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the developers insightful effort to fulfill our modern psychological needs and desires.

MMO (massively multiplayer online) games add a whole new social dimension. Looking at these games we see an amazing reflection of Jungian Psychology. We have taken our myths, our dreams, and even our cultural arch-types and given them life in worlds where we can interact with them, alone or in groups. Worlds where thousands can cooperate, compete, and interact, within a shared mythology. We are able to experiment with varying Persona through the characters we create, living out our Anima (our feminine aspect), or our Shadow selves (our dark side), or any mixture of our varied subconscious aspects. We can, within the confines of the game world, live out our fantasies and dreams.

These new games allow us to express aspects of our selves that we suppress in our day-to-day lives, or become that which we would like to be but can not achieve otherwise. The Personae we create can be as much like our mundane selves, or as different, as we choose. One can be an alluring female elf, or a brutish orc warrior, or even a grotesquely gothic undead. We can explore the world through these characters and the part of us that they subconsciously represents. We can fight in epic battles to save the world or get drunk and stomp on bunnies, its our choice.

One of the chief tenets of modern psychology is to recognize, and deal with, our innermost thoughts, desires, and feelings. These type of games allow us to do that in a safe environment, behind the mask of our character. Some will claim that they do not Role Play, but only play the game. Yet by creating a character and making choices within the game that affect that character, and others, we are role playing even if only on a subconscious level. Anyone who has guided Lara Croft through the dungeons of Tomb Raider has, if only subconsciously, entered into a deeper interaction with their Anima. It is even more true in games where we are allowed to create the characters we play, build them up over time, cloth them as is pleasing to us, etc.. There are deep psychological principles at work in those choices.

These virtual worlds have potential for being a type of therapy that can lead us to greater understanding of ourselves and others and lead us toward what Jung would call Transcendence (embracing all sides of our personality). In these virtual worlds we can face, or even become, the things of dreams or even nightmares. Whether we choose to be a hero in shining armor, or a darkly sensuous female undead, we are affected by those choices.

In our games, unlike our lives, we can freely experiment with different aspects of our unconscious in how we interact with our surroundings and those we play with. The multiplayer aspect of these games allow for social interaction between our contrived personae making these worlds as real', on a psychological level, as our day-to-day lives. Our characters become an extension of ourselves and we a part of our characters.

Our games still help us cope with our day-to-day lives, as they always have, day-to-day life has just gotten a lot more complicated in our modern era.

Learn more about this author, Maxwell Cynn.
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