20 ms·

Why Ever Stop Playing Video Games

247 points by pmcpinto 10y ago

tepidandroid 10y ago
I tried quitting video games cold turkey shortly before starting university. At the time, I was a huge Diablo II and Broodwar player. It was probably all that I ever did or thought about on a day to day basis during highschool. At lunch, my friends and I would hang out on Battle.net in the computer lab and then again, after school, probably from 5pm to 11:30pm every day (with 11:30pm to 1am dedicated to school work). I was pretty much obsessively playing these games to the point that my schoolwork started to suffer as well as relationships with parents and siblings. I'd get into daily fights with my parents about how much time I was spending online.... luckily I was somehow able to keep my grades pretty decent and got accepted into a good university. During university it was League of Legends every day. After graduating, I racked up almost 4000 hours of Team Fortress 2 in a two year period in addition to a few thousand hours of World of Tanks. I can honestly say that I regret all of it and I now look at my 'hours spent playing X' Steam statistic in shame. The thing with all of these games is that time spent playing them is a sunk cost, not an investment. You will never get it back. You will never acquire any returns for your time except for the immediate gratification you receive while playing it. And your real life problems won't just go away but will probably just get worse for lack of attentiveness. If you are consciously aware of these facts and that is what you are after, then great! But I think many people get sucked into the addictive side of video games unwittingly. It's just a fact that most of these games have been psychologically designed to keep you playing for as long as possible -as long as you keep playing it, you can retain that sense of fake fulfillment and defer whatever reality you were trying to escape from in the first place. Day after day passes by in the blink of an eye because your brain gets put on auto-pilot, and those hard realities never get any easier. "Achievements", ladder ranking, collecting digital pixels... it's all just so meaningless in real life. These things turn people who might otherwise have followed their natural curiosities or be great producers of things (be it code, reading, writing, art, music, etc) into mindless consumers craving that next fake reward. And to me that is a pity. I wish I could have spent all those hours developing my real life interests instead. All told, I'm probably behind by 5-6 years in terms of technical proficiency and just maturity-wise compared to the peers I look up to the most. I have nothing to make up for those deficiencies except perhaps an overactive adrenal gland and some mild social anxiety. Video game experiences are, by their very nature, virtual and transient. Would you not rather spend your time honing a skill or producing something of real value (that doesn't end when the servers shut down), something to look back fondly upon when you're older? The only game worth playing is the game of life.
Taylor_OD 10y ago
Every 6 months or so I find a game that swoops in and eats up all my time. Usually it is a valuable and rewarding experience and its missed once I complete the game. Then I spend 6 months trying games from my steam library until I find another one that has that special something. It's not the best method but I try to set a timer for 30 minutes 3 times a week and try a new game I've never played. It's obviously not a perfect method but often that's enough time to decide if I want to dedicate more time to that game.
- cableshaft 10y ago
  Last year for me it was The Witness, Life is Strange, and to a lesser extent Monument Valley. Those were all excellent. This year the first one is Civilization VI, but I fully expected that.
  - Taylor_OD 10y ago
    I believe I own all of those! I'll check them out. Thanks!
  - Taylor_OD 10y ago
    Hey! I just played Inside. It's made by the same creators of Limbo which was a hit a couple years back. The whole game took me about 3 hours but it was great. Puzzle focused but they were just difficult enough that I never got frustrated and blended into the game enough that they almost didnt feel like puzzles. Check it out!
arcanus 10y ago
>155 million Americans play video games, more than the number who voted in November’s presidential election. And they play them a lot: According to a variety of recent studies, more than 40 percent of Americans play at least three hours a week I'm among them. I play a few hours a week, after my wife and child go to bed. I barely talk about games with any of my fellow adult friends, because for some reason it is still too needing a world where discussing programming, star trek movies or settlers of Cataan is commonplace!
- robin__ 10y ago
  I'm jealous. Every time I try a game, I totally suck at it. Even the easy difficulty is not easy enough anymore. Nowadays, I only enjoy puzzle games if anything at all.
  - zardo 10y ago
    Totally sucking at something is the first step on the road to being pretty okay at something.
  - theandrewbailey 10y ago
    That's strange. Gamers have been complaining that games have been getting easier over time, to the point that 'normal' difficulty on many games (especially heavily marketed ones) is too easy.
    - ryandrake 10y ago
      There's the key: Gamers have been complaining, not normal people. When I used to be a gamer (meaning I didn't have anything else to do with my life than get better at games), I could literally spend hundreds of hours mastering a single game. When you're at that level, games seem easy. Now, I casually will pick up a game once every three months or so and play, and for some games unless it's the easiest difficulty level, I get my ass kicked. Online (vs. "gamers")? Forget it. I totally get the "difficulty inflation" that's happening.
    - barrkel 10y ago
overcast 10y ago
Honestly I don't see the thirty something generation ever giving up video games. They've been a part of our entire lives at this point. Once we're old, it will be a case where no generation has ever been without video games in some capacity.
- alexchantavy 10y ago
  There's also probably going to be a huge market in making games that older people can play when this generation hits retirement age.
  - krapht 10y ago
    I don't see any reason why retirement-age me won't be able to play Super Mario 2060. Adjustable difficulty, whether through mechanical tweaks or competitive multiplayer matchmaking should be good enough?
    - cableshaft 10y ago
      Mario already offers invincibility and constant flying items you can take if you die a lot in the recent games, so you should be all set to play Mario 2060 :).
  - mikestew 10y ago
    I'm bumping up against retirement age, and I'll still kick your ass at Titanfall (well, maybe; the odds are good, but not assured). Call of Duty, meh, not so much. I foresee a time where playing some twitch games aren't going to work for me anymore. But anything with the slightest hint of tactical gameplay and this oldster-in-the-making will be fine, I think. Especially the Tom Clancy games where "run and gun" just gets you killed more quickly. I look forward to Rainbow Six: Palm Springs with the Naples DLC expansion pack.
    - civilian 10y ago
      My dad just turned 65 and he still has no interest in video games except for solitaire. But I really think that he'd enjoy video games, especially as a way to keep an active mental life in retirement. I tried to explain the "it's almost-real physics!" angle of Kerbal Space Program, but that wasn't persuasive. Any tips? Also, have you played Overwatch or TF2? I found both of those more interesting than Titanfall-- and a wise player can really help a team by jumping into the role that isn't present on a team.
paublyrne 10y ago
I would love to play games still. I certainly enjoyed it in my teens and in periods in my 20s where I had more free time than I do now. They can be a real time sink though, so I don't allow myself to buy a console. I barely find time for the pursuits I want to enjoy as it is.
- scottmcleod 10y ago
  "..so I don't allow myself to buy a console." this is common with so many other people I know (and try to convince to game with me as Adults). I think its all too common to watch Nextflix & HBO for 20 hours in a week, but video games are taboo, despite being more social and cognitively enhancing.
  - jeron 10y ago
    to say Netflix and HBO is fine but gaming is too much of a time drain makes no sense. I've banned myself from both during the work week. The amount of reclaimed time is insane and I feel a lot more productive.
  - gozur88 10y ago
    The difference is there's no length to most video games. If you sit down to watch a movie you've blocked out ninety minutes (or whatever), and when the movie is over you're not going to tell yourself "I'll just watch for five more minutes." If you're the kind of person who can't ignore that voice you'll end up spending a lot more time gaming than you intended, particularly if your game of choice has some sort of level treadmill.
    - ashark 10y ago
      You also don't suffer for spending 2-3hrs watching a movie then waiting indefinitely before watching another. Even if you're watching a series of movies they were originally released months to years apart, so you'll be fine when you pick it back up—a glance at the Wikipedia summary for the previous entry will do if you feel it's necessary. With video games, take weeks off and you'll have forgotten the story (if any/relevant) and how to play effectively. At least that's my experience with single-player games—if I take too much time off I just have to start over, because I'll be too bad at it to handle the later stages I'm in on my last save, won't remember enough of the story, and will have lost my connection to the characters.
TulliusCicero 10y ago
Playing games is rad and cool, and there are many studies demonstrating various cognitive benefits. One of my favorite was on the elderly playing Rise of Nations, a critically-acclaimed RTS that's a sort of blend between Civilization and Age of Empires: https://news.illinois.edu/blog/view/6367/206094 https://news.illinois.edu/blog/view/6367/206094 > The researchers found that training on the video game did improve the participants' performance on a number of these tests. As a group, the gamers became significantly better - and faster - at switching between tasks compared with the comparison group. Their working memory, as reflected in the tests, also was significantly improved. Their reasoning ability was enhanced. To a lesser extent, their short-term memory of visual cues was better than that of their peers, as was their ability to identify rotated objects.
- cableshaft 10y ago
  They really need to make a proper sequel to Rise of Nations. That game was great. Also loved its single-player metagame mode.
  - TulliusCicero 10y ago
    Well, at least they released an HD version on Steam.
gnarcoregrizz 10y ago
I've been semi-hooked on counter-strike for the past few years. I started getting into it again after I got sick, and now some of my long distance high school and college friends jumped on the bandwagon again and we play regularly. Its a great way to stay in touch and socialize, as well as just have fun playing the game. Its also SUPER competitive which has its upsides and downsides. It makes the game dynamic, you constantly need to stay on top of the 'meta' to be good, but at the same time its tiresome, so its not a casual game at higher levels. As with anything, it does come at a real life expense - I have 700 hours on the game, and I need to remind myself when to cut the cord or to take a week off. I usually play 0-2 hrs a day now. Overall, spending a nice weekend outside with friends and family is a lot better than spending it playing video games.
- M_Grey 10y ago
  Balance. It's a theme that runs through absolutely everything in life, and video games are no exception.
- PascLeRasc 10y ago
  I'm also at around 700 hours of CS:GO. I find it to be the most enjoyable and probably my best playing after a very long day of work, usually with a cup of coffee or a beer. It's just not as satisfying to play on my days off. Totally agree on spending a weekend outside with friends instead. I don't really think meta knowledge/research is needed to play competitive though. I used to be really into learning nade throws and watching pro pushes and retakes, and now that I barely have time to play at all I'm still around the same rank.
- mandlar 10y ago
  If you like CS, then you should check out Rainbow Six Siege. Very similar play style (one life rounds with an objective). Everyone chooses a unique operator (each operator has their own weapon set/special ability). It's a lot of fun and reminds me of the days I used to play CS in college 10 years ago.
Razengan 10y ago
For all you know, real life could be a video game played by some higher dimensional beings.
- 2Pacalypse- 10y ago
  For all you know, that higher dimensional beings' real life could be a video game played by an even higher dimensional beings. It's turtles all they way down.
- CuriouslyC 10y ago
  Plot twist, your consciousness is actually a property of those higher dimensional beings, and our reality is like a hive-mind group dream.
- mistercow 10y ago
  This guy is taking Roy off the grid.
my_ghola 10y ago
I've replaced watching movies and TV with videogames. It's more engaging and a single video game can give me 30 to 60 hours of entertainment compared to a TV series that gives me 6 to 12.
- cpeterso 10y ago
  Somewhere between TV and video games, I started watching "Let's Play" game walkthrough videos of favorite Sierra Online adventure games from my childhood that I never completed. You get to discover the stories' secrets without the frustration, plus many of people recording the walkthroughs are pretty funny. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let%27s_Play https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let%27s_Play
  - gozur88 10y ago
    It's funny you should mention that. I replaced my TV watching with video games, but over the last year have spent a lot of time watching other people play on twitch. Kind of going full circle.
rthomas6 10y ago
I used to play games a lot, and I don't now. It's not that I don't want to or that I wouldn't enjoy it, I just want to do too many other things more. I have a wife and a kid who demand a lot of my time, I lift weights, I try to play board games with friends, I work on hobby projects, I read books, I do chores, I go on trips. As much as getting immersed into the new Witcher game would be enjoyable to me, I just can't fit it in. All those other things are more important and make me happier.
- ashark 10y ago
  Similar situation here. With the time constraints imposed by kids you have to drop entire categories of activities, not just moderate them, because the baseline time commitment ("oh god, last time I played this was 2 weeks ago and I only played an hour then—I have no idea WTF was going on or how the controls work") and money (PC upgrades every couple of years, new consoles) required just can't be sustained at the incredibly low levels they'd have to to fit in with kids plus a bunch of other things. You kinda have to pick 3-4 things to focus on and drop the rest entirely, not just cut back. If one of those is "stay sort-of in shape" then you're really limited. Most gaming just doesn't fit in any more. :-/
  - greggman 10y ago
    Everyone makes their own priorities. I have many friends with kids that somehow manage to find time to play video games. I don't find the time anymore and I don't have kids so I have no clue how they do it but I see them posting about them all the time. One has 2 kids, and other has 2 kids, one has three kids, another has 2. They guy who has three also manages to play guitar and do photography and raise 3 kids. I don't know how he does it
  - markdoubleyou 10y ago
    Kids triggered an impulse to take my career to the next level, so between work, family, maintaining a bare minimum level of fitness, and professional development, I've got nothing left to give games. TV has taken a major hit, too. Something in my brain clicked after the first one was born... an ok-you're-an-adult-stop-fucking-around mode was triggered. The result is that the lack of free time doesn't bother me that much. Too busy and tired to care, maybe.
laplace2 10y ago
I've found learning and creating to be more fulfilling activities than videogames. That's not to advocate against gaming, or to generalize all games, but I've thought about how much time I spent playing games in the past and if I was happy with what I gained from it: I largely was not. I felt as if I was lacking in skills that I wished I had, and believe I could have learned in that time. I'm happier with myself after cutting down greatly on gaming, and I wonder if other people share the same joy of learning that I feel or if it's an unpopular perspective. Add.: What I believe causes a game to feel unfulfilling is if after the game is finished the player, and the world, is (nearly) unchanged. If there's nothing to show for it. No new philosophy, no useful talent, no object created, nothing to share with others. Most games are equivalent in their impact to a bad reality TV show, a distraction from progress, a time sink, a void.
- M_Grey 10y ago
  I find that videogames fill my "brain in neutral" space very nicely. If I'm just not in the mood to read, or get out, pick up some new skill or polish an old one, hang out with friends or do something productive (and sometimes you truly want to do nothing)... I find that videogames are a nice choice. I especially enjoy combining them with unabridged audiobooks that I might not otherwise bother reading/listening to otherwise. The trick is to make sure that you resist the temptation to allow that empty time (like empty calories) to dominate your life. It's like ice cream... a little is great stuff, but don't make eating it the center of your lifestyle.
