I began my journey dead. In fact, I had been deceased for a very long time. That was the reality until one morning, a small flying robot few over my body, scanning me. And then I rose from the ground, my coming back good as new.

The robot began to speak. "Guardian?" he spoke with a desperate tone.

"Eyes up Guardian. It worked you're alive! you have no idea how long I've been looking for you." This robot is called a "Ghost," a robot sent out by the "Traveler." Sparing you some details, the Traveler is a machine god that gave humanity boundless amounts of knowledge. But that was the past. Now, newly awakened, I must go and fight the enemies of the traveler. Defeating gods and other guardians in the process, and by the time that it is over, I feel like I accomplished something greater than myself.

That is just one of the many amazing stories video games can tell. Much like books or movies, video games have the capacity to tell gripping and emotional stories that challenge human elements like sacrifice, hope, and what right and wrong truly mean. A great example of this is a game titled The Last of Us.

The game tells the story of a man named Joel. The game begins on a calm night, with you starting the game as Joel's daughter. She is home alone watching TV with Joel when she falls asleep in his lap. Joel takes her up to her room and puts her to bed. Shortly after she wakes up to the sound of sirens whizzing past her home.

The phone lines are dead, Joel is missing and the only thing you see when you go downstairs is a breaking news show, depicting the local city ablaze, and warning of an infection that causes individuals to behave aggressively and cannibalistic.

Then Joal busts through a door from the backyard and asks you to get his gun as he tells your infected neighbor to stay away. You hand him the gun as your neighbor breaks through, and with one clean shot to the head fired from Joel's gun, ends the life of your neighbor. You are both in shock but Joel insists there isn't time and you have to go. You grab your uncle and head for the county line only to be confronted by a soldier.

With your leg broken there isn't much you can do except hope that the soldier doesn't shoot you both. But it's too late. He opens fire as your uncle shoots him in the head, but the damage had been done. You (now playing as Joel) look down and realize that it is not your blood but your daughter's. The intro to the game ends with your daughter dying in your arms.

Flash forward 25 years later and Joel has made a name for himself as a smuggler. He meets an immune teenager named Ellie. It then becomes his goal to smuggle her out of the city, and while you do it, you make choices along the way that challenge your humanity, and the lives of others along the way.

After being an avid "gamer" for several years now, it has come to my attention that people hold many biases about video games. Some say that they are bad storytellers, which I think is disproved by the previous paragraph. Some think video games are too violent and that it is affecting the behavior of those who play them. Others even go as far as to say they serve no other purpose except to waste the time of the players.

When Grand Theft Auto V released in 2013, many people (mainly mothers) were appalled by the level of violence and sexual innuendos that their children were experiencing in the game. Yes, it is true that GTA V has those things in the game, the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB for short) gave the game a "Mature" rating.

That means that you must be 17 years of age to buy the game. So when 12-year-old Timmy started shooting people his mother went to the press and got a bunch of people upset. But let's not forget that the mom had to purchase the game, which means she did not see what was in it in the first place. On top of that, there are more genres of video games that the shoot-em-up titles you see commercials for. Genres like adventure or arcade that include classic titles like Tetris, Galaga, and Super Mario.

The one that gets me the most, though, is the presumption that video games only exist to waste the time of players and nothing more. First of all... (insert dead meme here) if video games were only created to waste time, why would they have a story or a multiplayer? Why would any game developer care about how their game looked or how well it played? Video games exist as a different medium of entertainment, but they can be used for so much more.

Last summer at summer camps all across the country, campers were using a video game called Minecraft to learn the basics of coding so they can be a leg up in the tech industry in the future. Games have been used to teach, as a method of therapy, and as a tribute to adoring fans who passed away. They even feature topics that aren't always seen in Hollywood. Same-sex marriage has been in games for a long time, along with female leads. Titles like Tomb Raider and the Metroid series have showcased these since the 90s.

But I digress. The gaming industry has come a long way since it's birth a long time ago. Today, the industry is worth over 188.6 Billion dollars by 2018, and you cant talk about the growth of the industry without talking about eSports.

What are eSports? eSports are the many games that make up competitive gameplay and they are not to be ignored. Video games have popped up at events like the X-Games, with titles like Call of Duty and Counter-strike being the games played there. These major tournaments are broadcast on both live TV and live-streamed on websites like YouTube and Twitch. Many game tournaments feature several teams playing for a prize pool of well over a million dollars in front of millions of people watching online. It is becoming a big deal in sports viewership as well as with game development.

You should drop any negative bias you have against video games. They are a platform for excellent storytelling, not always violent, used for amazing things, and are one of the fastest growing industries. There is something for everyone to enjoy with gaming, all you have to do is jump in and let huge stories and challenges take you for a ride you'll certainly never forget.