Do you mind going into detail about why you think video games devour life’s potential?
Sure. The main thing is that, empirically, they tend to hijack peoples’ motivational systems by providing fake utility functions and a constant stream of well-tuned rewards, to make them play for many hours. Those are usually hours that could’ve been spent on something much better. Some formerly-well-adjusted people end up spending a large fraction of their waking hours this way, particularly people who got suckered into setting up social reinforcement for their gaming habits (MMORPG players who meet friends they can only interact with through the game, and Facebook/Zynga game players who constantly receive and generate notifications to and from their friends about the games.) Even if you’re only losing a small number of hours, though, video games are dangerous as a procrastination activity because they’re immediately available and more tempting than most other procrastination activities, and they’re hard to transition back from.
Yet not all video games are like this. A new story-centered game, for instance, often requires some amount of time and mental effort to get into the story, so it’s not trivially available. It also won’t keep you hooked forever—you might not ever return to it after you’ve beaten it once.
I note that your original comment started off as reasonable, mentioning that you avoid certain classes of video games. Yet at the end, you seemed to be saying that all video games are “devourer’s of life’s potential”, which is overstating the case quite a bit.
I think Facebook and their ilk are much greater time-sinks and motivation-system-hijackers, and try to make the effort to consciously disengage myself from them in order to subject myself to some quality entertainment instead, if that’s what my brain seems to crave at the time. I maintain that the right games qualify as such a substitute, though I admit that I haven’t played very many video games in several years. (Mostly I haven’t had the energy to look for good ones.)
I can say that the ‘reward system’ is laughably easy to defeat as long as you are aware of it’s existence. Hint: the winning move is not to play.
Your typical game based on a reward system will cater to those who are playing the game for the lever, while other games will cater to other other audiences. They are pretty easy to spot.
I consider the primary use of video games to be a kind of virtual sport, with rules for victory, guidelines for possible and impossible actions, etc. Other wonderful uses are as a storytelling medium, a virtual world to explore or exploit, or three dimensional puzzles.
A fairly obvious heuristic, and one that tends to distinguish both Zynga “games” and MMORPGs from more traditional video games, is that the traditional game has a relatively high but fixed upfront cost, whereas the Zynga and MMORPG offerings tend to be cheap to start but require constant infusions of additional funds. The differing incentives for game design are readily apparent.
If you offered me a new shiny game that I would want to spend a lot of time playing if I start, I would refuse to start playing it, because I know that then I would spend a lot of time playing it, and I don’t want my time to be spent that way.
(Note, while this post starts off with evidence, A fair amount of this post is rambly/anecdotal. Please don’t take those parts as evidence. I realized I started simply adding my personal experiences about gaming, but I didn’t want to delete it, because it did seem relevant to the question.)
Jimrandomh also mentioned specific classes of video games, and to expound on his point, there are certainly some videogames which are substantially more devouring of life’s potential then others.
Those are rare, but they do happen, and certainly are a very literal example of Jimrandomh’s point.
Also, there is a class of videogames that are designed, not primarily to be fun, but primarily as an engine to keep you online and spending money. As an excellent example of this, almost anything made by the company Zynga.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zynga
To be more specific, there are consequences if you don’t play. Take Farmville. If you don’t play, you’ll experience disutility. Not just from “I could have leveled up if I had another hour to finish that quest.” that you might see in any videogame, but an additional crushing of resources when all your crops rot.
Or in Zynga’s cooking game, you have to cook at least once a day for 7 days to earn specific prizes. Played 6 days in a row and want to take a break on the 7th? No best prize for you, back to the beginning of the week.
Another characteristic of Zynga games is the way they guide you to the payment screen.
“No Energy? Want to buy an energy drink for 8 coins?”
“No Coins? Want to buy more for real money?”
Also want to get the best bonuses? Better get your friends hooked on the game to, you need their help to build your super stove. Well, unless you want to buy super stove parts with real money, we do that to.