  - droopyEyelids 10y ago
    I believe the essence of what you're saying is true, but I dispute the overall reasonableness of what you describe. The vast majority of video games are either built around the principles of addiction, or require a tremendous amount of time in muscle memory training. What you're describing seems like describing how enjoyable it can be to smoke one cigarette a month. (assuming that actually felt good). Could be true- but the odds are certainly stacked against people attempting that behavior.
    - 10y ago
beat 10y ago
I used to say I don't play videogames for the same reason I don't shoot drugs into my eyeballs. Then I got a medical condition that required injecting drugs into my eyeball once a month. I still don't play videogames, but take that, Keith Richards!
2Pacalypse- 10y ago
I've been playing a single video game for more than half of my life (I'm 30 now). I've dabbled with other games, but this game and the community around it contributed a lot in making me the person I am today. I don't plan on stopping any time soon. In fact, for the past few years I've shifted most of my free time from playing that game to helping a friend develop cool shit[0] for it, so we can hopefully prolong its lifetime. Programming and gaming go so well together that I'm pretty sure I'll continue hacking on some old games when I'm 60. [0] - https://shieldbattery.net https://shieldbattery.net
- vvvv 10y ago
  Hello brother, this game almost broke me and then, I guess, made me in many ways. I can't play without getting too into it, though to be fair, I haven't tried in a while.
- Humdeee 10y ago
  From your first sentence, I knew it was BW. We're the same age. I remember very clearly all those nights fighting away on WGT and later, the PGT ladder. I remember when the patch hit that allowed everyone to save replays. I remember BWChart and how revolutionary it was at the time. The anti-hack programs you needed to run in the background. Traveling to play in the world cyber games once a year. Fighting for a spot on the national team to be involved in nation wars. Although it was virtual, team 88) and team [LighT] made those years for me.
- spicytunacone 10y ago
  Hey 2Pac. While not nearly as focused on BW as you are, it and a handful of other competitive gaming scenes I feel were pretty key during my formative years as well. I loved the attitude to improvement: break down an issue you're having into simpler pieces and figure them out to paraphrase a Spooky adage of yore[0]. Considering that's the essense of what we do in math and CS, it's hard to not see a connection. Sounds cheesy but learning how to play 3rd Strike as a young teen made me see I could help myself much more than I previously believed. Unlike some SC2 posters in this article, being a part of long-established communities as opposed to one explosively (and unsustainably) growing one, I didn't have ambitions of grandeur and was just able to enjoy it all at my pace, too. I think my only regret is forgoing single-player games with that time. Trails in the Sky FC put on hold to ladder on Fish while the iron's hot, heh. Everytime I had thought my video game interests shelved, all it took was a friend to bring their console over where before long we're talking about best approaches to X, a trip to a Japanese arcade or for TBLS to all qualify for the largest BW offline tournament in recent history before I developed a hunger for it all again. So yeah, I don't see myself abstaining in the long, long run even if it's just to develop a little something. Best of luck with SB, didn't know you were part of the team! [0] https://www.twitch.tv/teamsp00ky https://www.twitch.tv/teamsp00ky
robertcorey 10y ago
Playing starcraft 2 totally consumed my life from about 18-22. It was very similar to a drug addiction except I convinced myself it was positive because I would eventually be a professional. My addiction prevented my from working on the underlying issues that caused my to seek refuge in the game. It also left me with a host of physical RSI problems that have been a huge negative to my life + career. Although if I hadn't developed them I suspect I'd still be consumed by games. In order to spend vast amounts of time playing video games you have to be at a certain level of privilege. I feel as if video games have cheated myself out of potential as well as those that my privilege obligates to help. As with other addictions there are people who won't be consumed by it like I was, and prohibition isn't the solution, not sure what is tbh.
- some-guy 10y ago
  Very similar story to me: I played Starcraft 2 throughout college in a competitive fashion and made me feel worse. There was a period of time after that where after quitting I wouldn't touch a video game. I've since picked up a Nintendo 3DS as an experiment now that I take long train rides to work, and it's been an amazing, relaxing experience. I guess what I'm trying to say is, there are many different ways to enjoy video games without being addicted or even playing a lot. Starcraft 2 ladder play may be one of the more stressful ways of going about it from experience.
  - VonGuard 10y ago
    I feel like both of your stories could easily be rewritten and replace videogames with sports. Many people spend their high school and college lives completely dedicated to football, basketball, baseball, or hockey with the idea that they'll go pro eventually. These folks can come away with wasted college time, physical injuries, and hideous aversion to the sport they once loved. I guess what I am saying is that I feel like this is an athlete/esports thing, not necesarily a videogame thing. Without the lure of a career behind it, it wouldn't be quite so dangerous a thing. But as with all fun careers, the demands are super high and the number of people who make it is super small. Acting is like this too, without the physical injuries.
twoquestions 10y ago
I used to play video games a lot, especially 'builder' type games like Harvest Moon 64 or SimCity. These days however, I feel guilty whenever I fire up a game, even one I really enjoy. I feel like I should be doing something more 'real', like playing guitar or building something, even if it's trivial. It's strange, because in the end enjoying my time gaming with my friends or playing guitar with them or building things for them add up to be the same.
ajeet_dhaliwal 10y ago
Games, especially Japanese video games are why I got into programming, got into the games industry, why I'm on this site. I limit my time playing them now due to work, my entreprenuerial engagements, wife and two children but I just got finished with Final Fantasty XV two days ago and it was the most magical time. Ignis is my new favorite game character. I'm convinced games are a better story telling medium than books, movies and TV. I never remember the details of anything I've watched but with a game I always remember because i actively participate in caring for the characters, healing them, making them grow. There is a negative side, they can be too engaging, too much fun and too rewarding in an instant gratification sense. Sales at your startup not going well? A game can make you feel good, getting bullied at school? A game will help, but really we should deal with the real problem and then make time for games. If you do that they are great and I'm convinced they will get better and we have not seen anywhere near the full potential yet.
tehchromic 10y ago
Because beekeeping and ping pong are more fun! That said, I'm interested in farm integrated gaming. I think there are ways to make automation adventurous. Properly this will be different than what we call gaming today, however I think the answer to your question is that when tech assisted activities are diversion from reality they tend to go out if style. When they amend it and make it cooler they tend to become it!
KirinDave 10y ago
Yes, playing games is fun. In no small part because they're carefully engineered to engage you, provide a path to success, and otherwise resemble a theme park experience. Even games like EVE Online that pride themselves on being massive PvP arenas are carefully tuned to make constant conflict a reality. Not many people here know this but I have a youtube channel where I have done an absolute ton of gaming content (mostly minecraft, but perhaps most famously a Dwarf Fortress tutorial series), as a way to practice my speech and work through a very difficult stutter. And while I still respect and root for my full time youtuber friends, for me it felt like such an emply lifestyle. Ultimately you're just walking along in other people's stories, experiencing other people's visions, and working within other people's limits was increasingly galling. And short of becoming unpaid labor for those games via their modding scenes, you are a passenger in someone else's car on someone else's map. Like television (and probably better than television, from a cognitive perspective), gaming is a great escape. But making it more and more of your life as some of this article suggests is a recipe for gradually detaching yourself from real life, real problems and real accomplishments. It's an addictive escapism, and ever year the authors of said escapism refine their techniques in a ruthless competition to keep you captivated. And the best minecraft fort or cleverest warframe trick I've pulled off pales in accomplishment to selling a company I built, teaching a new developer a new skill, or anything similar. The minute that gaming becomes an end until itself, you end up sliding down a slippery slope to irrelevance.
CRUDmeariver 10y ago
I have gone through several periods in my life where I have obsessively played video games, usually followed by me selling the console in disgust with myself and buying a new one ~1.5 years later. What has changed for me lately is building a gaming PC. I have found that this beast new PC, and the things I can do with it, are more interesting to me than most games. My single favorite game that has drawn me in the most is Metal Gear Solid V. It's very slow paced and tactical but still an action game. You have to make a lot of intelligent decisions and formulate your own strategy to infiltrate the buildings. Plus there is a whole Civilization-esque aspect where you build your own paramilitary organization and deal with things like personnel and budgets. Add on top of that the insane supernatural geopolitics of the story and it is a very engrossing experience.
- terminalcommand 10y ago
  Could you give some examples as to the benefits of building a killer PC? What interesting things can you do with it, that you previously couldn't? Or is it simply the speed and the ease of use? I'm also thinking of building a desktop PC, but I'm afraid that I won't be needing it. I don't game, I mostly write programs and browse the web. Does it really change things in terms of latency and if it does, does that have an impact on the relationship with your computer?
  - CRUDmeariver 10y ago
    For me it is doing big data processing that your average laptop cannot handle well. I have the top Core i7 and I see it as a challenge using it to the fullest. You can run the heaviest clunkiest IDE with ease. Also the flexibility and resiliency of having multiple hard drives (a sacrosanct SSD for the system, and a HDD for messing around). Plus I can run VMs with ease when I get tired of Windows. Easily extendable RAM, tons of usb ports, the list goes on... Plus it was fun to build and I learned a lot.
panic 10y ago
Great article, but I disagree with this section: Fourth: economics. Since every game is reliant on this addictive incentive system, every gamer harbors a game theorist, a situational logician blindly valorizing the optimization of quantified indices of “growth” — in other words, an economist. Resource management is to video games what African-American English is to rap music or what the visible sex act is to pornography — the element without which all else is unimaginable. In games as in the market, numbers come first. They have to go up. Our job is to keep up with them, and all else can wait or go to hell. Numbers and economic incentive systems show up in many games, but they're not fundamental. Take a look at games like Journey, Portal, Gone Home, Yume Nikki, or many others which work just fine without numbers. The creator of Undertale, Toby Fox, had this to say in an interview (http://existentialgamer.com/interview-toby-fox-undertale http://existentialgamer.com/interview-toby-fox-undertale): TEG: I really loved the fact that many of the branches in UNDERTALE‘s story seemed to lead to miniature “voids” where I was forced to contemplate what I’d just experienced without being “improved” in any quantitative way. Do you think that as gamers and people we have become addicted to numbers / money / experience in general? TF: The addictive quality of “numbers increasing” is what drives a lot of games. But some of the most important things in life can’t be accurately represented by numbers. As for people’s lives, I have no comment.
dk8996 10y ago
I used to play video games a lot. CS, Sim games, Strategy Games were my thing. Now I find them boring. I found other activities that are more fulfilling like crossfit and yoga. I also spend most of my freed up time improving my self professionally -- tech moves fast. Overall, I regret playing video games, considering how much time I spent doing it but I don't regret doing it with friends.
saturdaysaint 10y ago
One addictive aspect of gaming that the author doesn't mention is how immersive and perhaps addicting a good gaming scene can be. There are people that live and breathe competitive sports, with most people following a few teams, and it strikes me that videogames have way more addictive potential. First of all, the barriers to entry don't include winning a genetic lottery and/or having high level coaching from a young age, so there's a democratized element. More importantly, with e-sports, you can watch insanely high level play (often with engaging/entertaining personalities) 24/7 for free on your phone, without any of the annoying content protection and walls of most sports. I suspect I would have given up on Street Fighter a while ago without the burgeoning streaming scene keeping me hooked and Reddit offering a lively venue for discussion/learning. So in a sense, it's not "just a game" like grinding away at an RPG or whatever in the 90's in my parent's basement was - at times it can feel just as social as experiences I've had in music scenes.
- chrisdbaldwin 10y ago
  See: Killer Queen Arcade. The underground competitive arcade scene you (probably) don't know about.
- vinw 10y ago
  Don't think addicting is a word yet.
dragontamer 10y ago
> more than 40 percent of Americans play at least three hours a week Watching a single football game per week takes up more time. Honestly, 3-hours / week for an entertainment venue you enjoy is kinda small. The average football game is 3-hours 12 minutes. The average baseball game is 2-hours 54 minutes. I find it strange that in our culture, its fine to spend hours upon hours of watching Football, Basketball, Hockey, Baseball (and then play fantasy football and otherwise participate in social norms for even more hours throughout the week). But a paltry 3-hours of video games spread out in a few sessions per day? That's outrageous! ---------- Lets compare apples to apples here. If you spend 3-hours gaming per week, its equivalent to watching a single game of football or baseball per week. Its honestly nothing to be ashamed of. Now I played "Maple Story" (an awful MMORPG) for 4-hours a day at my peak. THAT is shameful and a waste. But 3-hours a week is more than reasonable, and just as healthy as any other entertainment venue. Hell, its arguably better to actually have your mind active in a video game than other, more passive, forms of entertainment. Real hobbies (music, art, creation, programming, engineering...) probably are the best for your brain though. And you get useful skills to boot.
PravlageTiem 10y ago
Played WoW for years. Grinded most of my members to rank 14. Ran a PvP guild that lost three times in 6 months during this grind. Tricked the entire horde to split forces in AV with 3 deep operatives, allowing Alliance to engage with the horde in two 37 vs. 20 waves, allowing them to win for the first time on that server in a year. I regret none of it. I learned how to lead people in high-stress situations, how to build loyalty, and how to handle high-performance people while feeding their never-ending urge for conquest. I took all those skills and now I run multiple companies in different sectors, all designed to achieve a singular goal when they are all put together.
datatan 10y ago
What an awful article. It's like they spent 5 pages just waiting for an opportunity to called Trump supporters "Trumpists" and label people they dislike. Sad they are so bitter and angry, totally destroys any rational point they may have been trying to make.
douche 10y ago
I've always leaned towards strategy games the most. Some of the best ones are nearly as educational as entertainment. When I was in college, I honestly think that the hours I poured into Europa Universalis and Victoria and Crusader Kings were as effective for learning history as a great deal of the readings I was assigned for class. If nothing more, you learn a lot about geography...
datatan 10y ago
What an awful article. It's like they spent 5 pages just waiting for an opportunity to called Trump supporters "Trumpists" and label people they dislike. Sad they are so bitter and angry, totally destroys any rational point they may have been trying to make.
shmerl 10y ago
I don't really like when computer games are called video games. It kind of lessens their value. Computers allow implementing a lot of different features in gaming, and not all of them are visual.
