A while back I was chatting with an acquaintance when my job came up. I mentioned that I worked in the video game business, writing about and reviewing games. They asked all the standard questions (“So you just play games all day?”), but then they asked me something that caught me off guard:

“Why do you like games so much? What is it about them that is so attractive to you?"At the time I didn’t have a great answer for them. In the months since I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it and turning the question over in my mind.The best answer I’ve been able to come up with is that the medium of video games, unlike any other, presents us with a sense of endless possibility. When you become an adult you realize that there’s no real magic in the world. Our lives can be enjoyable and fulfilling, but for the most part they’re also… mundane. We have to go to work, do the dishes and do the laundry. Anything we can explore has already been seen and done hundreds of times. Things simply don’t happen in the real world to spark one’s imagination.Let me back up. That actually isn’t 100% true. Things CAN happen in the real world to spark the imagination. It’s just that in the end the truth will extinguish that spark rather than nurture and reward it. Let me give you an example:Recently during a typical Wikipedia crawl I landed on the page for Lake Baikal , the deepest lake in the world. It’s over one mile deep in some spots. I couldn’t help but let me imagination begin to run. “There could be ANYTHING down there at the bottom! That lake is nearly 25 million years old!”But the truth is… there’s nothing down there but mud. Because that’s how the real world operates.But in a video game a deep and mysterious lake isworth exploring. There willbe something down there, just waiting to be discovered!It might be a dangerous eel in need of a teeth cleaning.Or an entire underwater labyrinth.Or maybe it will be something as “boring” as a secret treasure.Some people grow out of games when they reach adulthood while others stick with the hobby. I think the people that stop playing games as they age drop the hobby because they no longer need video games anymore to feel powerful or in control of the world around them. When you’re a kid, it’s obvious why saving the world and defeating mecha-Hitler is so attractive. It’s simple wish fulfillment.But when you’re older and have kids of your own and other real responsibilities, you can better shape the world around you. You don’t need to level-up in a video game to feel powerful. You can be successful at your job and personal life. There is less drive to escape into the world of Albion and rescue strangers.My theory is that those of us that didn’t grow out of games are the people that didn’t lose that spark of imagination. We’re wowed by deep space and ocean depths and unexplored caves . We want to believe that the real world still has some magic.Yes, gamers can often be cynical. Yes, the Eely Mouth boss fight in Super Mario Sunshine had some camera issues. Yes, raiding that underwater dungeon in World of Warcraft was a pain because traveling there took so long. Yes, treasure hunting in in The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker could be pointless. But deep down, we all derive a certain pleasure and excitement from a video game’s unknowns.Every time you fire up a new game, you truly don’t know what’s going to be at the bottom of that lake or around the next corner. It's an adventure! It's discovery in its purest form. It's intoxicating.But this emphasis on exploration and discovery is in some ways a cop-out and half-truth. Several of my favorite games of all time, including Super Monkey Ball from Sega, Geometry Wars from Bizarre Creations, and Advance Wars from Intelligent Systems feature no exploratory elements of any kind.In those cases, instead of having robust and imaginative game worlds to explore, they all have robust game systems to explore. Fully exploring and mapping out a game’s world isn’t really that different than fully wrapping your head around a game’s systems. Figuring out the perfect way to exploit the A.I. in Advance Wars. Fully mastering the physics in Monkey Ball through extensive trial & error. Mastering the risk vs. reward Geom scoring in Geometry Wars 2. It’s still about discovery, ingenuity and problem-solving.Many games can be broken down into a series of spreadsheets. Just as a game’s world initially seems impossibly huge and daunting, so too does a well-designed game’s inter-connected systems and simulations. But eventually, once a gamer spends enough time with a game, a subtle shift takes place.It's always a little bit sad.The game ceases to be about possibility and depth and becomes more about exposing all of its bare parts and how they fit together. Gamers want to accomplish their goals as quickly and easily as possible and will exploit any crack in a game to do so. The game is no longer a cohesive world. It’s now just a collection of interconnected systems and artwork.It’s no surprise, then, that the most acclaimed and beloved games of all time are games that allow the player to explore deep and imaginative game worldsgame systems. They stave off this reduction and debasement as long as possible. They give us glimpses of magic and allow us to forget the programming and spreadsheets. They come together in a beautiful mix of genius design:

Video games, when at their best, have the ability to surprise, engage, absorb and challenge individuals in a way that nothing else in the world can. My time spent in Dracula’s Castle, Midgar, Ironforge and Hyrule has not been time wasted.That stack of games on your table is not just a collection of software. It contains an uncountable number of puzzles, mysteries, battles, characters… windows into entire worlds. Worlds that don’t need to follow the rules. Worlds that always have something waiting for you, in the murky depths.They might be the only way we have left to put some magic back into the world.

Justin is Editor of IGN Wireless. He has been struggling to articulate his passion for video games his entire life and is relieved to finally have committed something to paper. You can follow him on Twitter and IGN