Are video games STS?

[APeacefulWarrior]

Personally, I find really big "open world" style games to be fascinating because, in some ways, they mirror the incarnative process. Someone could live a half-dozen lives or more in Skyrim or Fallout, and even if some of the same events occurred, the way the player could respond might vary entirely every time. It's like exploring the quantum decision-making web in a scale model. Plus, so many lessons to potentially be learned by looking at different reactions and how they impact the player and the game world. (Fallout even goes so far as to explicitly describe the long-term impact of the player's actions, and Fallout New Vegas is especially detailed.)

Or, while I do sometimes use them to blow off steam as well, I also have a love of running around in GTA IV and V without causing mayhem. There's something very interesting about being in a true consequence-free situation where I'm ostensibly able to behave as poorly as I like without any significant penalty... and choosing to just drive around safely and go shopping instead. There's definitely some lessons one could learn there about patience and self-control.

Even competitive games can be useful in one's own development. Mario Kart has been a great teacher of anger management and acceptance of the chaotic nature of life. The same basic thing goes for Rocket League, for that matter. One might even be able to use them in the same way older masters used to use martial arts to bring greater mental clarity and unification between mind and action. (The Wu-Wei of Mario Kart?)

Which is all to say, in a more general sense, there are plenty of ways one can use video games as opportunities to expand the mind, at least games which are beyond a certain threshold of complexity.