- marssaxman 10y ago
  They were called "video games" before people started using computers to play them.
  - shmerl 10y ago
    What did they use then if not computers?
    - grzm 10y ago
      Consoles and arcade game machines, to name two. Yes, they're arguably computers at heart, but they're not what are generally understood to be computers in the same way PCs are.
      - shmerl 10y ago
        Those are still computers. Form factor doesn't change that.
        grzm 10y ago
        They weren't called computers or computer games. I understood your initial comment as asking why PC games are sometimes called (improperly in your opinion) video games. If I've misunderstood your intention, please correct me. If this explanation doesn't satisfy you, that's fine. Having lived through that period of time, that's my recollection. Edit to add: I remember getting an early console at a garage sale. I think it was likely a Magnavox Odyssey 200 or 400[0]. I also remember friends with early Atari and Intellivision[1] consoles long before home PCs were common. These were called video games, TV games or by their brand names, as I recall. [0]: http://www.slipperybrick.com/2009/03/atari-vcs-2600/ http://www.slipperybrick.com/2009/03/atari-vcs-2600/ [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellivision https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellivision
nyrulez 10y ago
If anyone loves video games, but wants to able to pace the habit somehow, thought I will mention this thing: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00UY0TS9A/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00UY0TS9A/ It's a pre-commitment device and works great for many things, including gaming. And way better than fighting with and depleting your will power, while not giving up your hobby altogether if it's taking up an undesirable portion of your time.
dvt 10y ago
Guess I might go against the HN grain here. I played Counter-Strike competitively and professional from around 17-22 (I'd say on average 5-6 hours a day). I still play every now and then, but don't compete at tournaments or in leagues. I'm 30 now. Not only was my experience irreplaceable and positive (I made many life-long friends and met many cool people), but it also helped me with many other aspects of "grown-up" life: - I learned to be goal-oriented and focused - I learned how to lead and work with a team to succeed at a common goal - I learned how to weed out shitty people that poison the environment - I learned what it truly takes and how hard it is to be the top 1% at anything (even at a stupid video game) - I learned how to negotiate contracts and balance budgets I think being in the top-tier at anything gives a very specific outlook on things. Playing casually or "just for fun" never really appealed to me as I have a very competitive personality.
- thoughtpalette 10y ago
  Hi there, We may've ran into each other online (I'm 29). I've played CS:S and CS:GO competitively and minor professionally, mostly under the team MM3 (Message Mode 3). I can't stress the importance of video games (especially on my industry skills). Typing skills, debugging, communication, economics, strategy, critical thinking, most of this on-the-fly decision making. It's been an immense help. I now play RocketLeague Competitively at the higher ranks and always wonder if I'm wasting time trying to reach that final high tier. (already made GE in CS:GO/15 LANS). But I'm seeing it start to affect my personal life. I can't stop, and I don't want to stop. Just some anecdotal experience, figure it may be interesting. VagDis|vDis-
- kp1234321 10y ago
  I am finding it very hard to get out of Silver because when I solo queue i frequently get matched with teammates who treat the competitive match like a casual game. Most people either don't use mics at all or they only use them for racial slurs, and many others just play like they don't really care about getting a win. It's difficult to lead the team when I get matched with three other kids who queue up together and dick around the whole match, and it's very demotivating to realize I'll have to endure at least 16 rounds of obnoxious chatter and getting owned. I really do want to get better, but I'm not yet at the point where I can carry an uncooperative team (especially when there are also smurfs on the other team). I feel like a good approach would be to find some consistent players and stop solo queueing, but I'd love to hear if you have any other advice. Also, what has been a good strategy for you to in weeding out toxic players? Definitely seems like an applicable skill in all aspects of life.
nradov 10y ago
Playing most video games feels like doing unpaid work with nothing to show for it in the end.
skookumchuck 10y ago
I stopped because they bored me to tears.
pnathan 10y ago
I played a lot of video games when younger. I regret the amount of time I spent. It deeply harmed my health, harmed my social relationships, harmed my school, and limited my world. It was empty success. My total `/played` in WoW wound up well over 2 years at this point over a 5 year period, I believe. And WoW was not the only game I've played. I've not logged on in years, and I don't care to reactivate and do the math. On the other hand... they were inexpensive entertainment that worked out well for my living situations. Some of them provided great relationships and wonderful bonding experiences with other humans from all over the world. Games motivated me to get into software development. Yet, had I limited myself in time and taken the time saved from games to doing more programming, more art, and more reading (all perfectly doable and feasible for the life situations I was in when I was spending time gaming that much), I'd be a better human today. Period. Video games are fine in responsible amounts, and I consumed in vast and irresponsible amounts. These days I pull out Dwarf Fortress every couple months and spend the evenings on a weekend Striking the Earth, and that's appropriate and responsible in my life at present. I encourage my colleagues who have freshly graduated from college to limit their gaming and to use that time to improve themselves in other ways more engaged in the totality and diversity of human life.
nazka 10y ago
I have been a huge gamer but I stopped to play 5 years ago. I started to play on the master system and all the video games on DOS I could find. I started with Wolfeinshtein 3D, Prince of Persia, Another World since then I never stopped to play video games. It was a great way to "reset my brain to neutral" and to have fun while using my intellect and imagination. Me and my twin spent all our money on it, it was our passion and one of the biggest reasons I wanted to be a developer. We had a PS1 and a PC, friends had a N64 and so on. I was able to play on a lot of platforms to a lot of video games. I loved series that everybody knows like the Zelda, or Tekken knowing all the background stories of each character. I played and loved also less known or banned video games (because being violent it was a thing at that time) like Carmageddon, Die Hard, Road Rush, or Dead Ball Zone... Just thinking about doing a list right make me remember all the games I played and loved. I even remember sharewares that I loved that only a few people know like Chaos Overlords or experimental video games like Black and White. I loved that time and these games teached me a lot. But I also sunk a lot of time playing them. I remember here on HN someone posted an amazing article to explain reverse engineering from the first level to the end boss. And that was really interesting to learn about it from an expert Point of view. You had specifications about different electronic components, he explained different tools he was using... Someone impressed on HN commented about how this was amazing and even more about how he could do all that when him had no time. He came home after a day of coding and plays video games to rest and then sleeps. The author responded that it wasn't as insane as it seemed to have his level (he even did some crazy things in Haskell just for fun for his RE) and he said that all he did was to poke around when he came back home and learn more and more about reverse engineering. Back in the days video games felt to be made with a lot of love from the developers. Now it's really hard for me to find a game I can really dive down. The world is so much wealthier and the games so limited. Even as a pure gamer we can quickly find the limits of a game. I can only find my happiness in indie video games but they are still limited. The rest is all about graphics, additive designs, marketing, or just meh. (The only games that are relevant to me now are Distant World Universe, Assetto Corsa, and Wargame). When You cut yourself of video games, other distractions, and open your mind to see the possibility offer by this world, it's like the impression you have when you play Shenzhen IO. You realize that the real world is complex and hard but that make it makes it so much more interesting and rewarding. I took the real course at Stanford in ML and intent to do the one about convex optimization, I learn a lot about law in general, pattens, finance, investment... (In fact my MacBook right now is sitting Chartered Financial Analyst books) and this month I am learning Kubernetes and techs like that even thought I am not a devops. This wouldn't have been possible by being focused on video games.
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tps5 10y ago
I spent my college years pretty invested in computer games, mostly dota. I stopped when I got a job that I actually wanted to have. For a while I tried to do both, and did. But I was exhausted all the time. Computer games are not passive entertainment (for me anyway), they require a lot of energy. If I could invest 2 hours a day into a computer game, I'd like that. But I can't. Even aside from the energy requirement, I have trouble playing games casually. Performing poorly at something bothers me and the only way to improve is to invest more time (than 2 hours). Anyway, I think this is an uncommonly good article. Computer games taught me that value is totally subjective. You have to pick your own goals, and you'd be making a mistake to adopt the goals of the people around you just because they outvote you. I found value somewhere else, but there's a large segment of the population working boring, low paying jobs that they hate. For some of these people, games will provide far more value than what they're getting out of work. And that's totally fine. It's life and life only.
0xcde4c3db 10y ago
> What did the game offer that the rest of the world could not? To begin with, games make sense, unlike life: As with all sports, digital or analog, there are ground rules that determine success (rules that, unlike those in society, are clear to all). The purpose of a game, within it, unlike in society, is directly recognized and never discounted. I think this is really the underappreciated factor in why people prefer video games to jobs. For some people, it's not that they're lazy and games are an excuse to avoid work, it's that the games are actually a far better work experience than the average job. You don't have to go to any meetings where an HR manager breathlessly explains how the new performance assessment web app is going to make everything better, even though it just looks like a reskin of the one you used last year. You don't have to spend a single nanosecond thinking about whether you're going to be edged out for a promotion by someone who has a better rapport with the boss. There are no especially demanding customers or government budget cuts eating away at the revenue you're paid from. You get to just do the goddamn work.
- Baeocystin 10y ago
  Flow is intoxicating. Simple as that, really.
- dropit_sphere 10y ago
  There is a lot to be said for this. I recently wrote the guide for teamplay with the US Forces army of Company of Heroes 2. USF is widely considered underpowered in team games, because those games often devolve into tank slugfests, and USF lacks heavy tanks. Players who are considered "good" at USF in team games generally play "worse Soviets" --- that is, their playstyle (mass artillery) would be better executed by a different army. I quixotically refused to accept this, and played a ton of games as USF, trying to find a style that played to their strengths and was viable in large team games. It was my top idea in mind for a while, to use pg's concept---the thing I thought about in the shower. Eventually I came up with a style that emphasized flanking, range, kiting, and prioritized taking and using ground. The most important thing was that it was non-gimmicky---that is, it is not an easily counterable one-track pony. I wrote a guide detailing it and the underlying concepts over the course of a couple days, then posted it to the subreddit. I compare this to a React app I recently wrote for a client. We had to work with a kludgy financial API, we had to compromise on certain features to be ready in time for a stakeholder inspection, and some bits of the code are not so great. It's strange, but I almost wish I lived in a universe where I could put the CoH 2 guide on my resume, and not the client work. It's a better product, it represents (relatively) pioneering intellectual work, and I can take full credit for all of it with clear conscience. Of course, no one will make any money off of it; it will not feed any hungry mouths, and an overweening preference for solo projects can signify difficulty working with others. But: the experience of working on it was great, and I can look back and say, "I did a good job, at a hard thing, that conventional wisdom believed was impossible."
dpeterson 10y ago
I recently just started playing a videogame again. The last time I played was World of Warcraft in 2005. I stopped to fulfill my career goals, get a masters degree and strike it rich working on my own startup. Well, as the years went by I kept telling myself, any day now my startup will take off and I can go back to enjoying my life and do things like play video games. Uh uh. The only thing I have to show for my years of programming and working endlessly on my startup outside of work is horrible anxiety (I hope but it could be much worse). So, here I am, 12 years older and back playing World of Warcraft where I started. I should have been enjoying my life the whole time. Live and Learn.
triode3 10y ago
Because the video card you need for awesome modern games costs more than my whole damn computer? That's why I quit.
triode3 10y ago
Because a modern video card "Good enough" to play those awesome modern games costs more than my whole damn computer? That's why I quit.
bobbington 10y ago
My dad was a genius. I learned how to code c++ in middle school because my dad had a great rule: you can only play video games you create, except for 1 hour on Saturday. It was a brilliant rule, and I had a blast learning to code. I didn't end up playing my pong game too much. But I learned an amazing life skill which now pays my bills. And the feeling of creating my own installable program was way better than any video game
- kazagistar 10y ago
  I had a higher base quota, but my parents did something very similar, where working on creating and playing my own games didn't count against it.
DaveSapien 10y ago
I love games. I make games. I don't have the time to play games. This is my problem. If anyone has advice on how to play more, i'd love to hear it.
chis 10y ago
This is a cool article, don't get me wrong. But is there a name for the fallacy of just categorizing things instead doing actual analysis? You really have to stretch to fit some games into the "levels" of graphics, narrative, objectives and economy.
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vesak 10y ago
If I would play games for 90% of the time I currently spend on Reddit, Hacker News, Twitter, Facebook, etc, I'd be a better man. Happier and more effective. I think I'll start doing exactly that. http://www.hackernewsletter.com/ http://www.hackernewsletter.com/
temp-ora 10y ago
i absolutely hate and detest the way that he talks about his associate dropping out of college. he says something like "he dropped out of college but he was ok, just graduated late." he says this as if not graduating from college is like getting some kind of terrible disease. i was having a family dinner with a bunch of extended family one time and i jokingly told them i was going to drop out and go into the trades. they all recoiled in horror, literally making that gasping sound you hear in movies. "certainly not!" there should be absolutely no shame or indignity in not being able to or wanting to finish a college degree. it shouldnt be a status symbol.
temp-ora 10y ago
some video games are just additive and mindless. others are works of art and thought provoking. you should only play the former in limited amounts. spending lots of time in the latter can be justified if you are thinking about and appreciating the game while you play it because it will spur productive activities afterwards -- you will develop questions and passions based on the game that will linger long after playing and those will lead to building and creating things of your own. half life 2 is a good example of that in my opinion.
kybernetyk 10y ago
Time. Or lack of it. I can enjoy video games only when I can get really good at them. And I simply can't get really good at something if I'm doing it only for a few hours on the weekend.
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donovanm 10y ago
For me I just realized I wasn't very fulfilled by playing video games all of the time. Nowadays I still like to play games but in smaller amounts. Instead of building things in games I now find myself wanting to build software projects :p.
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247 points by pmcpinto 10y ago

