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> Although the angle of: Losing his characters is the best thing that's happening for him due to wasting a very significant part of his life in video games has

> Although the angle of: Losing his characters is the best thing that's happening for him due to wasting a very significant part of his life in video games has some merit It has no merit. Do you look at your hobbies as wasting your life? I certainty don't. My alone time playing video games is just as important to me as when I'm going hiking or camping with friends.

ElCheapo 4y ago
I don't beg for my hobbies, that sounds more like an addiction
- sirsinsalot 4y ago
  If I spend 6k hours coding a project and was making noise because I was about to have access to my source code taken away ... would you say i'm an addict?
  - ElCheapo 4y ago
    You should make noise because, unless you signed some particular contract, the code is your intellectual property and it's illegal to just take it away from you. I bought Stadia and read the contract, I was under no illusion that I could export save files or progress to other platforms. You don't own the games you play, if you cared you'd buy from GoG.
    - marginalia_nu 4y ago
      It's not that far fetched. A lot of people rely on third party services to host and manage their source code.
      - ElCheapo 4y ago
        And every time people are advised to keep a local copy. I have a bunch of stuff on an Amazon Glacier account for convenience, but I still keep an HDD in the closet
- wincy 4y ago
  I mean I think in Red Dead Redemption 2 multiplayer there’s money to be spent? If it’s anything like GTA 5. Has he spent money on expensive cowboy hats and the like?
martincmartin 4y ago
At what point does a hobby turn into an addition? People who have spent 6k hours in a casino, for example, would probably be happier if they could figure out why they're doing it, and find a more productive way to address that need. Same might be true of someone who has spent 6k hours in a single video game. [I've spent 450 hours in Factorio, but stopped soon after my partner nick named it Divorcio.]
- unity1001 4y ago
  > At what point does a hobby turn into an addition? Why should something that unstresses, revitalizes and inspires you should be an addition. With that logic, food is an addiction. Sleep. Rest. Even poetry and art.
  - matwood 4y ago
    Like most things, the dose makes the poison. A little Red Dead is probably great, too much probably bad. Gambling, food, sleep all fall into similar U shaped curves.
    - elil17 4y ago
      Who are we to say how much is the right amount for this person? To play 6,000 hours of this game he must have a reason. Perhaps he's particularly passionate about it, perhaps there is someone in his life he loves to play it with.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - mikepurvis 4y ago
        I think that argument works a lot better if we're talking about a consumption level in the 10-100s of hours, along the lines of average for this title and most others like it: https://howlongtobeat.com/game/27100 https://howlongtobeat.com/game/27100 6000 hours is multiple orders of magnitude beyond that point, so it feels like a point where it's a lot safer to reach for an absolute judgment that it really is "too much".
Bakary 4y ago
What bothers me about video games is that they're so accessible. Sometimes I wonder how I would spend my time if I really had many more options at my disposal. The angle has some merit, it just needs quite a few asterisks and the topic has to be evaluated carefully. I don't doubt that millions of gamers have no such cognitive dissonance and simply enjoy their games, of course. For certain specific games, I certainly have no regrets. Some games such as SOMA were even transformative experiences.
- praxulus 4y ago
  The interesting thing for me has been the completely unintentional collapse in gaming time as I've gotten older. I was borderline addicted to games in high school, but the low barrier to in-person socializing in college, followed by relationships and rising interest in other hobbies has made video games something I have to actively choose to spend time on. Now I'm expecting a kid and even if my free time doesn't completely evaporate, I'm guessing my gaming time will. It's weird because I still think of myself as a "gamer", but I realized I've spent almost as much time building and tinkering with my current PC as I have actually playing games on it.
slothtrop 4y ago
None of that is threatened with the loss of a virtual character in RD2.
- Entinel 4y ago
  I don't understand the point you're trying to make. If I had 6k hours invested in literally anything I'd be pretty upset with it being taken away.
  - slothtrop 4y ago
    > they'll need to start a new save file on another platform The value added from 6k hours of investment in RDR2 is at best cosmetic and trivial. The real pain here is buying the game on another platform, if that hasn't been done already. At any rate this was a cloud service. Can't trust any of them to maintain the product you want indefinitely.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
PedroBatista 4y ago
The key point here is 6k hours. The game has been on Stadia for 2 and a half years. No one is attacking hobbies or video games, the argument was: The argument of playing 6k hours of RDR2 in 2 years being too much might have some merit.
- ramblerman 4y ago
  That’s 6.7h a day
  - LilBytes 4y ago
    Yeah fair that's a fucking lot.
  - dtjb 4y ago
