Age: 29
Gender: Male
Level of Education: BA
1) My mother brought an Apple IIE home from work which had a handful of classic arcade games on it (Moon Patrol, Montezuma's Revenge, Missile Command, Q-Bert, Dig-Dug, etc.).
2) A lot of my peers had the NES so I was tempted to try this whole "video game" thing out. I didn't want to be left out of the loop on something that was universally accepted as "cool."
3) A variety of reasons, chief of which is that they've simply become part of what I do. It's hard to grow out of a hobby. I'm a member of a gaming group, my friends and relatives include many avid gamers, and I like the interactivity of the medium as opposed to music or television.
4) Getting to interact with other people to work together to solve problems, or, more often, engage in some friendly competition in a medium where the only thing that can get hurt is feelings.
5) I do consider gaming to be a social activity. Back in the days of the SNES, I would have friends over to play splitscreen Mario Kart or Killer Instinct or Play Action Football. We graduated on to splitscreen in Goldeneye, then the more active atmosphere of motion-controlled games like Wii Sports. And I've been playing games online since 1999, which has offered me an opportunity to make friends with people I never would've otherwise met, with some friendships extending beyond the game and into real-world interactions like BBQs and such.
6) I do. I spend a fair amount of time playing pool, and even though I have a pool table, it's fun to go out to local pool halls to play. Many of my friends are active pool players as well as gamers.
7) I feel more comfortable using racial slurs with strangers... no, that's not true. Honestly, I don't feel that it's changed me much. I try to speak to people the same online as I would if I were face-to-face; if I wouldn't say it for fear of getting punched, does it really need to be said?
8) Yes, several in my gaming group, and that's primarily because of their location. I know people in Canada, Australia, Japan, Hawaii and states several thousand miles away that I consider friends who I've met through gaming. It would be unreasonable to expect me to travel to Australia just to share a beer with someone (well, not share a beer, but you get my point).
9) I've ducked out on responsibilities once or twice for gaming, but never in a way that led to any long term ramifications. I've taken vacations from work based solely around the release of an anticipated game, but again, they were planned in advance.
10) I'm not an extrovert by any stretch until I feel comfortable with someone or there's alcohol in me. I consider myself friendly, humorous and helpful, but I wouldn't say that I go out of my way to meet new people or be the life of the party.
11) I would, up to the point of them getting sucked into WoW or StarCraft and dying during a marathon gaming session. I think as long as you teach your children proper values and keep a watchful eye on the games they're being exposed to, video games offer a good teaching tool and a good source of socialization with people of different cultures (I now know more Australian and Canadian terminology than I ever figured I would solely by interacting with people in video games). And, obviously, they're a good source of entertainment as well.
12) To feel like the hero. To run around in a world where my actions have no consequence. Generally, this doesn't mean much, since I'm too nice a person, and I try to be generally good whether playing in a single-player world or a multi-player world, but every now and then it's nice to just be a complete dick to everything without having to worry that you're griefing in someone else's game and ruining their day. That, and single-player games offer a much more cohesive story than multi-player games, since you can't usually put a narrative that revolves around a whole bunch of different players operating independently.
13) In the sense of talking to the game? No. Sometimes you need an escape from social interaction, which is no different than what you experience when reading a book, or listening to classical music through headphones, or watching Full House in the dark while masturbating and crying. Single-player games are simply another opportunity to entertain yourself without the company of others. And, incidentally, I've never played any of the Mass Effect games, but I have watched my friend played it for several hours and enjoyed simply watching the story unfold. It doesn't have to be a solo experience just because only one person has control.
14) This is a tough one, because I'm generally open to many different types of games. I'd say MMO's are my least favorite, in part because it's so hard to stand out in a server populated by thousands and thousands of other people, and in part because they always feel like they're based around the gameplay of grinding on and on to get better gear to grind on and on some more. No thanks. I like traditional multiplayer FPS games like Counter-Strike or the Battlefield games. I also like a single-player game that offers me a unique world and good story (GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Assassin's Creed, Skyrim, etc.).
15) Absolutely. Without gaming I wouldn't have met the people in my gaming group. I made friends with them through CS, but I've since met a number of them at a local LAN party hosted by a member, I've gone to BBQs and parties with some of them, I've helped them build computers (and vice versa), and made some good friendships out of it. It was a friend I made through an old Half-Life mod called Frontline Force who turned me on to Sage Francis, Aesop Rock and other underground hip hop artists who now rank as some of my favorite music. I did my college thesis on how gender portrayals in video games have evolved over time. I learned how to build computers so that I could get off Macs and make a computer that would be able to run current video games, a skill which has paid for itself nicely over the years. I'd say video games have contributed far more good than bad in my life, even outside of their value as an entertainment medium.