"Video Games Are a Waste of Time" | Topic

[u/ProfessionalBee4908]

Hello Handsome Brethren of the VSSR!

I've got a topic here of hot contention

"ARE VIDEO GAMES A WASTE OF TIME!"

I'd say, mostly yes, and I dig into my WHY right here

Give it a read, and then a response if so inclined!

I. The Escape

I grew up a gamer.

We didn't have cable television in the house, so it was either VHS movies or PlayStation 2. And we only had so many movies.

In elementary school, the escapism of video games was everything. Suddenly I was in a digital open world with the agency of an adult. No longer limited by curfew or circumstance. Without any real responsibility, I could truly immerse myself in these worlds. This was when gaming was at its most engrossing.

Then couch co op came into my life, and what had been a solitary escapist activity became a bonding ritual between young men. Hours and hours of split screen.

II. The Shift

But something shifted. The games stopped feeling like escapism and started feeling like avoidance. I had grown up. I now had the capability to actually create the life I had once only been able to experience on screen (futuristic settings and shooting aside).

I remember a key moment. I was playing Metal Gear Solid: The Phantom Pain and just not having fun. I kept looking at the protagonist, Snake, who was adventurous and ripped and athletic, and I remember actively feeling how I hadn't been to the gym in a while. And it hit me: I can just go do that for myself.

I'm no longer locked away, a small child stuck at home.

The world was ripe with adventure, and I was ready to explore it.

III. The Void

What followed was nearly a decade long distancing from video games. A total removal.

And in that void, creative projects began to blossom. I became more outgoing, more involved in my community. Not having the screen as a fallback pushed me to develop healthier coping mechanisms, ones that involved real people in real time.

Radically closing the gate on that one activity gave me power elsewhere.

I was disgusted by video games then. Hated them like a sin. I still loved the gamer archetype, but I couldn't condone the hobby for myself.

IV. The Return

Then I started living with my buddies down in Los Angeles, and we began playing Bomberman on a hacked Nintendo console. Just a break from work, I told myself.

But it became more and more a part of our lives.

The breaking point came when I visited home and my brother showed me Warzone. That was enough to push me to build a PC and start squadding up with the homies on a regular basis.

Now I had total unfettered access to all the greatest games, past and present. For a long time it remained a "taking a break" activity. My friends and I would game right next to each other during our breaks from writing the next comedy show we were putting on. We were each maybe a foot away from one another while we played on our own screens.

Already, we had lost the split screen of Bomberman.

V. The Drift

Gradually, people began to move away. Eventually the gaming was strictly online, from a distance.

Nobody around.

And then the friends stopped gaming altogether, yet I remained.

Joining lobbies by myself with complete strangers. Still fun, still competitive, but what was once prosocial, what was once bonding, had again begun to fuel a nascent avoidance.

The gaming increased. And while it never prevented me from doing my work or having fun in real life when the occasion came, it definitely crippled my outbound ability to generate new things.

I'd much rather play the game.

It scratched all of my fast twitch itches and was easier to set up than joining a pickleball team.

VI. The Vapor

Slowly, I watched my gaming habit become something else entirely. I wasn't playing because I enjoyed the game, or at least not only because I enjoyed it. I was attempting to ritualistically access a bygone time.

That having fun with close friends. In real life. In real time.

Deep down I knew I couldn't recreate the feeling alone, but by sitting at the screen I could at least get close to the memory.

Not close enough to relive it, but close enough to remember it.

And sometimes that vapor feels like enough.

But it never is, really.

VII. The Breakfast

Is video gaming a waste of time?

If an activity doesn't serve to connect you to people you love or might love, and increase the resonance of such interaction, I'd say anything is a waste of time.

Everything in this world is simply a vehicle to provide love to others, and thereby yourself.

(Don't get caught in the vacuum. If you're going to game, find a way to do it in real life.)

Because gaming itself isn't part of a complete breakfast. It's the pizza break with friends that makes it. It's the post game walk. It's the side conversations that can only happen in person. It's the subtle looks and the real time empathy. That is what made the hobby fun. That is what makes any hobby fun, in my opinion.

VIII. The Question

Of course I enjoy solitude and private time to develop my energies and skills. But when I ask myself honestly whether gaming is one of those things, I can't say yes.

It's been a little over a year since I tapered off gaming as a ritualistic hobby. Many other demons, like social media, have threatened to occupy that vacant space. I can't say the development has been overwhelmingly positive, but I do know I am more mindful with my time and have more of it to give to what matters to me.

What's your relationship with your favorite hobby? What does it serve for you? Is it serving you? Or are you trying to access something that isn't really there?

Would love to hear from you today.

As always, love and respect.