    I know people that read that much but we don't go around telling bookworms they're addicts. It's up to each person to decide where the line is for them, where a satisfying hobby becomes a destructive habit. If someone has no desire to form external relationships and they're completely content with their life, good for them for figuring things out. I'm not going to impose my arbitrary rules on them. I love RDR2 and play it passively (a few hours a week), but I completely get how someone could get sucked in like that. I can't think of any other game that provides such an immersive world, you can get lost in its details for hours on end. Just riding your horse around with no destination in mind is a very relaxing and almost therapeutic way to pass time.
    - morelisp 4y ago
      I know a lot of people who often, like maybe several days a month, will read that much. I don't know anyone who reads every day for >2 years, >6h a day unless it's (part of) their job.
    - jahewson 4y ago
      But in this case it’s more like reading the one same book, over and over again for 6hrs a day, every day.
ok123456 4y ago
It is if your hobby engages in psychological dark patterns to manipulate you to keep playing. There's a difference when your hobby is, say, lifting weights a couple hours per week, vs being manipulated into playing a video game 6 hours per day and buying lootcrates every couple of days.
chillfox 4y ago
It has even less than no merit when you consider that the guy is a content creator and the math works out to 8 hour week days with the weekend off. Basically a normal work week.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dabernathy89 4y ago
I like video games. They're fun. I also waste time watching YouTube videos, etc. But the number of hours that user put into that game is quite literally 1/4 of all the hours since Stadia launched three years ago. It's nearly 3/4 of an entire year, sleeping and waking, spent on one game. That cannot be healthy or enriching.
nsxwolf 4y ago
It has some merit. When Call of Duty 4 came out on XBox 360, I was completely addicted to it. At some point I noticed I had been playing the game for 2 months. I spent 2 full months out of a single year playing a game. It was fun! Yeah, it was a lot of fun. But there are real things I could have accomplished by balancing that time with other things. I have good memories of COD4, but I still can't play piano. And 1440 hours isn't even a lot compared to what some people are doing.
- 300bps 4y ago
  It has some merit. When Call of Duty 4 came out on XBox 360, I was completely addicted to it. Other than sporadically playing video games with my children, I haven't played regularly since I was a kid. But that's me. I wouldn't presume to know best for anyone else - why do you think your experience is applicable to others? Is someone binge watching Netflix really better for you than playing video games? Death scrolling TikTok or Facebook? Collecting beanie babies? I think there are a lot of things people do for varying degrees of mindless entertainment but for some reason video games are singled out as particularly bad.
  - nsxwolf 4y ago
    At some point you have to step out of the "mind your own business" box and be a little bit judgemental. Just a little bit. Otherwise, how can we ever say we have any concern for others? You can go too far with it. Very easily! But "Meh, you do you" is just as destructive.
    - 300bps 4y ago
      I'm not sure if you meant to reply to someone else because my main point was not "meh, you do you" but rather that there is a lot of judgement regarding video games but not in other things that are arguably even more harmful.
    - mikepurvis 4y ago
      It depends on the nature of the relationship. The obvious one is parent-child, that parents get to have quite a lot to say about where and what their young ones spend time on, and with whom. Though part of growing up is pushing away a good deal of that influence, and then I guess for some, inviting a bunch of it back in if the relationship successfully transitions to a healthy adult-adult one. But I don't think it really stops there— I would hope that my spouse, siblings, and close friends would feel comfortable enough speaking into my situation if they observed me falling into a pattern of behaviour that looked to be self-destructive. We need checks and balances in our lives other than the just the extreme end of having to stage an intervention when someone's bad enough that they're hitting rock bottom.
fbanon 4y ago
Case in point: don't choose a hobby that can be taken away from you on the whims of some dickhead Google exec.
gigatexal 4y ago
Yeah this take is paternalistic and dumb. Let them do as they please. They’re playing video games.
HyperSane 4y ago
What if a person really doesn't want to spend so much time doing an activity but cannot stop due to being addicted to the dopamine it generates?
bjt2n3904 4y ago
There's a modern trend to be relentlessly supportive and approving of everything, so long as the person can claim it makes them happy. (They don't actually have to make this claim, or even actually be happy. Society will be more than happy to make it for them, and infer happiness.) Society will say, if you want to have a family of seven kids, awesome! If you want to pull a David Hogg and not have kids, awesome! Affirmation for everyone! I've got a pretty wide tolerance for "you do you", but objectively speaking, no. Not all lifestyles are equally valid and/or good. Six thousand hours in a video game is not good.
danjoredd 4y ago
6000 hours sounds like way more than a hobby. I play videogames too, but that is downright obsession

