12 years ago I quit gaming because decent titles weren't available for Linux. I now have a great job and family, part of which I attribute to spending thousands of hours learning about life and technology instead of playing games. Give it up people, video games = fast-forwarding your life. (Actually I'm not really suggesting being that strict. I did return to play the occasional top title like Portal 2, but on a stri…
Except, in addition to being pleasurable, media shapes our society and culture. That we do more than just working to survive is perhaps one of humanity's defining features, and we should be embracing it. Video games are similar to books or film, in that they have dramatically influenced many of our minds and lives. That's why we get upset when publishers see our obsession and game merely as something to exploit for profit, then throw away, rather than as something that should be preserved as part of society's collective knowledge. Even if the DRM probably won't directly cause us any problems ever, it makes us uncomfortable. I noticed when playing the latest release of Metal Gear Solid, how significant the series has been to me.
When I played MG/MGS1, I was young - and, among other games, shared controller gameplay was a bonding experience between me and my friends. These friends are still my strongest, so no doubt it helped cement the friendship. MGS2 was when I was about 10, and starting to think somewhat philosophically. The ideas about AI and censorship, trans-humanism, robotics and nanotechnology significantly changed me and perhaps shaped my beliefs and future (in combination with films like The Matrix which I watched at the same time). MGS3, I played with my girlfriend when we first met - and even now we still talk about it, and have played it a few times since. I played MGS4 relatively recently, now moved out, living with girlfriend and working. That video game series, however, has been there, influencing my life in various ways from the sidelines - and that's just one video game out of hundreds I've played over the years. I remember when playing Sega Megadrive games when I was very young, trying to work out how they were made. It perhaps is when I started to get interested in programming.
Sure, you shouldn't be playing them all day every day - but that's just the age old problem of procrastination, living a balanced life and work before play. If you go too far down this path of maximum productivity, you start to burn out. Finding the play/work balance is hard, because on the one side is extreme sloth, and on the other is a path that, I believe, ends up making you a kind of solipsist/nihilist burnout.