A game is a story -- all games are stories, just like novels or plays or movies. It is just an interactive way of taking in story. And when I play, it is a little likes creating a story - I create a character, I give them a name to get
WOW POWER LEVELING, I make them do things, I choose the order in which I pursue quests, I make connections with other players if it is an online game. But it is like telling a story without any real responsibility about
WOW POWER LEVELING. I am part of the drive of the narrative (or my avatar is), but I do not have to control it or worry about where it is going, make sure the characters have depth, that the surprises are surprising. It is more active than reading, but still, the story is being told to me, rather than me telling the story about
WOW POWER LEVELING.
It is incredibly relaxing. Sometimes there is nothing that calms me down or centers me like plugging into a game for a few hours. Sounds weird, does not it? But it is kind of zen. The world of the game flows around me, and I can get lost in it, the way you can lose yourself in meditation or yoga.
Since I write in the fantasy genre, the game is always to avoid the appearance of rolling dice behind the scenes to get
WOW POWER LEVELING. So many fantasy novels are bad re-hashings of a game campaign that was super cool online or on the tabletop -- but in a book feels forced and artificial. So I try to avoid a lot of the tropes of MMORPGs, actually -- random, episodic questing and cliched cultures being the main danger.