ElCheapo 4y ago

I don't beg for my hobbies, that sounds more like an addiction

sirsinsalot 4y ago
If I spend 6k hours coding a project and was making noise because I was about to have access to my source code taken away ... would you say i'm an addict?
- ElCheapo 4y ago
  You should make noise because, unless you signed some particular contract, the code is your intellectual property and it's illegal to just take it away from you. I bought Stadia and read the contract, I was under no illusion that I could export save files or progress to other platforms. You don't own the games you play, if you cared you'd buy from GoG.
  - marginalia_nu 4y ago
    It's not that far fetched. A lot of people rely on third party services to host and manage their source code.
    - ElCheapo 4y ago
      And every time people are advised to keep a local copy. I have a bunch of stuff on an Amazon Glacier account for convenience, but I still keep an HDD in the closet
wincy 4y ago
I mean I think in Red Dead Redemption 2 multiplayer there’s money to be spent? If it’s anything like GTA 5. Has he spent money on expensive cowboy hats and the like?

martincmartin 4y ago

At what point does a hobby turn into an addition? People who have spent 6k hours in a casino, for example, would probably be happier if they could figure out why they're doing it, and find a more productive way to address that need. Same might be true of someone who has spent 6k hours in a single video game. [I've spent 450 hours in Factorio, but stopped soon after my partner nick named it Divorcio.]

unity1001 4y ago
> At what point does a hobby turn into an addition? Why should something that unstresses, revitalizes and inspires you should be an addition. With that logic, food is an addiction. Sleep. Rest. Even poetry and art.
- matwood 4y ago
  Like most things, the dose makes the poison. A little Red Dead is probably great, too much probably bad. Gambling, food, sleep all fall into similar U shaped curves.
  - elil17 4y ago
    Who are we to say how much is the right amount for this person? To play 6,000 hours of this game he must have a reason. Perhaps he's particularly passionate about it, perhaps there is someone in his life he loves to play it with.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - mikepurvis 4y ago
      I think that argument works a lot better if we're talking about a consumption level in the 10-100s of hours, along the lines of average for this title and most others like it: https://howlongtobeat.com/game/27100 https://howlongtobeat.com/game/27100 6000 hours is multiple orders of magnitude beyond that point, so it feels like a point where it's a lot safer to reach for an absolute judgment that it really is "too much".

Bakary 4y ago

What bothers me about video games is that they're so accessible. Sometimes I wonder how I would spend my time if I really had many more options at my disposal. The angle has some merit, it just needs quite a few asterisks and the topic has to be evaluated carefully. I don't doubt that millions of gamers have no such cognitive dissonance and simply enjoy their games, of course. For certain specific games, I certainly have no regrets. Some games such as SOMA were even transformative experiences.

praxulus 4y ago
The interesting thing for me has been the completely unintentional collapse in gaming time as I've gotten older. I was borderline addicted to games in high school, but the low barrier to in-person socializing in college, followed by relationships and rising interest in other hobbies has made video games something I have to actively choose to spend time on. Now I'm expecting a kid and even if my free time doesn't completely evaporate, I'm guessing my gaming time will. It's weird because I still think of myself as a "gamer", but I realized I've spent almost as much time building and tinkering with my current PC as I have actually playing games on it.

slothtrop 4y ago

None of that is threatened with the loss of a virtual character in RD2.

Entinel 4y ago
I don't understand the point you're trying to make. If I had 6k hours invested in literally anything I'd be pretty upset with it being taken away.
- slothtrop 4y ago
  > they'll need to start a new save file on another platform The value added from 6k hours of investment in RDR2 is at best cosmetic and trivial. The real pain here is buying the game on another platform, if that hasn't been done already. At any rate this was a cloud service. Can't trust any of them to maintain the product you want indefinitely.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

PedroBatista 4y ago

The key point here is 6k hours. The game has been on Stadia for 2 and a half years. No one is attacking hobbies or video games, the argument was: The argument of playing 6k hours of RDR2 in 2 years being too much might have some merit.

