April 21st, 2024
Lately I’ve been loving the sounds of my fave match 3 puzzle games broadcast through my big bluetooth speaker.
One of my phones is *always* connected to my cabin’s Klipsch The Three speaker that my wife gifted me. And it is always playing *something*: usually white noise or some kind of sound-masking background ambience. So when I play games with that phone, the sound effects and music from the game layer over whatever I’m playing at the moment.
Most of the time it is Empires and Puzzles, and it *always* exceeds the volume of my white noise so it comes across pretty loud.
I worry that it might disturb our neighbors, but sometimes I just give into enjoyment and let my whole entire cabin be filled with the sounds of E&P raid battles and legendary music.
I LOVE IT. I absolutely love it. I love the reverberating bombing noises and casino noises and gunshots and clashing swords and triumphant stingers and epic quest musical scores.
Being surrounded by and even vibrating with game ambience, sound effects and background music makes the experience so immersive, it’s even more addictive. I think being in a small solitary space like a detached accessory dwelling unit or tiny home that is entirely your own room with no shared walls makes the escape into gaming extremely comforting, satisfying and transportive. It is even better than wearing headphones, to be INSIDE a container filled with and cushioned by jolly sounds.
Writing and reflecting like this on the transportive immersion candy power of solo wall-to-wall single-game sounds within close cozy quarters makes me acknowledge the undeniable big benefits of gaming, particularly when one gets to do it shamelessly, alone, in a safe space that doesn’t bother anyone else. Games and spaces made for them (and spaces made for solitude) make for instant multi-sensory multi-dimensional travel into a perfectly-stimulating controlled environment for active rest.
Being able to retreat into a visually, auditorially, and kinesthetically colorful, controlled, and mentally-occupying container of lights, sounds, and not-TOO-challenging tasks is a lifesaver for some of us. Gaming — especially in a fortified safe space where we can control the volume, limit distracting interruptions, and have our entire field of hearing and vision occupied with single-minded focus on the games we are playing — is an affordable therapeutic way to recover from the outside world, stressors, and fatigue from all of the work we are doing when we are not playing games.
Many people who use games to help themselves and tend to their mental health don’t have other options, particularly not ones that are so easily accessible. Everyone needs breaks, and some of us are wired so that games are one of the best ways to actively take those breaks. They are an escape hatch a lot of people desparately need and I’m not sure there is anything quite like them.
Knowing how life- and sanity-saving escaping into games can be makes me want to be very careful not to suggest (by my name and words like “addiction”) that gaming is intrinsically bad or something everyone should stop doing. I do not even want to say that someone who games “too much” should stop or be pressured to stop (or, worse yet, to ever be FORCED to stop — that is incredibly wrong unless they’re spending money they don’t really have that takes food out of people’s mouths or something like that). Chances are, if someone is gaming “too much” there are really good reasons, like a complete dearth of adequate nutritious opportunities for (or ways to) rest or escape from stressors.
For many people, entering an immersive, consuming gaming zone is the only sanctuary or safe space they have.