by David Park

Created on: January 13, 2009

More and more we hear our friend and the media saying how bad life can be. Wars, taxes, and just general melancholy fill the world right now. How does one escape from such sadness? One way is to sit down, relax, and enter the fantasy world of an RPG, a Role-Playing Game.

In any RPG, you are a character who is in a virtual world somewhere, and you have something to do. It can be a Massive-Multiplayer-Online RPG (MMORPG), or just a regular save-the-world type of game such as Final Fantasy, but you're always someone different, someone who has a different life than you. This someone doesn't have the same worries as you do, and even though they often have their own problems, you are the one who helps them get through it and solves them.

In a good RPG, the player becomes the character they play as. They become fully immersed in the plotline, or if there isn't a plotline, their own virtual life. This allows one to forget about the world around them, the depressing void that can surround people in this day and age. The RPG acts as a portal into a new world, and often makes one feel better about him/herself. As you progress through the game, you accomplish increasingly difficult tasks, and as you challenge yourself in-game and complete the challenge, you get a feeling of accomplishment that you may not feel enough of in reality.

Why do I play RPGs? Because I love the stories, I love to be the person to save the world. If I want to play the game, I know that there will be tasks to do along the way, but I know that I need to do them in order to survive, and this motivates me to do the tasks I need to do in life as well. A word of warning, though, one should never forget that an RPG is only a virtual thing. Real life always should come first before an RPG. There are countless stories of people becoming too immersed in the game, and if they lose something important in the game, they consider life not worth living anymore. I admit that it can be depressing to lose all of the hard work you've done in a certain game, but one must never forget that is only a game.

If you love reading fantasy novels, I highly suggest playing console RPGs such as Final Fantasy, Valkyrie Profile, Xenogears and others. If you want to be someone else who lives in a fake world and to live life in another place, then an MMORPG might be the type of game for you. It's all up to you.

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