I tried quitting video games cold turkey shortly before starting university. At the time, I was a huge Diablo II and Broodwar player. It was probably all that I ever did or thought about on a day to day basis during highschool. At lunch, my friends and I would hang out on Battle.net in the computer lab and then again, after school, probably from 5pm to 11:30pm every day (with 11:30pm to 1am dedicated to school work). I was pretty much obsessively playing these games to the point that my schoolwork started to suffer as well as relationships with parents and siblings. I'd get into daily fights with my parents about how much time I was spending online.... luckily I was somehow able to keep my grades pretty decent and got accepted into a good university. During university it was League of Legends every day. After graduating, I racked up almost 4000 hours of Team Fortress 2 in a two year period in addition to a few thousand hours of World of Tanks. I can honestly say that I regret all of it and I now look at my 'hours spent playing X' Steam statistic in shame. The thing with all of these games is that time spent playing them is a sunk cost, not an investment. You will never get it back. You will never acquire any returns for your time except for the immediate gratification you receive while playing it. And your real life problems won't just go away but will probably just get worse for lack of attentiveness. If you are consciously aware of these facts and that is what you are after, then great! But I think many people get sucked into the addictive side of video games unwittingly. It's just a fact that most of these games have been psychologically designed to keep you playing for as long as possible -as long as you keep playing it, you can retain that sense of fake fulfillment and defer whatever reality you were trying to escape from in the first place. Day after day passes by in the blink of an eye because your brain gets put on auto-pilot, and those hard realities never get any easier. "Achievements", ladder ranking, collecting digital pixels... it's all just so meaningless in real life. These things turn people who might otherwise have followed their natural curiosities or be great producers of things (be it code, reading, writing, art, music, etc) into mindless consumers craving that next fake reward. And to me that is a pity. I wish I could have spent all those hours developing my real life interests instead. All told, I'm probably behind by 5-6 years in terms of technical proficiency and just maturity-wise compared to the peers I look up to the most. I have nothing to make up for those deficiencies except perhaps an overactive adrenal gland and some mild social anxiety. Video game experiences are, by their very nature, virtual and transient. Would you not rather spend your time honing a skill or producing something of real value (that doesn't end when the servers shut down), something to look back fondly upon when you're older? The only game worth playing is the game of life.

