Are people fantasizing about living in a game?

@yaasshat Now you are beginning to talk like my mother and it frightens me!

Any who, to answer the original question. NO! And here is why. As much as I love fantasy stories with action and challenges, reality is in a way its own game. So if I were already having my hands full dealing with this reality, what good would escaping to another one do? The problem isn't with the universe outside. It's the inner universe that needs the Protagonist's Privilege to continue the long journey to where it all begins and ends. Myself! I am that other world yet to be explored! What can be more thrilling or mysterious than the untapped potential inside one's own heart? Another thing to consider... Most popular fantasies, including powered ones, cater to a great deal of suffering. Take a game like Devil May Cry. Dante may be able to do anything, however he constantly carries the burden of grief for failing to save the ones he loves. Look cool and stylish all he wants, but no matter how many times he SSS ranks a level, his mother is never coming back! The Final Fantasy series is wrought with the theme of death as well. Cloud can't get back his friends or mother. Squall is able to meet up with his father at some point, yet he goes through a fair share of growing pains being treated as an orphan for most of his youth. Noctus canonically dies for the sake of his world. And then Lightning... Well her whole franchise just plain sucks so existing in that universe would be a fate worse than death! And don't get me started on Shin Megami or Persona! Does anyone really want to live in those worlds? As much as I wouldn't mind existing in a space like the Velvet Room if only for one of the denizens. I mean come on! Who wouldn't want to party with Igor, am I right? Let me guess, you thought I would say Elizabeth? You do know she spontaneously casts Megidolaon on even her own relatives, right? Not taking any chances no matter how hot I think she is! So to some up. A fantasy world is only as good or as valued as what the real world can give it. No isekai can be any greater than the universe that dreamt it up in the first place. That's my reason anyway... https://cdn.quotesgram.com/img/52/40/2006037541-dante2.jpg http://www.epiphaniesinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/06-PersonalBrand-DrSeuss-quote.jpg

Agreed^ Most the possible worlds you can get sent to are just as shitty but with more ways to be shitty imagine tyrants that can drop meteors on you or just set you on fire, like no. The only real difference maybe would be like yuu yuu hakusho or some other world where the personal power a single person can have is limited to their own worth as a person literally. You might have more agency in that specific situation but at the same time you'd have to be pretty f!$#ing powerful to be able to say f!@# you world leave me alone.

Oh right don't forget the lesser explored parts of magic like brainwashing, memory wipes, polymorphing(imagine a grumpy wizard turning you into a chicken because you bumped into him) magically binding vows, soul manipulation, healing magic to never let you die so you can suffer eternally there is a lot of bad shit that can happen regarding magic. Then there are the creatures UGH don't even get me started on those, like the brood and darkspawn would be my mortal enemies I would go all goblin slayer on those shits.

You could make similar arguments about technology in our world from the perspective of another world. Magic is basically just a form of technology. However, it provides some agency since it's (usually) innate to an individual, and reliable. A lot of assumptions have been made about what would be possible or accessible. Some of those things may be fundamentally impossible, and yet other things we haven't imagined may be. This is why I wouldn't want a game-like world. It fundamentally boxes you into a system that was already imagined.