ramblerman 4y ago
That’s 6.7h a day
- LilBytes 4y ago
  Yeah fair that's a fucking lot.
- dtjb 4y ago
  I know people that read that much but we don't go around telling bookworms they're addicts. It's up to each person to decide where the line is for them, where a satisfying hobby becomes a destructive habit. If someone has no desire to form external relationships and they're completely content with their life, good for them for figuring things out. I'm not going to impose my arbitrary rules on them. I love RDR2 and play it passively (a few hours a week), but I completely get how someone could get sucked in like that. I can't think of any other game that provides such an immersive world, you can get lost in its details for hours on end. Just riding your horse around with no destination in mind is a very relaxing and almost therapeutic way to pass time.
  - morelisp 4y ago
    I know a lot of people who often, like maybe several days a month, will read that much. I don't know anyone who reads every day for >2 years, >6h a day unless it's (part of) their job.
  - jahewson 4y ago
    But in this case it’s more like reading the one same book, over and over again for 6hrs a day, every day.

ok123456 4y ago

It is if your hobby engages in psychological dark patterns to manipulate you to keep playing. There's a difference when your hobby is, say, lifting weights a couple hours per week, vs being manipulated into playing a video game 6 hours per day and buying lootcrates every couple of days.

chillfox 4y ago

It has even less than no merit when you consider that the guy is a content creator and the math works out to 8 hour week days with the weekend off. Basically a normal work week.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

dabernathy89 4y ago

I like video games. They're fun. I also waste time watching YouTube videos, etc. But the number of hours that user put into that game is quite literally 1/4 of all the hours since Stadia launched three years ago. It's nearly 3/4 of an entire year, sleeping and waking, spent on one game. That cannot be healthy or enriching.

nsxwolf 4y ago

It has some merit. When Call of Duty 4 came out on XBox 360, I was completely addicted to it. At some point I noticed I had been playing the game for 2 months. I spent 2 full months out of a single year playing a game. It was fun! Yeah, it was a lot of fun. But there are real things I could have accomplished by balancing that time with other things. I have good memories of COD4, but I still can't play piano. And 1440 hours isn't even a lot compared to what some people are doing.

300bps 4y ago
It has some merit. When Call of Duty 4 came out on XBox 360, I was completely addicted to it. Other than sporadically playing video games with my children, I haven't played regularly since I was a kid. But that's me. I wouldn't presume to know best for anyone else - why do you think your experience is applicable to others? Is someone binge watching Netflix really better for you than playing video games? Death scrolling TikTok or Facebook? Collecting beanie babies? I think there are a lot of things people do for varying degrees of mindless entertainment but for some reason video games are singled out as particularly bad.
- nsxwolf 4y ago
  At some point you have to step out of the "mind your own business" box and be a little bit judgemental. Just a little bit. Otherwise, how can we ever say we have any concern for others? You can go too far with it. Very easily! But "Meh, you do you" is just as destructive.
  - 300bps 4y ago
    I'm not sure if you meant to reply to someone else because my main point was not "meh, you do you" but rather that there is a lot of judgement regarding video games but not in other things that are arguably even more harmful.
  - mikepurvis 4y ago
    It depends on the nature of the relationship. The obvious one is parent-child, that parents get to have quite a lot to say about where and what their young ones spend time on, and with whom. Though part of growing up is pushing away a good deal of that influence, and then I guess for some, inviting a bunch of it back in if the relationship successfully transitions to a healthy adult-adult one. But I don't think it really stops there— I would hope that my spouse, siblings, and close friends would feel comfortable enough speaking into my situation if they observed me falling into a pattern of behaviour that looked to be self-destructive. We need checks and balances in our lives other than the just the extreme end of having to stage an intervention when someone's bad enough that they're hitting rock bottom.

fbanon 4y ago

Case in point: don't choose a hobby that can be taken away from you on the whims of some dickhead Google exec.

gigatexal 4y ago

Yeah this take is paternalistic and dumb. Let them do as they please. They’re playing video games.

HyperSane 4y ago

What if a person really doesn't want to spend so much time doing an activity but cannot stop due to being addicted to the dopamine it generates?

bjt2n3904 4y ago

There's a modern trend to be relentlessly supportive and approving of everything, so long as the person can claim it makes them happy. (They don't actually have to make this claim, or even actually be happy. Society will be more than happy to make it for them, and infer happiness.) Society will say, if you want to have a family of seven kids, awesome! If you want to pull a David Hogg and not have kids, awesome! Affirmation for everyone! I've got a pretty wide tolerance for "you do you", but objectively speaking, no. Not all lifestyles are equally valid and/or good. Six thousand hours in a video game is not good.

danjoredd 4y ago

6000 hours sounds like way more than a hobby. I play videogames too, but that is downright obsession