Taylor_OD 10y ago

Every 6 months or so I find a game that swoops in and eats up all my time. Usually it is a valuable and rewarding experience and its missed once I complete the game. Then I spend 6 months trying games from my steam library until I find another one that has that special something. It's not the best method but I try to set a timer for 30 minutes 3 times a week and try a new game I've never played. It's obviously not a perfect method but often that's enough time to decide if I want to dedicate more time to that game.

cableshaft 10y ago
Last year for me it was The Witness, Life is Strange, and to a lesser extent Monument Valley. Those were all excellent. This year the first one is Civilization VI, but I fully expected that.
- Taylor_OD 10y ago
  I believe I own all of those! I'll check them out. Thanks!
- Taylor_OD 10y ago
  Hey! I just played Inside. It's made by the same creators of Limbo which was a hit a couple years back. The whole game took me about 3 hours but it was great. Puzzle focused but they were just difficult enough that I never got frustrated and blended into the game enough that they almost didnt feel like puzzles. Check it out!

arcanus 10y ago

>155 million Americans play video games, more than the number who voted in November’s presidential election. And they play them a lot: According to a variety of recent studies, more than 40 percent of Americans play at least three hours a week I'm among them. I play a few hours a week, after my wife and child go to bed. I barely talk about games with any of my fellow adult friends, because for some reason it is still too needing a world where discussing programming, star trek movies or settlers of Cataan is commonplace!

robin__ 10y ago
I'm jealous. Every time I try a game, I totally suck at it. Even the easy difficulty is not easy enough anymore. Nowadays, I only enjoy puzzle games if anything at all.
- zardo 10y ago
  Totally sucking at something is the first step on the road to being pretty okay at something.
- theandrewbailey 10y ago
  That's strange. Gamers have been complaining that games have been getting easier over time, to the point that 'normal' difficulty on many games (especially heavily marketed ones) is too easy.
  - ryandrake 10y ago
    There's the key: Gamers have been complaining, not normal people. When I used to be a gamer (meaning I didn't have anything else to do with my life than get better at games), I could literally spend hundreds of hours mastering a single game. When you're at that level, games seem easy. Now, I casually will pick up a game once every three months or so and play, and for some games unless it's the easiest difficulty level, I get my ass kicked. Online (vs. "gamers")? Forget it. I totally get the "difficulty inflation" that's happening.
  - barrkel 10y ago

overcast 10y ago

Honestly I don't see the thirty something generation ever giving up video games. They've been a part of our entire lives at this point. Once we're old, it will be a case where no generation has ever been without video games in some capacity.

alexchantavy 10y ago
There's also probably going to be a huge market in making games that older people can play when this generation hits retirement age.
- krapht 10y ago
  I don't see any reason why retirement-age me won't be able to play Super Mario 2060. Adjustable difficulty, whether through mechanical tweaks or competitive multiplayer matchmaking should be good enough?
  - cableshaft 10y ago
    Mario already offers invincibility and constant flying items you can take if you die a lot in the recent games, so you should be all set to play Mario 2060 :).
- mikestew 10y ago
  I'm bumping up against retirement age, and I'll still kick your ass at Titanfall (well, maybe; the odds are good, but not assured). Call of Duty, meh, not so much. I foresee a time where playing some twitch games aren't going to work for me anymore. But anything with the slightest hint of tactical gameplay and this oldster-in-the-making will be fine, I think. Especially the Tom Clancy games where "run and gun" just gets you killed more quickly. I look forward to Rainbow Six: Palm Springs with the Naples DLC expansion pack.
  - civilian 10y ago
    My dad just turned 65 and he still has no interest in video games except for solitaire. But I really think that he'd enjoy video games, especially as a way to keep an active mental life in retirement. I tried to explain the "it's almost-real physics!" angle of Kerbal Space Program, but that wasn't persuasive. Any tips? Also, have you played Overwatch or TF2? I found both of those more interesting than Titanfall-- and a wise player can really help a team by jumping into the role that isn't present on a team.

paublyrne 10y ago

I would love to play games still. I certainly enjoyed it in my teens and in periods in my 20s where I had more free time than I do now. They can be a real time sink though, so I don't allow myself to buy a console. I barely find time for the pursuits I want to enjoy as it is.

scottmcleod 10y ago
"..so I don't allow myself to buy a console." this is common with so many other people I know (and try to convince to game with me as Adults). I think its all too common to watch Nextflix & HBO for 20 hours in a week, but video games are taboo, despite being more social and cognitively enhancing.
- jeron 10y ago
  to say Netflix and HBO is fine but gaming is too much of a time drain makes no sense. I've banned myself from both during the work week. The amount of reclaimed time is insane and I feel a lot more productive.
- gozur88 10y ago
  The difference is there's no length to most video games. If you sit down to watch a movie you've blocked out ninety minutes (or whatever), and when the movie is over you're not going to tell yourself "I'll just watch for five more minutes." If you're the kind of person who can't ignore that voice you'll end up spending a lot more time gaming than you intended, particularly if your game of choice has some sort of level treadmill.
  - ashark 10y ago
    You also don't suffer for spending 2-3hrs watching a movie then waiting indefinitely before watching another. Even if you're watching a series of movies they were originally released months to years apart, so you'll be fine when you pick it back up—a glance at the Wikipedia summary for the previous entry will do if you feel it's necessary. With video games, take weeks off and you'll have forgotten the story (if any/relevant) and how to play effectively. At least that's my experience with single-player games—if I take too much time off I just have to start over, because I'll be too bad at it to handle the later stages I'm in on my last save, won't remember enough of the story, and will have lost my connection to the characters.

TulliusCicero 10y ago

Playing games is rad and cool, and there are many studies demonstrating various cognitive benefits. One of my favorite was on the elderly playing Rise of Nations, a critically-acclaimed RTS that's a sort of blend between Civilization and Age of Empires: https://news.illinois.edu/blog/view/6367/206094 https://news.illinois.edu/blog/view/6367/206094 > The researchers found that training on the video game did improve the participants' performance on a number of these tests. As a group, the gamers became significantly better - and faster - at switching between tasks compared with the comparison group. Their working memory, as reflected in the tests, also was significantly improved. Their reasoning ability was enhanced. To a lesser extent, their short-term memory of visual cues was better than that of their peers, as was their ability to identify rotated objects.

cableshaft 10y ago
They really need to make a proper sequel to Rise of Nations. That game was great. Also loved its single-player metagame mode.
- TulliusCicero 10y ago
  Well, at least they released an HD version on Steam.

gnarcoregrizz 10y ago

I've been semi-hooked on counter-strike for the past few years. I started getting into it again after I got sick, and now some of my long distance high school and college friends jumped on the bandwagon again and we play regularly. Its a great way to stay in touch and socialize, as well as just have fun playing the game. Its also SUPER competitive which has its upsides and downsides. It makes the game dynamic, you constantly need to stay on top of the 'meta' to be good, but at the same time its tiresome, so its not a casual game at higher levels. As with anything, it does come at a real life expense - I have 700 hours on the game, and I need to remind myself when to cut the cord or to take a week off. I usually play 0-2 hrs a day now. Overall, spending a nice weekend outside with friends and family is a lot better than spending it playing video games.

M_Grey 10y ago
Balance. It's a theme that runs through absolutely everything in life, and video games are no exception.
PascLeRasc 10y ago
I'm also at around 700 hours of CS:GO. I find it to be the most enjoyable and probably my best playing after a very long day of work, usually with a cup of coffee or a beer. It's just not as satisfying to play on my days off. Totally agree on spending a weekend outside with friends instead. I don't really think meta knowledge/research is needed to play competitive though. I used to be really into learning nade throws and watching pro pushes and retakes, and now that I barely have time to play at all I'm still around the same rank.
mandlar 10y ago
If you like CS, then you should check out Rainbow Six Siege. Very similar play style (one life rounds with an objective). Everyone chooses a unique operator (each operator has their own weapon set/special ability). It's a lot of fun and reminds me of the days I used to play CS in college 10 years ago.

Razengan 10y ago

For all you know, real life could be a video game played by some higher dimensional beings.

