When was the last time you played a video game? What about a video game that wasn't played on your phone? What about a video game that you sat down with for an extended period of time by yourself like you would for a TV show or a movie? For me, a decent chunk of my free time when I have it is spent playing video games. I know, I'm a 20-year-old male, why should I spend time rotting my brain with stuff meant for kids? Except video games aren't just for kids anymore, nor are video games just mindless entertainment anymore. Video games have been a major part of my world since I was nine years old, more specifically role-playing games (henceforth called RPGs).

Video games for me have always been an escape. I prefer to play RPGs, games that typically have large, diverse fantasy worlds centered around an extensive story. These games usually take around 20 hours at the least to get to the credits screen if one chooses not to partake in any side content not necessary to beat the game. Something about exploring a surreal world in a grand adventure puts me at a very special kind of ease, and this is just the games themselves. Gone are the days of games appearing your TV screens as 2-D sprites in a side-scrolling fashion. Games today (and really for the past 20 or so years) are becoming far more cinematic. RPGs are known to have long cutscenes, sometimes as long as an entire hour because they are first and foremost trying to tell a story. These stories are not lazy either. Even though they are not set in the real world, you would be amazed how creative these writers get by telling stories about real-world issues in a fantasy setting such as racism, classism, struggles between religions, even philosophical questions about what it means to be human or how deep the gravity of death truly is.

I'm not ashamed to say that I have cried while playing a video game or when one ended. Video games, to me at least, are this weird kind of hybrid art that combines the literary, cinematic, and musical into a single piece of art that aims to combine them into a unified experience. Even Mario and Zelda games have morphed into these artistic masterpieces that often go beyond what one might expect out of something that most assume just wish to entertain people. Video games no longer just entertain people, however. They've become something more, something far bigger. They wish to leave an impact by allowing you to experience what would only be watched on a screen a few years ago.