Incredibly well said. Coming out of high school, my group of friends would have near-weekly LANs, and they were great. We'd dick around in CS, SC, some random F

Incredibly well said. Coming out of high school, my group of friends would have near-weekly LANs, and they were great. We'd dick around in CS, SC, some random F2P game on the internet, whatever. And that was fine. Going into college, some of my friends started playing LoL. At first casually. Then more, then more, until there were three of us playing 8-12 hours a day. We got very good, stopped playing with our other friends, joined a pro team (what is now Fear). Those 8-12 hours a day became almost mandatory to "keep your edge". I did this for two years. I spent an incredibly small percent of my time on schoolwork (Perhaps an hour a week), failed a class in my minor that I had a natural talent for (Calc II), skipped classes, and was generally lazy. All because I knew I could just forget whatever pressing problem was there and hop on LoL and get sucked up in it and have fun with my friends. A year and a couple months ago, after coming back from a paid tourney, I stopped and thought about my life, after one of the many comments my parents made to me about spending all of my time playing video games. I had made a couple thousand dollars (re: in an entire year, probably $2k), but all of my creativity, my interests? I hadn't spent any time on a personal project in years. How long could I sustain this? What would happen when I moved out and started working full time? I didn't like how my current lifestyle answered these questions. So I quit. Played catchup on the things that didn't stick in school, started writing a lot of software, cooking, exercising, just doing things. Going out. One of my other friends quit too because he was failing school and was forced to by his parents. All of this was difficult: I knew I wasn't going to be hanging out with them 2-3 times a week, playing games. It was very hard. If I wasn't a "creatively-motivated" individual, so to speak, I wouldn't have been able to do it. And even though I was, I still wasted 2 years of my life on video games. What did we all have in common? Parents who gave us free rent, paid for our school, gave us free food, paid for our insurance, phone bills, etc. My other friend ended up playing again and is on a different pro team now. "Pro" being word for "top 8, known team", not "pro" as in "making any kind of livable money". It's way too easy to end up getting sucked into the instant-gratification that video games offer you if you have an addictive personality. Slightly less easy if you don't. The instant gratification is there regardless. I have a great girlfriend that I can see myself marrying and having kids with in a few years. I'm stumped as to how to handle video games with my kid. And it's a problem that needs answering. Once again, great post.