It’s time gamers took gaming more seriously

I think it's a pretty facile view to take that Rocksmith or Dance Central are inherently more meaningful because they teach a certain real world skill.

World of Warcraft teaches lots of skills (see work by Joi Ito, like [1]), but I am sure you would put that in your "demonize" category.

Just like with other mediums like literature and cinema, you get into a lot of trouble very quickly when you start saying one art piece is worth more than another. Everything has value, even the most mindless game provides mindless escapism, and that is OK. It is OK to escape for a while.

The problem isn't games. The problem is that we have poor motivational draws for other life aspects. Try reading some intrinsic motivational theory like Self-Determination Theory or Reiss 16 Desires.

[1]: http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-6048770-7.html

Graphical representations are there to draw you in, but once you are there, the representation isn't as meaningful. Tetris remains a wonderful game whether you play it on a Game Boy or on hardware today.

The hats thing is about people meeting certain status motivational needs. Reiss' 16 Desires indicates that people seek status, and hats confer it. There's also a desire for collection, which hats also offer. You'll find many people who go "why do you care about hats? They don't change the game." For them, their desire for how they look or what they have isn't as meaningful. I'm hesitant to say "Reiss' 16 Desires is definitely correct" as all psychology is essentially pretty soft, but it does provide a useful framework for games motivation analysis, which is what I am currently supposed to be writing my PhD thesis on instead of procrastinating on HN :)

Some skins do confer gameplay bonus, even if they don't do it mechanically. League of Legends sells skins, and when you see someone with a champion with a skin on, you know they like that champion. It provides "skintimidation" to the other team.

I don't go as far as Aarseth in terms of rejecting aesthetics or narratives. I like that we have these things, and I like that they are better than they once were. I think most people feel that way. However, it's not a be-all-and-end-all proposition if you play a game that doesn't have a great story or stretches your moral compass. Those games could be wonderful games. There are plenty of great narratives with terrible games attached, like Heavy Rain.

There's room for everything, and I don't think pointing and saying "You're a bad game because of your narrative" is helpful. A better issue is "You're a bad game because of your ludonarrative dissonance" (such as Bioshock Infinite, where the character is trying to escape the ghosts of his past, but ends up murdering hundreds of people anyway) or "You're a bad game because your system simulation is completely screwed up" (imagine a SimCity where you were taught that people loved it if you polluted everything as long as there were low taxes). These are bad designs because they teach the wrong lessons. GTA is a wonderful marriage of design and story: the insanity that the players' are allowed to wreak fits in with the world created. The only way to play GTA subversively is to actually attempt to follow the law except when instructed not to (something Pippin Barr tried in [1]).

[1 pg. 200] http://www.pippinbarr.com/academic/Pippin_Barr_PhD_Thesis.pd...

I agree with you here, there are certainly skills to be gained from playing games, and World of Warcraft could certainly be giving a lot as far as social interaction, cooperation, and leadership.

Even the horrible example I was thinking of (Call of Duty) has some benefits.

The problem is, I don't see real life ever being as seductive emotionally as the gaming life. More and more our synthetic realities (video games, social media) are becoming more emotionally charged than our physical layer of reality.

Just look at the number of people walking down the street with their faces in their phones. When they come home it's back to the computers and video games.

Where do we regain the ability to focus in the real world? Or is the constant distraction the new norm for us as a culture?

You're not wrong, but the motivational ship has already sailed. However, I'm sure much the same was said about television and radio before it.

The problem isn't the technology, it's us. However, we've survived OK so far. Do I think people spend too much time on their phones Wall-E style? Sure. Do I think it's the phone's fault? No. I think it's an us thing, and we're still working out how to deal with it.

It wasn't long ago that a social convention was popping up where people would put their phones on the table and turn them all onto Airplane Mode. We need new social conventions, but the technology that invades our lives away from the desk is all very new in the grand scheme of things.

We like looking at pretty things. Well-rendered scenes in games let me more easily imagine myself in a different scenario -- whether that is rappelling down the side of a skyscraper to rescue hostages, or flying an X-wing through a canyon.

I'm not going to play Bioshock or Dishonored or Call of Duty 42 simply because of "ooh, shiny!", but at the same time we won't complain if it's there. If all else is equal, we often go with the newer one. If I were to buy Bioshock Infinite (or the new Tomb Raider, etc), it would be because I'm interested in the story and the experience, of which the graphics are just part. Perhaps that's because graphics in PC games have been already Pretty Awesome for longer than I've been able to afford the hardware?