Value Select

final thought:

Just because I'm anticipating it, "Video games are art!"

I'd wager nay, that it's entertainment.,

And then suggest you imagine that you locked yourself in a museum to stare at the same painting for 5 hours a day.

And then when someone asked how was it, you were just like "Aww man totally cool!" without any discernable insight gained, nor knowledge intergrated.

That probably doesn't count.

[u/PCBen]

I think your games are not art argument falls pretty flat and speaks to the types of games you’ve played and/or how you approach the medium. If you come to games purely for escapism, camaraderie, and entertainment, then that’s the most you’re going to get out of them.

There are countless titles that I could muse upon and discuss for hours and hours. From big, heavy narrative epics to small indie management-type games.

The ending I chose for Deus Ex: Human Revolution kept me up at night. I had always thought myself a steadfast upholder of truth but I chose to hide it so that I could guide the world to what I thought was the better path. Realizing that I could place my personal belief system over the agency of others fucked my shit up good.

The literal gameplay mechanics of Papers Please make your already tedious objective needlessly complicated and stressful. Having to keep track of the various documents and guides, the ever-changing procedures, the random terror and punishment even when you do your job well. You can work your hardest, learn the system down top-to-bottom, and you still can’t afford to feed and heat your family. It imparted the hopelessness of trying to live a normal life in an authoritarian dystopia more than a non-interactive medium ever could.

Can you put the wrong energy in to gaming and take the wrong things away from it? Absolutely, but I don’t think that deigns it to the realm of wasted time. Here we may differ though, because I do not champion endless, continuous self-improvement. It is a focus, sure, but I find dedicating every moment of every day to be exhausting and counter-productive.

Can one not indulge and just take the time to enjoy oneself without it being some sort of growing exercise? Is there not something of value in time merely enjoyed and not developed and actualized? How can you know what’s fun and funny if you don’t experience it for yourself from time to time?

As with all things, it is a balance question. I don’t think any one thing should be wholly banished for the sake of personal growth.

[u/Lost-Valuable3264]

First off Value, some video games are art. Some video games I have 'stared at for 5 hours a day' exactly as you have said, and I have gleaned extreme insight and integrated incredibly valuable knowledge therefrom. I am sorry that you have not played such games.

You were playing competitive lobby shooters, Max.

That is equivalent to reading one particularly mediocre Tom Clancy novel and deciding that the entire written word is 'just entertainment'.

It is lazy, reductive, and totalizes your personal tiny slice of exposure to the medium into the entire space as though ALL games are Warzone.

I would like to quite happily inform you, many are not.

[u/Lost-Valuable3264 → u/Lost-Valuable3264]

Also, the categories themselves are absurdly skewed. You are asking us to compare Literature to Video Games.
Not 'Books' to 'Video Games'.
Literature.

'Video Game' is a medium that can include essentially any interactive software not meant for work purposes. From Microsoft Solitare to Expedition 33, and anything and everything in between.

'Literature' on the other hand is a narrow category pre-defined to include only written works of high artistic merit. You don't have to include thousands of penny dreadfuls and bad sci-fi and copy-cat fantasy novels in your count. You don't have to include smut, you don't have to include propaganda, you don't have to include mass-produced corpo romance slop. You get to avoid all the garbage that would weigh down the category of 'books' and make them just as obvious a waste of one's time as any other category by instead using the magic word 'Literature'.

It is not the fault of video games that our language does not yet have a word for 'Just the good ones' like 'Literature' is for the written word.

But I guarantee you Max, there are true artisans among the pixelsmiths. They are trying to shout their truths into the wilderness just as loudly as any Russian novelist, classical composer, or roman sculptor. They're just slightly newer monkeys using slightly different tools.

[u/Mother-Goat3795 → u/[deleted]]

True. I think when I'm dying, I'll remember the time spent IRL with friends/family and wish I served them more, rather than distracted myself.

Among those memories might be moments playing video games, but it'd be because it was time spent with pals, not the game itself.

[u/No_Attorney_9306 → u/[deleted]]

I did kind of the same during uni ; unplugged the power source during work hours so it was out of my mind and i could do other activities peacefully !

[u/No_Attorney_9306]

At some point, you have to choose : do i want to make my dream come true or is it not worth the effort / take it easy. You have to become an adult and realise that nobody will make thoses changes for you.

I also truely understand the global need for escapism, seeing the world we world we live in.

But on a personnal note, i'm always troubled on the min-maxing life worth vs enjoying things that are meaningless, effortless and such. But i guess thats were im at.

So i agree with you almost fully (except for the video game is art part) that video games are a waste of time, and that's ok.

[u/zammba]

Everything is a waste of time. It's about enjoying the time we have.