2Pacalypse- 10y ago
For all you know, that higher dimensional beings' real life could be a video game played by an even higher dimensional beings. It's turtles all they way down.
CuriouslyC 10y ago
Plot twist, your consciousness is actually a property of those higher dimensional beings, and our reality is like a hive-mind group dream.
mistercow 10y ago
This guy is taking Roy off the grid.

my_ghola 10y ago

I've replaced watching movies and TV with videogames. It's more engaging and a single video game can give me 30 to 60 hours of entertainment compared to a TV series that gives me 6 to 12.

cpeterso 10y ago
Somewhere between TV and video games, I started watching "Let's Play" game walkthrough videos of favorite Sierra Online adventure games from my childhood that I never completed. You get to discover the stories' secrets without the frustration, plus many of people recording the walkthroughs are pretty funny. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let%27s_Play https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let%27s_Play
- gozur88 10y ago
  It's funny you should mention that. I replaced my TV watching with video games, but over the last year have spent a lot of time watching other people play on twitch. Kind of going full circle.

rthomas6 10y ago

I used to play games a lot, and I don't now. It's not that I don't want to or that I wouldn't enjoy it, I just want to do too many other things more. I have a wife and a kid who demand a lot of my time, I lift weights, I try to play board games with friends, I work on hobby projects, I read books, I do chores, I go on trips. As much as getting immersed into the new Witcher game would be enjoyable to me, I just can't fit it in. All those other things are more important and make me happier.

ashark 10y ago
Similar situation here. With the time constraints imposed by kids you have to drop entire categories of activities, not just moderate them, because the baseline time commitment ("oh god, last time I played this was 2 weeks ago and I only played an hour then—I have no idea WTF was going on or how the controls work") and money (PC upgrades every couple of years, new consoles) required just can't be sustained at the incredibly low levels they'd have to to fit in with kids plus a bunch of other things. You kinda have to pick 3-4 things to focus on and drop the rest entirely, not just cut back. If one of those is "stay sort-of in shape" then you're really limited. Most gaming just doesn't fit in any more. :-/
- greggman 10y ago
  Everyone makes their own priorities. I have many friends with kids that somehow manage to find time to play video games. I don't find the time anymore and I don't have kids so I have no clue how they do it but I see them posting about them all the time. One has 2 kids, and other has 2 kids, one has three kids, another has 2. They guy who has three also manages to play guitar and do photography and raise 3 kids. I don't know how he does it
- markdoubleyou 10y ago
  Kids triggered an impulse to take my career to the next level, so between work, family, maintaining a bare minimum level of fitness, and professional development, I've got nothing left to give games. TV has taken a major hit, too. Something in my brain clicked after the first one was born... an ok-you're-an-adult-stop-fucking-around mode was triggered. The result is that the lack of free time doesn't bother me that much. Too busy and tired to care, maybe.

laplace2 10y ago

I've found learning and creating to be more fulfilling activities than videogames. That's not to advocate against gaming, or to generalize all games, but I've thought about how much time I spent playing games in the past and if I was happy with what I gained from it: I largely was not. I felt as if I was lacking in skills that I wished I had, and believe I could have learned in that time. I'm happier with myself after cutting down greatly on gaming, and I wonder if other people share the same joy of learning that I feel or if it's an unpopular perspective. Add.: What I believe causes a game to feel unfulfilling is if after the game is finished the player, and the world, is (nearly) unchanged. If there's nothing to show for it. No new philosophy, no useful talent, no object created, nothing to share with others. Most games are equivalent in their impact to a bad reality TV show, a distraction from progress, a time sink, a void.

M_Grey 10y ago
I find that videogames fill my "brain in neutral" space very nicely. If I'm just not in the mood to read, or get out, pick up some new skill or polish an old one, hang out with friends or do something productive (and sometimes you truly want to do nothing)... I find that videogames are a nice choice. I especially enjoy combining them with unabridged audiobooks that I might not otherwise bother reading/listening to otherwise. The trick is to make sure that you resist the temptation to allow that empty time (like empty calories) to dominate your life. It's like ice cream... a little is great stuff, but don't make eating it the center of your lifestyle.
- droopyEyelids 10y ago
  I believe the essence of what you're saying is true, but I dispute the overall reasonableness of what you describe. The vast majority of video games are either built around the principles of addiction, or require a tremendous amount of time in muscle memory training. What you're describing seems like describing how enjoyable it can be to smoke one cigarette a month. (assuming that actually felt good). Could be true- but the odds are certainly stacked against people attempting that behavior.
  - 10y ago

beat 10y ago

I used to say I don't play videogames for the same reason I don't shoot drugs into my eyeballs. Then I got a medical condition that required injecting drugs into my eyeball once a month. I still don't play videogames, but take that, Keith Richards!

2Pacalypse- 10y ago

I've been playing a single video game for more than half of my life (I'm 30 now). I've dabbled with other games, but this game and the community around it contributed a lot in making me the person I am today. I don't plan on stopping any time soon. In fact, for the past few years I've shifted most of my free time from playing that game to helping a friend develop cool shit[0] for it, so we can hopefully prolong its lifetime. Programming and gaming go so well together that I'm pretty sure I'll continue hacking on some old games when I'm 60. [0] - https://shieldbattery.net https://shieldbattery.net

vvvv 10y ago
Hello brother, this game almost broke me and then, I guess, made me in many ways. I can't play without getting too into it, though to be fair, I haven't tried in a while.
Humdeee 10y ago
From your first sentence, I knew it was BW. We're the same age. I remember very clearly all those nights fighting away on WGT and later, the PGT ladder. I remember when the patch hit that allowed everyone to save replays. I remember BWChart and how revolutionary it was at the time. The anti-hack programs you needed to run in the background. Traveling to play in the world cyber games once a year. Fighting for a spot on the national team to be involved in nation wars. Although it was virtual, team 88) and team [LighT] made those years for me.
spicytunacone 10y ago
Hey 2Pac. While not nearly as focused on BW as you are, it and a handful of other competitive gaming scenes I feel were pretty key during my formative years as well. I loved the attitude to improvement: break down an issue you're having into simpler pieces and figure them out to paraphrase a Spooky adage of yore[0]. Considering that's the essense of what we do in math and CS, it's hard to not see a connection. Sounds cheesy but learning how to play 3rd Strike as a young teen made me see I could help myself much more than I previously believed. Unlike some SC2 posters in this article, being a part of long-established communities as opposed to one explosively (and unsustainably) growing one, I didn't have ambitions of grandeur and was just able to enjoy it all at my pace, too. I think my only regret is forgoing single-player games with that time. Trails in the Sky FC put on hold to ladder on Fish while the iron's hot, heh. Everytime I had thought my video game interests shelved, all it took was a friend to bring their console over where before long we're talking about best approaches to X, a trip to a Japanese arcade or for TBLS to all qualify for the largest BW offline tournament in recent history before I developed a hunger for it all again. So yeah, I don't see myself abstaining in the long, long run even if it's just to develop a little something. Best of luck with SB, didn't know you were part of the team! [0] https://www.twitch.tv/teamsp00ky https://www.twitch.tv/teamsp00ky

robertcorey 10y ago

Playing starcraft 2 totally consumed my life from about 18-22. It was very similar to a drug addiction except I convinced myself it was positive because I would eventually be a professional. My addiction prevented my from working on the underlying issues that caused my to seek refuge in the game. It also left me with a host of physical RSI problems that have been a huge negative to my life + career. Although if I hadn't developed them I suspect I'd still be consumed by games. In order to spend vast amounts of time playing video games you have to be at a certain level of privilege. I feel as if video games have cheated myself out of potential as well as those that my privilege obligates to help. As with other addictions there are people who won't be consumed by it like I was, and prohibition isn't the solution, not sure what is tbh.

some-guy 10y ago
Very similar story to me: I played Starcraft 2 throughout college in a competitive fashion and made me feel worse. There was a period of time after that where after quitting I wouldn't touch a video game. I've since picked up a Nintendo 3DS as an experiment now that I take long train rides to work, and it's been an amazing, relaxing experience. I guess what I'm trying to say is, there are many different ways to enjoy video games without being addicted or even playing a lot. Starcraft 2 ladder play may be one of the more stressful ways of going about it from experience.
- VonGuard 10y ago
  I feel like both of your stories could easily be rewritten and replace videogames with sports. Many people spend their high school and college lives completely dedicated to football, basketball, baseball, or hockey with the idea that they'll go pro eventually. These folks can come away with wasted college time, physical injuries, and hideous aversion to the sport they once loved. I guess what I am saying is that I feel like this is an athlete/esports thing, not necesarily a videogame thing. Without the lure of a career behind it, it wouldn't be quite so dangerous a thing. But as with all fun careers, the demands are super high and the number of people who make it is super small. Acting is like this too, without the physical injuries.

twoquestions 10y ago

I used to play video games a lot, especially 'builder' type games like Harvest Moon 64 or SimCity. These days however, I feel guilty whenever I fire up a game, even one I really enjoy. I feel like I should be doing something more 'real', like playing guitar or building something, even if it's trivial. It's strange, because in the end enjoying my time gaming with my friends or playing guitar with them or building things for them add up to be the same.

ajeet_dhaliwal 10y ago

Games, especially Japanese video games are why I got into programming, got into the games industry, why I'm on this site. I limit my time playing them now due to work, my entreprenuerial engagements, wife and two children but I just got finished with Final Fantasty XV two days ago and it was the most magical time. Ignis is my new favorite game character. I'm convinced games are a better story telling medium than books, movies and TV. I never remember the details of anything I've watched but with a game I always remember because i actively participate in caring for the characters, healing them, making them grow. There is a negative side, they can be too engaging, too much fun and too rewarding in an instant gratification sense. Sales at your startup not going well? A game can make you feel good, getting bullied at school? A game will help, but really we should deal with the real problem and then make time for games. If you do that they are great and I'm convinced they will get better and we have not seen anywhere near the full potential yet.

tehchromic 10y ago

Because beekeeping and ping pong are more fun! That said, I'm interested in farm integrated gaming. I think there are ways to make automation adventurous. Properly this will be different than what we call gaming today, however I think the answer to your question is that when tech assisted activities are diversion from reality they tend to go out if style. When they amend it and make it cooler they tend to become it!

