Gaming as Repair, Not Escape
What play may be trying to restore when ordinary life has taken something away
We often describe gaming as escape. Sometimes that is accurate. Games can create distance from distress, loneliness, conflict or demands that feel impossible to meet. But escape is a small word for a complicated journey. It tells us what someone may be moving away from, while saying very little about what they are moving towards.
In my work with gamers and parents at the NHS National Centre for Gaming Disorders, I have repeatedly been reminded that the number of hours played is rarely the whole story. The more revealing question is often: what becomes possible in the game that has become difficult elsewhere? Gaming can be an attempt to restore something. Not always successfully. Not without cost. But often for reasons that make human sense.
What a game can give back
Consider agency. In ordinary life, we can work hard and receive no useful feedback. Relationships remain uncertain. Institutions move at the speed of institutions, which is a specialised form of geology. Health changes, plans fail and outcomes sit beyond our control. Games usually respond. I choose and something happens. I practise and improve. I fail, learn and try again. Even in a difficult game, my actions tend to matter.
For someone who has felt powerless all day, that responsiveness can be restorative.
Games also make competence visible. Levels, abilities, rankings, equipment and increasingly difficult challenges show that learning is happening. Real-world progress is often quieter. A person may be working hard at school while feeling behind, managing illness without recognition or doing a job in which good work is noticed mainly when it stops. Inside a game, improvement can be seen.
Then there is connection. For many players, online spaces are not a pale imitation of social life. They are social life. Friends meet, teams cooperate, jokes acquire a history and someone notices when you do not log in. A shared mission can make conversation easier because attention is side by side rather than face to face. Games can offer predictability too. The rules may be complex, but they are usually knowable. A world that responds consistently can feel soothing when home, school, work or the body has become uncertain.
They can support identity. A person who feels awkward, overlooked or ineffective elsewhere may be strategic, dependable, inventive or funny in play. This is not necessarily a false self. It may be a real part of the person that has found a more hospitable environment.
Threat, drive and soothing all log in
Compassion Focused Therapy describes three broad emotional systems: threat, drive and soothing. Games can interact with all three. A familiar world can reduce threat. Progress and achievement can energise drive. Cooperative play, routine and belonging can support soothing. Occasionally all three arrive at once, which helps explain why “just do something else” may not feel like an equivalent offer.
This does not mean every gaming session is therapeutic. A ranked match at midnight can leave drive wearing a headband and threat overturning the furniture. The effect depends on the person, the game, the context and what happens afterwards. Useful curiosity therefore sounds less like “Is gaming good or bad?” and more like:
What need is this meeting and is the way it is being met still working?
Holding both truths
Parents often arrive understandably focused on stopping. Gamers may arrive expecting an important source of competence, connection or relief to be taken away. Both positions make sense. Useful work begins when we can hold two truths at once.
Gaming can genuinely repair something. It can also become the place we remain after the repair has stopped working.
Understanding function is not the same as excusing harm. Sleep loss, missed education, debt, conflict or declining health still matter. Curiosity simply gives us a better chance of making change that lasts. If gaming is the only place a person feels capable, removing it will not automatically create competence elsewhere. If it is the main place they belong, a time limit will not manufacture friendship. If it is the only reliable way to settle, turning off the router may switch off the game without switching off distress.
Change becomes more workable when we protect what is valuable in play and widen the routes to the same needs outside it.
Just One More Thing
After one gaming session this week, pause before judging the time spent. Ask: what did I get from that? Agency, competence, connection, predictability, identity, relief or something else? Then ask whether I feel more available for life or less available for it.
There is no need to produce a perfect answer. Naming the function turns a verdict into a formulation, which is a rather grand clinical way of saying that we become curious about what the pattern is trying to do.
Gaming is not always the problem. Sometimes it is the attempted solution.
Further Support for Gaming Difficulties
If gaming is becoming difficult to control or is having a significant impact on education, work, sleep, relationships or family life, information and support are available through the NHS National Centre for Gaming Disorders.
The service supports people in England aged 13 and over who are experiencing difficulties controlling their video game use. It also offers support for parents and carers of young people aged 13 to 16. The official page includes current eligibility, referral details and contact information.
About the Author
Dr. Richard Pomfret is a HCPC-registered Counselling Psychologist and founder of Therapy On The Hill. He works with adults experiencing a range of emotional and psychological difficulties, offering evidence-based therapy in a compassionate and collaborative way. He also has clinical experience working with gamers and families at the NHS National Centre for Gaming Disorders.
Contact
If you’d like to learn more about therapy or enquire about working together, you can contact Richard at: