Why do you play the games you play?

This is one that I get pretty deep up in my own head thinking about from time to time, and I realize many people don’t care for this level of analysis of their hobbies. Asking Why do you play video games is not very far from asking Why do you play and that’s a question that stabs perilously close to the very concept of being human — where we come from, how we learn, who we really are, and what we’ve inherited from our ancestors. Play is very common across the animal kingdom — if you’ve ever had a pet cat or dog, you’ve likely seen them play.

So I’m aware there are a whole lot of potential answers to the question of why we play the games we play. But since I have depression that expresses itself in anhedonia — a stark inability to feel pleasure in a normal fashion — it would seem pretty paradoxical to keep playing games, wouldn’t it? But if anything, playing games has served me as a means to work around my anhedonic tendencies, to make connections with people despite living many thousands of miles from where I grew up, and to allow myself to cope with my anxiety. Also, I really enjoy certain fantasy tropes which is why I keep playing games like Dungeons and Dragons or World of Warcraft.

Also, I love to DM because it’s a nice escape valve for my tendency to make up my own worlds.

So those are my reasons why I still play video games and some of why I play the ones I do. There’s way more, but I’m really interested in what you’re going to say about this all. Why do you play the games you play? What does playing games mean to you and how do you most enjoy doing it?