I’m sure I’m not the only one who finds it difficult to make it clear to non-gamers what I enjoy so much about computer games at their best. While I think the medium has made great strides, it’s still quite alien to people who don’t get the same kind of enjoyment out of games. They see the silly writing, the weird genre conventions, the way that so much gameplay seems to be about doing the same thing over and over and over again, which should bore any sane grown-up, one would think.

For me, the main attraction of playing games is that it takes me to worlds I couldn’t go to otherwise. I’m not even talking about escapism, at least not in any conventional sense: just like fiction allows me to meet and spend time with people I wouldn’t meet otherwise, at its best gaming can put me in places that, whether they’re subtly or wildly different from our world, I could otherwise only enter in dreams. A good game is like a lucid dream. It’s not the power fantasy, at least for me – I can get as much enjoyment out of walking around a virtual deserted island exploring its nooks and crannies as I might get out of running and gunning.

This is also one of the attractions Virtual Reality – or rather, VR done right *coughOculusRiftcough* – has on me. It’s about putting me there in those worlds, with no obvious demarkation line where the screen ends. And that is why projects such as YouTube user ultrabrilliant’s Other Places hold such a fascination for me. Other Places shows video game worlds through the same eyes as Alastair Fothergill’s BBC documentaries show our planet.

So, since it is tritely said that pictures speak a thousand words, here are three epic monologues. Enjoy! (Ideally in full screen and with the resolution turned up as high as possible.)