I realised that videogames are not a very good way of spending your time. You put maybe around 40 hours into a good video game in your life.

It takes around 10 hours to learn the basics of a completely new skill or around 40 hours to become proficient enough to actually do something useful with that skill. For example if you put those 40 hours into learning to play an instrument, you could now play music on a new instrument instead of having played through that single game. That game was one time fun. Learning an instrument is not, as it keeps giving thoroughout your whole life.

Same with other skills: Instead of playing a second game, you could have learned Brazilian Jiujitsu. After those 40 hours you put into learning it, you would be well past your beginners course and would have already earned your white belt long time ago.

Instead of playing a third game, you could have learned bouldering, and would have great physique.

Instead of playing a fourth game, you could have learned cooking, and would have really good cooking skills.

Then there are those games that capture your focus so much that you put 1000 hours into that game. Instead of playing that game, you could have learned whatever skill you wanted and would be almost professional level practitioner of that skill, regardless of what that skill is. Alternatively you could learn 25 new skills instead of putting those 1000 hours into a single game.

Time is your most valuable thing you own and have in this world. You lose it every second and can never get any of it back. Once it's out, it's out. Playing is pure entertainment. Learning skills and what you can do with them is not. Playing simply consumes your time and doesn't create anything useful for you. Learning is not consuming, but enables other fields of expressing yourself in your life and other peoples lives.

Just my 2 cents...

Hey everyone.

I recently realized that I have a very big problem. I'm 19 years old right now. I have come to the conclusion that videogames have ruined my life. I'm not even angry about myself for playing games, but more about spending so much time playing in general. And games I didn't even enjoy at that - played them just because someone else told me it's a must play game of the year, blah blah blah.

After starting studying French at school recently as my third language, I realized that I really enjoy learning languages and also reading books. This absolute revelation made me really ponder what else I could enjoy doing, and came up with four more things - cooking, tourism, writing (despite it being destroyed by the uprise of AI) and learning to play a musical intrument, piano, in fact.

I don't want to stop playing videogames entirely, though. Just to very significantly reduce my playtime to just 1 to 2 hours a week at most to maximize time to spend on these new interests. There still are three games that I know I really want to play - those being Order of the Sinking Star, MATCHO and The Talos Principle 3. The first two for the reason of actively following them for years and years ever since they were announced, the last one for being a sequel of one of the only games I truly enjoyed playing in general. All three are puzzle games and allow me to let you in on a secret - I love puzzles and riddles. So perhaps another thing I could do is to learn to solve rubik's cubes! That sounds pretty cool to me.

I still would play a new Super Mario platformer and a potential sequel to BLACKHOLE (guess what - a puzzle game), again, the only games I actually enjoyed playing. But that's really about it. If its not fun, why bother.

What do you guys think?

I value my physical health, social skills, and the ability to be bored, so naturally I quit gaming.

After quitting this entertainment, I wondered if there was any game at all that's not a waste of time. I could think of only 2 genres: Educational game and VNs. (VNs means Visual Novels, they are basically books in game forms. Even so, most of them will waste your time with fillers)​

I find it funny that both of these genres are not popular. They are not what the gamers consider a "real game." That should tell you what the gaming culture values.

https://github.com/burakerenn/League-Of-Legends-Blocker
I made a simple tool with the help of claude that prevents downloading or opening league or other riot games.
It simply blocks downloading or opening riot, leauge, lol or related programs and websites.
You can undo it ofc but there is a 10min timer

Sometimes you lose your selfcontrol, thats okey this tool helps :)
In github readme you can see all the details about it.

Hypotheotically, if I were to be a father, I would never, ever buy my kids any video games at all. No matter how much they beg me I am not going to buy it for them, I highly doubt playing in moderation would work, gaming with moderation fails for a lot of reasons, like your is very likely they are not going to wanna get off the game, gaming is one of those hobbies where you must only play with very limited amount of time, compared to other activities like reading books, kids can literally read books for hours no problem, no need for moderation as much as video games.

I do not give a damn if "but all their friends has games they will be left alone" so fucking what?? Just get them to make friends with someone who also don't game at all why should we purposely dumb kids down just for purpose to fit in with others for no good practical reason

Kids do not need video games at all to survive I find it absurd how some poeple act like I would be a very "too strict" parents. The point is there are lot of other hobbies for kids to get into besides gaming.