Written by: Seth Budrik
Edited by: Shania Kuo and Huimin Zhou
Dear Gamer,
Hello, my name is Seth Budrik, I am 26 years old and from suburban Chicago, Illinois. I have been into gaming my entire life, which has had an important impact on me as a person. I want to briefly tell you why I got into gaming and what games influenced me the most. While my journey through gaming may be unique to me, some of you may relate to that as well.
At some point or another, I think all of us have used video games as a means to escape from reality. I am no different. I started playing games as something to do when I was a kid. However, right around the age of ten, I spent almost all of my time playing video games when I was not in school or sleeping. As I have Autism Spectrum Disorder, making friends for me was difficult, and I would often get bullied because of how “awkward” or “weird” I was. It didn’t help that, at the time, my home situation was not the best. So, to cope with my situation, I would escape into the world of video games. Primarily, Pokemon. There, I could travel across the land searching far and wide so I could be the very best like no one ever was (lol). That and the idea of traveling with cool creatures and forming bonds with those creatures was massively appealing to me as a kid.
What I love most about video games and what got me lost in them was a good story, especially in RPGs. While well-crafted and complex stories exist in other genres, they tend to be the most intricate in games where you control an entire party of characters through a fantasy world with a clear goal. These are the kind of games that shaped me the most, especially the Pokemon franchise. While they are not heavy on story or drama and are often referred to as “the baby RPG”, they are the first games that got me into the genre where I discovered games such as The Legend of Dragoon (PS1), Persona (PS1), The World Ends With You (Nintendo DS), Final Fantasy Tactics A2 (Nintendo DS), the Fire Emblem franchise, and many, many others. These games helped me escape to their worlds to avoid my trashy reality and helped inspire my interest in writing. As time went on, part of the joy of these stories was analyzing the characters and the narratives these games created. I love analyzing and dissecting stories as much as I enjoy writing them, and I have video games to thank for inspiring that interest in me.
While I may have gotten into gaming mostly as a means of escape, it ended up inspiring my love for stories and analyzing them. Eventually, this transformed into my dream to become a writer. Gaming for me is not just a hobby or something I do for fun, it is an important aspect of who I am. Video games didn’t just inspire me to be a writer, but also to look within myself and learn lessons from these stories. And perhaps, one day, my stories, in whatever form they take, can help inspire others as well.
Your Fellow Gamer,
Seth
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