KirinDave 10y ago

Yes, playing games is fun. In no small part because they're carefully engineered to engage you, provide a path to success, and otherwise resemble a theme park experience. Even games like EVE Online that pride themselves on being massive PvP arenas are carefully tuned to make constant conflict a reality. Not many people here know this but I have a youtube channel where I have done an absolute ton of gaming content (mostly minecraft, but perhaps most famously a Dwarf Fortress tutorial series), as a way to practice my speech and work through a very difficult stutter. And while I still respect and root for my full time youtuber friends, for me it felt like such an emply lifestyle. Ultimately you're just walking along in other people's stories, experiencing other people's visions, and working within other people's limits was increasingly galling. And short of becoming unpaid labor for those games via their modding scenes, you are a passenger in someone else's car on someone else's map. Like television (and probably better than television, from a cognitive perspective), gaming is a great escape. But making it more and more of your life as some of this article suggests is a recipe for gradually detaching yourself from real life, real problems and real accomplishments. It's an addictive escapism, and ever year the authors of said escapism refine their techniques in a ruthless competition to keep you captivated. And the best minecraft fort or cleverest warframe trick I've pulled off pales in accomplishment to selling a company I built, teaching a new developer a new skill, or anything similar. The minute that gaming becomes an end until itself, you end up sliding down a slippery slope to irrelevance.

CRUDmeariver 10y ago

I have gone through several periods in my life where I have obsessively played video games, usually followed by me selling the console in disgust with myself and buying a new one ~1.5 years later. What has changed for me lately is building a gaming PC. I have found that this beast new PC, and the things I can do with it, are more interesting to me than most games. My single favorite game that has drawn me in the most is Metal Gear Solid V. It's very slow paced and tactical but still an action game. You have to make a lot of intelligent decisions and formulate your own strategy to infiltrate the buildings. Plus there is a whole Civilization-esque aspect where you build your own paramilitary organization and deal with things like personnel and budgets. Add on top of that the insane supernatural geopolitics of the story and it is a very engrossing experience.

terminalcommand 10y ago
Could you give some examples as to the benefits of building a killer PC? What interesting things can you do with it, that you previously couldn't? Or is it simply the speed and the ease of use? I'm also thinking of building a desktop PC, but I'm afraid that I won't be needing it. I don't game, I mostly write programs and browse the web. Does it really change things in terms of latency and if it does, does that have an impact on the relationship with your computer?
- CRUDmeariver 10y ago
  For me it is doing big data processing that your average laptop cannot handle well. I have the top Core i7 and I see it as a challenge using it to the fullest. You can run the heaviest clunkiest IDE with ease. Also the flexibility and resiliency of having multiple hard drives (a sacrosanct SSD for the system, and a HDD for messing around). Plus I can run VMs with ease when I get tired of Windows. Easily extendable RAM, tons of usb ports, the list goes on... Plus it was fun to build and I learned a lot.

panic 10y ago

Great article, but I disagree with this section: Fourth: economics. Since every game is reliant on this addictive incentive system, every gamer harbors a game theorist, a situational logician blindly valorizing the optimization of quantified indices of “growth” — in other words, an economist. Resource management is to video games what African-American English is to rap music or what the visible sex act is to pornography — the element without which all else is unimaginable. In games as in the market, numbers come first. They have to go up. Our job is to keep up with them, and all else can wait or go to hell. Numbers and economic incentive systems show up in many games, but they're not fundamental. Take a look at games like Journey, Portal, Gone Home, Yume Nikki, or many others which work just fine without numbers. The creator of Undertale, Toby Fox, had this to say in an interview (http://existentialgamer.com/interview-toby-fox-undertale http://existentialgamer.com/interview-toby-fox-undertale): TEG: I really loved the fact that many of the branches in UNDERTALE‘s story seemed to lead to miniature “voids” where I was forced to contemplate what I’d just experienced without being “improved” in any quantitative way. Do you think that as gamers and people we have become addicted to numbers / money / experience in general? TF: The addictive quality of “numbers increasing” is what drives a lot of games. But some of the most important things in life can’t be accurately represented by numbers. As for people’s lives, I have no comment.

dk8996 10y ago

I used to play video games a lot. CS, Sim games, Strategy Games were my thing. Now I find them boring. I found other activities that are more fulfilling like crossfit and yoga. I also spend most of my freed up time improving my self professionally -- tech moves fast. Overall, I regret playing video games, considering how much time I spent doing it but I don't regret doing it with friends.

saturdaysaint 10y ago

One addictive aspect of gaming that the author doesn't mention is how immersive and perhaps addicting a good gaming scene can be. There are people that live and breathe competitive sports, with most people following a few teams, and it strikes me that videogames have way more addictive potential. First of all, the barriers to entry don't include winning a genetic lottery and/or having high level coaching from a young age, so there's a democratized element. More importantly, with e-sports, you can watch insanely high level play (often with engaging/entertaining personalities) 24/7 for free on your phone, without any of the annoying content protection and walls of most sports. I suspect I would have given up on Street Fighter a while ago without the burgeoning streaming scene keeping me hooked and Reddit offering a lively venue for discussion/learning. So in a sense, it's not "just a game" like grinding away at an RPG or whatever in the 90's in my parent's basement was - at times it can feel just as social as experiences I've had in music scenes.

chrisdbaldwin 10y ago
See: Killer Queen Arcade. The underground competitive arcade scene you (probably) don't know about.
vinw 10y ago
Don't think addicting is a word yet.

dragontamer 10y ago

> more than 40 percent of Americans play at least three hours a week Watching a single football game per week takes up more time. Honestly, 3-hours / week for an entertainment venue you enjoy is kinda small. The average football game is 3-hours 12 minutes. The average baseball game is 2-hours 54 minutes. I find it strange that in our culture, its fine to spend hours upon hours of watching Football, Basketball, Hockey, Baseball (and then play fantasy football and otherwise participate in social norms for even more hours throughout the week). But a paltry 3-hours of video games spread out in a few sessions per day? That's outrageous! ---------- Lets compare apples to apples here. If you spend 3-hours gaming per week, its equivalent to watching a single game of football or baseball per week. Its honestly nothing to be ashamed of. Now I played "Maple Story" (an awful MMORPG) for 4-hours a day at my peak. THAT is shameful and a waste. But 3-hours a week is more than reasonable, and just as healthy as any other entertainment venue. Hell, its arguably better to actually have your mind active in a video game than other, more passive, forms of entertainment. Real hobbies (music, art, creation, programming, engineering...) probably are the best for your brain though. And you get useful skills to boot.

PravlageTiem 10y ago

Played WoW for years. Grinded most of my members to rank 14. Ran a PvP guild that lost three times in 6 months during this grind. Tricked the entire horde to split forces in AV with 3 deep operatives, allowing Alliance to engage with the horde in two 37 vs. 20 waves, allowing them to win for the first time on that server in a year. I regret none of it. I learned how to lead people in high-stress situations, how to build loyalty, and how to handle high-performance people while feeding their never-ending urge for conquest. I took all those skills and now I run multiple companies in different sectors, all designed to achieve a singular goal when they are all put together.

datatan 10y ago

What an awful article. It's like they spent 5 pages just waiting for an opportunity to called Trump supporters "Trumpists" and label people they dislike. Sad they are so bitter and angry, totally destroys any rational point they may have been trying to make.

douche 10y ago

I've always leaned towards strategy games the most. Some of the best ones are nearly as educational as entertainment. When I was in college, I honestly think that the hours I poured into Europa Universalis and Victoria and Crusader Kings were as effective for learning history as a great deal of the readings I was assigned for class. If nothing more, you learn a lot about geography...

datatan 10y ago

shmerl 10y ago

I don't really like when computer games are called video games. It kind of lessens their value. Computers allow implementing a lot of different features in gaming, and not all of them are visual.

marssaxman 10y ago
They were called "video games" before people started using computers to play them.
- shmerl 10y ago
  What did they use then if not computers?
  - grzm 10y ago
    Consoles and arcade game machines, to name two. Yes, they're arguably computers at heart, but they're not what are generally understood to be computers in the same way PCs are.
    - shmerl 10y ago
      Those are still computers. Form factor doesn't change that.
      - grzm 10y ago
        They weren't called computers or computer games. I understood your initial comment as asking why PC games are sometimes called (improperly in your opinion) video games. If I've misunderstood your intention, please correct me. If this explanation doesn't satisfy you, that's fine. Having lived through that period of time, that's my recollection. Edit to add: I remember getting an early console at a garage sale. I think it was likely a Magnavox Odyssey 200 or 400[0]. I also remember friends with early Atari and Intellivision[1] consoles long before home PCs were common. These were called video games, TV games or by their brand names, as I recall. [0]: http://www.slipperybrick.com/2009/03/atari-vcs-2600/ http://www.slipperybrick.com/2009/03/atari-vcs-2600/ [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellivision https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellivision

nyrulez 10y ago

If anyone loves video games, but wants to able to pace the habit somehow, thought I will mention this thing: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00UY0TS9A/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00UY0TS9A/ It's a pre-commitment device and works great for many things, including gaming. And way better than fighting with and depleting your will power, while not giving up your hobby altogether if it's taking up an undesirable portion of your time.

dvt 10y ago

Guess I might go against the HN grain here. I played Counter-Strike competitively and professional from around 17-22 (I'd say on average 5-6 hours a day). I still play every now and then, but don't compete at tournaments or in leagues. I'm 30 now. Not only was my experience irreplaceable and positive (I made many life-long friends and met many cool people), but it also helped me with many other aspects of "grown-up" life: - I learned to be goal-oriented and focused - I learned how to lead and work with a team to succeed at a common goal - I learned how to weed out shitty people that poison the environment - I learned what it truly takes and how hard it is to be the top 1% at anything (even at a stupid video game) - I learned how to negotiate contracts and balance budgets I think being in the top-tier at anything gives a very specific outlook on things. Playing casually or "just for fun" never really appealed to me as I have a very competitive personality.

thoughtpalette 10y ago
Hi there, We may've ran into each other online (I'm 29). I've played CS:S and CS:GO competitively and minor professionally, mostly under the team MM3 (Message Mode 3). I can't stress the importance of video games (especially on my industry skills). Typing skills, debugging, communication, economics, strategy, critical thinking, most of this on-the-fly decision making. It's been an immense help. I now play RocketLeague Competitively at the higher ranks and always wonder if I'm wasting time trying to reach that final high tier. (already made GE in CS:GO/15 LANS). But I'm seeing it start to affect my personal life. I can't stop, and I don't want to stop. Just some anecdotal experience, figure it may be interesting. VagDis|vDis-
kp1234321 10y ago
I am finding it very hard to get out of Silver because when I solo queue i frequently get matched with teammates who treat the competitive match like a casual game. Most people either don't use mics at all or they only use them for racial slurs, and many others just play like they don't really care about getting a win. It's difficult to lead the team when I get matched with three other kids who queue up together and dick around the whole match, and it's very demotivating to realize I'll have to endure at least 16 rounds of obnoxious chatter and getting owned. I really do want to get better, but I'm not yet at the point where I can carry an uncooperative team (especially when there are also smurfs on the other team). I feel like a good approach would be to find some consistent players and stop solo queueing, but I'd love to hear if you have any other advice. Also, what has been a good strategy for you to in weeding out toxic players? Definitely seems like an applicable skill in all aspects of life.