This is not to say that Zynga is the only company that does this. But they make such a very, very good example of a video game that you should avoid.
Now, I don’t want to give the impression that all games are this bad either. I remember having fun on Sundays playing Heroes of Might and Magic IV with my dad. It’s hot seat, so only one of us could play at a time. My Mom would frequently take advantage of this to get whoever wasn’t playing to do the dishes, and my Dad and I would switch off. This helped break up a boring task with a fun stimuli, while allowing me to enjoy interacting with my Family.
However, recently I was playing Dungeons and Dragons Online. I was feeling bored (and more then just a little sleepy), and I actually ended up being so bored/sleepy that I was dying and didn’t even notice it (I had the sound off.) I actually had more fun cleaning up the house for my Inlaws then I did playing that game, In this case, the game had gotten so boring that the cleaning was the fun stimuli, and playing the game was the boring task.
In a twist, I had more fun playing through that exact same level again the next day, when I was freshly woken up, and thinking to myself “Alright, THIS TIME, I’m not going to let the boss kill me through sleepy inattentiveness.” I then crushed the level by setting almost everything that wasn’t me on fire. And it was fun.
Which brings up another excellent point: Games can be fun. But games can also make you lose sleep. This is not a generally not a good tradeoff. I specifically deleted my accounts on one game (Pardus) when I was bothered by the amount of sleep I was losing over it.
I think another reason that I stopped playing it is that my best friend had stopped playing it. This is something about games: If a substantial amount of your friends are playing a game, then playing the game is socially inclusive: It gives you something to interact with your friends about during times where you are socializing. This isn’t limited to just video games either. People do the same thing with sports when they say things like “Did you watch the game last night?” and then talk about home runs and touch downs. If none of your friends are playing a game, then the game is exclusive. You feel more distant from people and no one really cares when you are talking about it. In my case, Pardus was being socially exclusive, which is another reason I stopped playing.
Another perspective on devouring lifes potential is that games essentially delete substantial amount of time where you are bored. If you didn’t have games, you might think to yourself “I’m bored. Let me go write that story.” or “Let me go smash that rotting bookcase into pieces small enough to fit in a trash bag.” But if you are a gamer, you might instead think “Let me play some games.” and then the more productive work doesn’t get done.
Of course, this isn’t necessarily the case. If you were to replace video games with rereading TVTropes, then it doesn’t really matter: You weren’t going to spend that time doing productive work just because you removed video games from the equation. I’ve been in both cases, although I haven’t tried to gather statistics.
I suppose one factor which is likely to bias my opinion in favor of video games is that I met the first woman who I seriously dated, and who later became my wife, when she thrashed me in a video game tournament. That was Soul Calibur 2, specifically. But comparing Soul Calibur 2 with something like Farmville seems bizarre to me. I mean, yes, they’re both games, and yes, they’re both played on video screens, but they have so many large differences.
The set of people who’ve died due to video games is a very small portion of the set who lose large amounts of time from them that would be be better spent on something else.
I may have felt obligated to post it because I myself game. I was trying to to think of anything I could think of that seemed to related to the concept “Do Videogames devour life’s potential?” And I wouldn’t want to discard something which may indicate the conclusion that I should abandon my hobby even if it seemed like it might be irrelevant because that would be a source of bias.
Although, that is probably simply a rationalization. My ACTUAL thought process was probably something like “I have been typing this post for an hour and I need to get back to work. I don’t want to save it on Google Docs as a Cached post and not get back to it, because I already have an enormous number of partial thoughts backlogged there, some from years ago. I’ll just post what I have at the moment and stop thinking about it.”
Similarly, my response to you would be “Yes, I would probably agree with you, but I’m worried I would simply be agreeing with you because that’s what I WANT to think.” Because I prefer a convenient world in which my hobby doesn’t cause deaths that I have to care about.
But, that doesn’t let me off the hook either. Just because I have biases which would lead me to believe that it is irrelevant, doesn’t actually mean I can simply bring it up as relevant and think “And now I’m NOT being biased.” That actually doesn’t work at all and is still too convenient.
