Being the sister of a serious gamer and video game artist, I’ve grown up digital entertainment. So you could say that rapidly pushing buttons to control digital characters on a a screen is in my blood. I recently saw "Gamer" (2009), and let’s just say that I felt like I was with family. Directing duo Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor of the ever-expanding “Crank” franchise once again bring the intensity of the home arcade to a theater near you.

The film features two main games: Society, which is a version of Second Life, except that the gamers pay to control real people, who are then compensated for their participation; and Slayers, in which players control death row inmates who have to fight to the death numerous times to win their freedom. The main character, Kable (Gerard Butler) , is the reigning champion of the Slayers game and is controlled by a young boy named Simon Silverton (Logan Lerman). Meanwhile, Kable’s wife (Amber Valletta) is controlled by players in the game Society. A group of dissenters, led by a character played by rapper Ludacris, tries to fight the mastermind behind the games, Ken Castle (Michael C. Hall). Needless to say, things get pretty hairy for everyone involved.

Disappointingly, a lot of critics either canned the film or barely tolerated it for being squarely within the genre of the loud, fun, and plotless summer movie. Others blamed the film for being unoriginal, especially this fan, who found the movie to be a mashup of “Running Man”(1987), starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, and "Death Race" (2008), a recent remake of a 1975 cult classic starring David Carradine of "Kill Bill" fame.

Sure, the film might veer toward your stereotypical adolescent male fantasy full of nudity and violence. But despite all that, I thought “Gamer” raised broader questions about how our forms of escape can affect our (and others’) real lives.

Most see the virtual reality of the gaming world as having only a unidirectional effect on the player: games either corrupt or educate. But “Gamer” raises the possibility that the player influences other people’s real lives through the game. With communities like Second Life, this concept is not that far-fetched anymore. In fact, recently, sex toy manufacturer SexGen sued someone who started creating and selling virtual versions of their products under the same name on that virtual community. But virtual reality need not be the seedy underworld for actions deemed too scandalous for the real light of day. Recently, simulation games have been used to help the blind navigate unfamiliar real-world spaces.

With all these real-world examples of the interaction between the real and virtual worlds, there were moments in the film that made me think about our own society and what our forms of entertainment say about us. If an alien from outer space were to land on Earth and observe us huddled in front of our TVs (or movie screens, for that matter), killing people (or watching other people kill), they might think we enjoy what we do in our spare time. And if that alien from outer space were to see us watching players playing Slayers, they might conclude that we specialize in killing the most misfortunate of our society, prisoners.

Watching this film might make gamers rethink why they play games. Whenever I watch my brother play first-person shooter games, I always think about the number of people who die over and over and the few who survive, indulging in a killing spree. Of course, at the end of the day, it’s a game, but I still wonder how many gamers would do what the young boy in the film does-- gambling with others’ lives while making others rich.

The scary part is if we indeed had that choice how many would be more than willing to do so. The scene in the movie when Kable’s wife enters Society after he’s wrongly imprisoned in Slayers makes we think about whether we are really free. When stressful things come into our lives, we often escape into another world to cope—be it through alcohol, drugs, gambling, games, or other substances that fuel addictive behaviors. We forget what it means to live freely.

I think the film’s portrayal of the game Society and Slayers comments on our own escapist tendencies and forces us to ask ourselves some serious questions: what does it mean to be controlled by human beings and/or substances? Is it like being a puppet? Or a willing slave? And if you had a choice, which would you be? The puppet slave or the master? And what would that choice say about you?