nradov 10y ago

Playing most video games feels like doing unpaid work with nothing to show for it in the end.

skookumchuck 10y ago

I stopped because they bored me to tears.

pnathan 10y ago

I played a lot of video games when younger. I regret the amount of time I spent. It deeply harmed my health, harmed my social relationships, harmed my school, and limited my world. It was empty success. My total `/played` in WoW wound up well over 2 years at this point over a 5 year period, I believe. And WoW was not the only game I've played. I've not logged on in years, and I don't care to reactivate and do the math. On the other hand... they were inexpensive entertainment that worked out well for my living situations. Some of them provided great relationships and wonderful bonding experiences with other humans from all over the world. Games motivated me to get into software development. Yet, had I limited myself in time and taken the time saved from games to doing more programming, more art, and more reading (all perfectly doable and feasible for the life situations I was in when I was spending time gaming that much), I'd be a better human today. Period. Video games are fine in responsible amounts, and I consumed in vast and irresponsible amounts. These days I pull out Dwarf Fortress every couple months and spend the evenings on a weekend Striking the Earth, and that's appropriate and responsible in my life at present. I encourage my colleagues who have freshly graduated from college to limit their gaming and to use that time to improve themselves in other ways more engaged in the totality and diversity of human life.

nazka 10y ago

I have been a huge gamer but I stopped to play 5 years ago. I started to play on the master system and all the video games on DOS I could find. I started with Wolfeinshtein 3D, Prince of Persia, Another World since then I never stopped to play video games. It was a great way to "reset my brain to neutral" and to have fun while using my intellect and imagination. Me and my twin spent all our money on it, it was our passion and one of the biggest reasons I wanted to be a developer. We had a PS1 and a PC, friends had a N64 and so on. I was able to play on a lot of platforms to a lot of video games. I loved series that everybody knows like the Zelda, or Tekken knowing all the background stories of each character. I played and loved also less known or banned video games (because being violent it was a thing at that time) like Carmageddon, Die Hard, Road Rush, or Dead Ball Zone... Just thinking about doing a list right make me remember all the games I played and loved. I even remember sharewares that I loved that only a few people know like Chaos Overlords or experimental video games like Black and White. I loved that time and these games teached me a lot. But I also sunk a lot of time playing them. I remember here on HN someone posted an amazing article to explain reverse engineering from the first level to the end boss. And that was really interesting to learn about it from an expert Point of view. You had specifications about different electronic components, he explained different tools he was using... Someone impressed on HN commented about how this was amazing and even more about how he could do all that when him had no time. He came home after a day of coding and plays video games to rest and then sleeps. The author responded that it wasn't as insane as it seemed to have his level (he even did some crazy things in Haskell just for fun for his RE) and he said that all he did was to poke around when he came back home and learn more and more about reverse engineering. Back in the days video games felt to be made with a lot of love from the developers. Now it's really hard for me to find a game I can really dive down. The world is so much wealthier and the games so limited. Even as a pure gamer we can quickly find the limits of a game. I can only find my happiness in indie video games but they are still limited. The rest is all about graphics, additive designs, marketing, or just meh. (The only games that are relevant to me now are Distant World Universe, Assetto Corsa, and Wargame). When You cut yourself of video games, other distractions, and open your mind to see the possibility offer by this world, it's like the impression you have when you play Shenzhen IO. You realize that the real world is complex and hard but that make it makes it so much more interesting and rewarding. I took the real course at Stanford in ML and intent to do the one about convex optimization, I learn a lot about law in general, pattens, finance, investment... (In fact my MacBook right now is sitting Chartered Financial Analyst books) and this month I am learning Kubernetes and techs like that even thought I am not a devops. This wouldn't have been possible by being focused on video games.

deleted 10y ago

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tps5 10y ago

I spent my college years pretty invested in computer games, mostly dota. I stopped when I got a job that I actually wanted to have. For a while I tried to do both, and did. But I was exhausted all the time. Computer games are not passive entertainment (for me anyway), they require a lot of energy. If I could invest 2 hours a day into a computer game, I'd like that. But I can't. Even aside from the energy requirement, I have trouble playing games casually. Performing poorly at something bothers me and the only way to improve is to invest more time (than 2 hours). Anyway, I think this is an uncommonly good article. Computer games taught me that value is totally subjective. You have to pick your own goals, and you'd be making a mistake to adopt the goals of the people around you just because they outvote you. I found value somewhere else, but there's a large segment of the population working boring, low paying jobs that they hate. For some of these people, games will provide far more value than what they're getting out of work. And that's totally fine. It's life and life only.

0xcde4c3db 10y ago

> What did the game offer that the rest of the world could not? To begin with, games make sense, unlike life: As with all sports, digital or analog, there are ground rules that determine success (rules that, unlike those in society, are clear to all). The purpose of a game, within it, unlike in society, is directly recognized and never discounted. I think this is really the underappreciated factor in why people prefer video games to jobs. For some people, it's not that they're lazy and games are an excuse to avoid work, it's that the games are actually a far better work experience than the average job. You don't have to go to any meetings where an HR manager breathlessly explains how the new performance assessment web app is going to make everything better, even though it just looks like a reskin of the one you used last year. You don't have to spend a single nanosecond thinking about whether you're going to be edged out for a promotion by someone who has a better rapport with the boss. There are no especially demanding customers or government budget cuts eating away at the revenue you're paid from. You get to just do the goddamn work.

Baeocystin 10y ago
Flow is intoxicating. Simple as that, really.
dropit_sphere 10y ago
There is a lot to be said for this. I recently wrote the guide for teamplay with the US Forces army of Company of Heroes 2. USF is widely considered underpowered in team games, because those games often devolve into tank slugfests, and USF lacks heavy tanks. Players who are considered "good" at USF in team games generally play "worse Soviets" --- that is, their playstyle (mass artillery) would be better executed by a different army. I quixotically refused to accept this, and played a ton of games as USF, trying to find a style that played to their strengths and was viable in large team games. It was my top idea in mind for a while, to use pg's concept---the thing I thought about in the shower. Eventually I came up with a style that emphasized flanking, range, kiting, and prioritized taking and using ground. The most important thing was that it was non-gimmicky---that is, it is not an easily counterable one-track pony. I wrote a guide detailing it and the underlying concepts over the course of a couple days, then posted it to the subreddit. I compare this to a React app I recently wrote for a client. We had to work with a kludgy financial API, we had to compromise on certain features to be ready in time for a stakeholder inspection, and some bits of the code are not so great. It's strange, but I almost wish I lived in a universe where I could put the CoH 2 guide on my resume, and not the client work. It's a better product, it represents (relatively) pioneering intellectual work, and I can take full credit for all of it with clear conscience. Of course, no one will make any money off of it; it will not feed any hungry mouths, and an overweening preference for solo projects can signify difficulty working with others. But: the experience of working on it was great, and I can look back and say, "I did a good job, at a hard thing, that conventional wisdom believed was impossible."

dpeterson 10y ago

I recently just started playing a videogame again. The last time I played was World of Warcraft in 2005. I stopped to fulfill my career goals, get a masters degree and strike it rich working on my own startup. Well, as the years went by I kept telling myself, any day now my startup will take off and I can go back to enjoying my life and do things like play video games. Uh uh. The only thing I have to show for my years of programming and working endlessly on my startup outside of work is horrible anxiety (I hope but it could be much worse). So, here I am, 12 years older and back playing World of Warcraft where I started. I should have been enjoying my life the whole time. Live and Learn.

triode3 10y ago

Because the video card you need for awesome modern games costs more than my whole damn computer? That's why I quit.

triode3 10y ago

Because a modern video card "Good enough" to play those awesome modern games costs more than my whole damn computer? That's why I quit.

bobbington 10y ago

My dad was a genius. I learned how to code c++ in middle school because my dad had a great rule: you can only play video games you create, except for 1 hour on Saturday. It was a brilliant rule, and I had a blast learning to code. I didn't end up playing my pong game too much. But I learned an amazing life skill which now pays my bills. And the feeling of creating my own installable program was way better than any video game

kazagistar 10y ago
I had a higher base quota, but my parents did something very similar, where working on creating and playing my own games didn't count against it.

DaveSapien 10y ago

I love games. I make games. I don't have the time to play games. This is my problem. If anyone has advice on how to play more, i'd love to hear it.

chis 10y ago

This is a cool article, don't get me wrong. But is there a name for the fallacy of just categorizing things instead doing actual analysis? You really have to stretch to fit some games into the "levels" of graphics, narrative, objectives and economy.

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vesak 10y ago

If I would play games for 90% of the time I currently spend on Reddit, Hacker News, Twitter, Facebook, etc, I'd be a better man. Happier and more effective. I think I'll start doing exactly that. http://www.hackernewsletter.com/ http://www.hackernewsletter.com/

temp-ora 10y ago

i absolutely hate and detest the way that he talks about his associate dropping out of college. he says something like "he dropped out of college but he was ok, just graduated late." he says this as if not graduating from college is like getting some kind of terrible disease. i was having a family dinner with a bunch of extended family one time and i jokingly told them i was going to drop out and go into the trades. they all recoiled in horror, literally making that gasping sound you hear in movies. "certainly not!" there should be absolutely no shame or indignity in not being able to or wanting to finish a college degree. it shouldnt be a status symbol.

temp-ora 10y ago

some video games are just additive and mindless. others are works of art and thought provoking. you should only play the former in limited amounts. spending lots of time in the latter can be justified if you are thinking about and appreciating the game while you play it because it will spur productive activities afterwards -- you will develop questions and passions based on the game that will linger long after playing and those will lead to building and creating things of your own. half life 2 is a good example of that in my opinion.

kybernetyk 10y ago

Time. Or lack of it. I can enjoy video games only when I can get really good at them. And I simply can't get really good at something if I'm doing it only for a few hours on the weekend.

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donovanm 10y ago

For me I just realized I wasn't very fulfilled by playing video games all of the time. Nowadays I still like to play games but in smaller amounts. Instead of building things in games I now find myself wanting to build software projects :p.

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