Yes, I Play Video Games

Yesterday during a conversation, I was asked what I did for stress relief. I mentioned reading, coloring, playing guitar, and video games.

You'd have thought I'd said I walked to the moon every morning.

"You play video games? At your age? And you're a woman!"

Neither of those facts have escaped me. However, I know a lot of folks my age who play video games. Whether they own up to it or not is another matter. I do because I don't care what people think of the fact that I play video games.

The fact that I am a woman - that too did not surprise me that it surprised her. There is this conventional misconception that women don't play video games. But a lot of women play video games. They may not be the shoot 'em up and leave 'em bloody kind of video games, but they are video games.

Pew Research says that 31% of women in my age bracket play video games. That's almost 1/3 of us. So why is it surprising that I play?

I play a lot of puzzle games, and those are popular with folks who have at least a bachelor's degree. I like the challenge of them. I play city-building games because they're kind of a puzzle - how do you fit this building here and get the population correct and all of that. Lots of math involved (which should make my friend Tina very happy, so I won't tell her that these days I just call out, "Alexa, what's Q x X" or whatever I need), as well as thinking and contemplating. It's a lot better than worrying about politics, I'll tell you that.

My video game playing began with pinball when I was a wee lass, and progressed from there. I thought Pong was the greatest thing ever. I loved Centipede in the arcade. I thought a weird game called Area 51 was great. I liked to play games by Apogee (and if you don't know that name, you weren't gaming in the 1990s), like Duke Nukem, Rise of the Triad, and Commander Keen.

I also loved Bethesda's Elder Scroll series and played those, too. Skyrim was the last one they put out before moving to multi-player online games. I don't like multi-player games - too much drama involved with other people - so I stick to Skyrim, which I still play every now and then. It can be time consuming and involved so I generally don't play it unless I've got a lot of downtime.

And then there was the Sims. I loved the first incarnations of the Sims; wasn't too fond of the Sims III and haven't played since. There is a Sims Freeplay app game that I play sometimes on my Kindle, but it freezes up a lot so I don't mess with it often.

Playing video games gives my brain a pause. Well, not a big pause because there is a lot of thinking involved in these games but it gives it a rest from worrying. I can't worry if I'm focusing on beating a level or finding the next treasure or whatever.

So yes, I play video games. It beats smoking, drinking, running around with men, and going wild.