have learned is that if you are doing art commercially, you don’t get to put what is on your mind onto the screen as often as you think. It is always a struggle for the artist to be able to do what they want versus doing what the company wants in order to make a living. It was only a matter of time to realize that I was just a cog in the wheel, thus I had to make the difficult decision of letting go and try something new that is closer to my heart’s desire.

Even though working in the industry is not what I have imagined, I wonder why the love for games is still etched in my mind. Granted, making games and playing games are two totally different things, although we sometimes fall into the trap of thinking that the passion between creating and consuming is the same thing.

I have quit gaming since I took up photography some years back, but that gamer in me still couldn’t resist the temptation of a good game. I knew that if I started to play again, I would be so addicted that I will find it really hard to stop; it does feel like a modern-day drug designed to keep people living in their heads.

What is it about video games that makes it more appealing than life itself? Why indulge in adventuring in a virtual world and not the real world?

The main difference I find between real life and video games is that of success and control.

Games are designed to get you addicted and one of the ways to do it is through story, the story of an alter ego, one that you get to choose and recreate to your ideal dreams and specification. This illusion is so tempting because you could never be like the character you are playing in real life. The more successful you are in-game, the more your reality takes a toll; the amount of time needed to grind so that you can be successful in the virtual world causes less time for you to make it in the real world.

It is a weird feeling: you can be so powerful and successful in-game after you spent so much time and energy, but when you exit the game, you feel so empty—as if one has woken up from a beautiful dream. The addiction to this beautiful dream is what causes one to keep coming back again and again. Who doesn’t want to be the hero of their own story?

This beautiful dream promises you fame, power and respect from your peers in a virtual world, a world sometimes more real than reality. The key difference is that what you can do in the virtual world is controllable and almost guaranteed for success if you just learn the game and put in the time. In a world of binaries made of zeros and ones, it is a numbers game. If you kill these amount of monsters, you gain this amount of experience, gold and power in terms of skills and influence. You know what you are doing is going to pay off, it is just a matter of time. In the real world, success is not guaranteed. Even if you put in years of hard work to gain experience in your craft, you might not even gain a level in anything. There is always an element of luck involved because there are so many things that are beyond your control. In-game, it felt like everyone can be a legend, in reality the chance of becoming a legend is really slim.

Games become a short-cut to what you would like to experience in your life when you had no courage, no capabilities or the will to try it out in real life. It is safer to get damage in-game than to fall in reality. I mean how many people can take that many slashes and hits in real life and get to start over again? You never truly die. It is one of the best life policies out there; you can try anything and there is no real penalty. In life, everything is always a risk.

You might not really understand this post if you are not a gamer but this phenomenon doesn’t just exist in video games. We are playing the game of a virtual world in our minds all the time.

All the ideas and the aspirations you have within you, as you fall unconsciously into a daze when the world passes you by. When was the last time you actually see the person in front of you, truly seeing him or her in the eyes and genuinely experiencing their existence? Or is that phone more important? The Whatsapp messages? The Facebook feeds? The work that you felt needed to be done? The important person on the other side of the line that you had to talk to? All these distractions in your virtual world causes you to miss the immediate events unfolding right in front of you. The best part is that when you happen to meet the important person on the other side of the line, again you are already thinking of something else.

With today’s image, I am trying to bring you to the top of The Peak in Hong Kong to experience one of the most amazing sunset colors I have witnessed. It is a representation of what I saw but I can never fully translate the whole experience to you. You have to be there to feel the cold wind and to smell the fresh air. You have to take the steps to reach the top in the first place. Everything that you do adds to the experience that no virtual world can imitate.

Remember when you fall asleep in your mind, a part of your being dies.

Live a little…that is what life is all about. It is not about living in your mind or the games that you play, it is about looking at the world through your existence.

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