Welcome one and all to a very Athena Veta season of good will! Athena’s a friend of the show, as it were, and general all-around cool person; she also happens to be extremely smart, so check out her blog at the AmbiGaming Corner for deep and well-considered thoughts on what we can learn from gaming as well as a whole bunch of other always-interesting stuff.
For the holiday season this year, Athena’s coordinated an event based on that classic Marmite of tunes (you love it or you hate it): The Twelve Days of Christmas. Each day from December 26th to January 6th, we’ll look at a gamified version of one of the song’s lines until eventually we have 364 gamey gifts!
On the first day of Blogmas, the gamers said to me: What are twelve favourite gaming memories?
On the second day of Blogmas, the gamers said to me: Tell us eleven games you love!
On the third day of Blogmas, the gamers said to me: What are ten reasons you would play a game?
On the fourth day of Blogmas, the gamers said to me: Give us nine games on your to-play list!
On the fifth day of Blogmas, the gamers said to me: Eight characters you love!
On the sixth day of Blogmas, the gamers said to me: Share seven of your favourite posts!
On the seventh day of Blogmas, the gamers said to me: Tell us your six gaming/ blogging resolutions!
On the eighth day of Blogmas, the gamers said to me: Five games you’ve played more than once!
On the ninth day of Blogmas, the gamers said to me: Share four dramatic or memorable game moments!
On the eleventh day of Blogmas, the gamers said to me: List two games you’d improve!
AND FINALLY: On the twelfth day of Blogmas, the gamers said to me: Tell us the one best reason to play video games!
So far, I’ve struggled to come up with enough things to fill the list. This one, though, I have way too many to reduce it to just one.
But let me say this, and I’ll go on about all the other details some other time:
If you want to play games, then you should. If you enjoy playing games, if they help you in any way, or if you get something out of it, then that’s wonderful. I don’t care whether you play games that anyone else likes, or whether other people would get the same things out of playing a game that you would. Play what you want to play for whatever reason you want to.
Games can be many things to many people, but the only thing that should matter is that they’re something to you. It’s totally irrelevant what that something is – you don’t need a ‘better’ reason than anyone else to play a game. Taking care of yourself might involve escaping from reality for a bit, or it might be doing some close thinking about elements of a game that get your mind working, or it might just be having a laugh. Your reason for playing a game can be the same as mine, or completely different – but whatever it is, it is more than enough as far as I’m concerned.
Ultimately, I hope that games make you happy. Or, heck, that they make you sad but in a way that adds something to your life or gives you a profound experience. I hope that you get from games what you want to get from games, and that is the only reason you need or metric by which you can judge.
Happy gaming.
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Of course, I’m writing this in advance, so I don’t know who else is taking part or what they’ll have written, but I bet there are a bunch of other awesome people writing incredibly cool things on this very topic today, so check out the AmbiGaming Corner and probably Twitter for some links!
That’s it, then! Thanks to Athena for coming up with this rather cool event, and to you for reading (if indeed you are), and I very much look forward to seeing what everyone else is coming up with. Merry happy, and I hope 2019 is precisely as good as it needs to be for you to feel loved and content.
OverThinker Y 
Well said! Gaming is anything you want it to be!
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