More and more today, we are living within a world where the institutional systems that are supposed to be providing structure and stability for our lives are no longer working for us but actually feel like they’re working against us and intentionally standing in the way of our own potential growth and development.
For many of us, we’re looking for something more, something beyond what exists today but we can’t find it, no matter how hard we look. Feeling frustrated and with no where else to turn, many of us are escaping from reality by playing video games and socializing within the online communities that surround them as a sort of sanctuary from the craziness of our everyday lives.
But in the process of doing so, we often feel like the imaginary characters that we are roleplaying within these virtual worlds better represent who we truly are deep down inside than the “roles” we are “playing” in real life. Even more so, these imaginary spaces of play feel like they are meeting and supporting our psychological needs and well-being far better than our work environments typically do.
Yet what if we could transform the way we perceive ourselves, our lives, and the world around us in such a way that we could bring these experiences, normally only felt within these roleplaying games, out into the real world, using many of the same game elements to help us to play and adventure within a much larger world of our own creation?
That’s what Be Real Creative aims to do. To forge a pathway from playing within imaginary worlds to imagining a world of play. One in which play can heroically and creatively lead us to our authentic selves by adventuring beyond the boundaries of who we are expected to be and discovering who we truly are, thus allowing us to self-author our own path and story.
If you’d love to come along on this hero’s journey and help us craft our Player’s Handbook for this new world of playful possibilities, a tome that provides “everything a player needs to heroically level up their character in the massively multiplayer online roleplaying game called Life,” then join us today. But be forewarned adventurer, you will be stepping off the edge of your known world and into unknown, uncertain territory. Here be dragons!
People who play virtual worlds for fun must be engaged in their own, personal, hero’s journey. If you think about it, why else would they invest two to four hours every night for 18 month playing the same computer game? They’re doing it because they get to be themselves. That’s all that people anywhere throughout history have ever wanted to be.
Richard A. Bartle, MMOs From The Inside Out
Featured image from World of Warcraft copyright Blizzard Entertainment