I could start a side conservation about how many deaths something would have to have to be relevant, but that seems odd because it’s really past the scope of the original topic and I nominally agree with you, so it would just be arguing for the sake of arguing as opposed to actually trying to prove a point.
Although, this entire conversation, taking one step back, could be an indicator that I’m entirely to self conscious and wordy for what are one line comments and I don’t need to write books on every answer. Certainly my Wife has pointed out similar flaws in my speech style.
Regardless of any of that, thank you for your thought provoking critique.
If it helps you calibrate at all, I used to play a lot of games, consider them to be a massive waste of time, and have elsewhere on this thread argued that they are a massive waste. And I still think the deaths are so rare at to be irrelevant. So I don’t think you need to worry about biases in this context impacting your judgement if I’m reading you correctly.
Do you mind going into detail about why you think video games devour life’s potential?
Sure. The main thing is that, empirically, they tend to hijack peoples’ motivational systems by providing fake utility functions and a constant stream of well-tuned rewards, to make them play for many hours. Those are usually hours that could’ve been spent on something much better. Some formerly-well-adjusted people end up spending a large fraction of their waking hours this way, particularly people who got suckered into setting up social reinforcement for their gaming habits (MMORPG players who meet friends they can only interact with through the game, and Facebook/Zynga game players who constantly receive and generate notifications to and from their friends about the games.) Even if you’re only losing a small number of hours, though, video games are dangerous as a procrastination activity because they’re immediately available and more tempting than most other procrastination activities, and they’re hard to transition back from.
Yet not all video games are like this. A new story-centered game, for instance, often requires some amount of time and mental effort to get into the story, so it’s not trivially available. It also won’t keep you hooked forever—you might not ever return to it after you’ve beaten it once.
I note that your original comment started off as reasonable, mentioning that you avoid certain classes of video games. Yet at the end, you seemed to be saying that all video games are “devourer’s of life’s potential”, which is overstating the case quite a bit.
I think Facebook and their ilk are much greater time-sinks and motivation-system-hijackers, and try to make the effort to consciously disengage myself from them in order to subject myself to some quality entertainment instead, if that’s what my brain seems to crave at the time. I maintain that the right games qualify as such a substitute, though I admit that I haven’t played very many video games in several years. (Mostly I haven’t had the energy to look for good ones.)
I can say that the ‘reward system’ is laughably easy to defeat as long as you are aware of it’s existence. Hint: the winning move is not to play.
Your typical game based on a reward system will cater to those who are playing the game for the lever, while other games will cater to other other audiences. They are pretty easy to spot.
I consider the primary use of video games to be a kind of virtual sport, with rules for victory, guidelines for possible and impossible actions, etc. Other wonderful uses are as a storytelling medium, a virtual world to explore or exploit, or three dimensional puzzles.
A fairly obvious heuristic, and one that tends to distinguish both Zynga “games” and MMORPGs from more traditional video games, is that the traditional game has a relatively high but fixed upfront cost, whereas the Zynga and MMORPG offerings tend to be cheap to start but require constant infusions of additional funds. The differing incentives for game design are readily apparent.
If you offered me a new shiny game that I would want to spend a lot of time playing if I start, I would refuse to start playing it, because I know that then I would spend a lot of time playing it, and I don’t want my time to be spent that way.
(Note, while this post starts off with evidence, A fair amount of this post is rambly/anecdotal. Please don’t take those parts as evidence. I realized I started simply adding my personal experiences about gaming, but I didn’t want to delete it, because it did seem relevant to the question.)
Jimrandomh also mentioned specific classes of video games, and to expound on his point, there are certainly some videogames which are substantially more devouring of life’s potential then others.
First of all, there are those cases where people actually die from video games. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_addiction#Notable_deaths
Those are rare, but they do happen, and certainly are a very literal example of Jimrandomh’s point.
Also, there is a class of videogames that are designed, not primarily to be fun, but primarily as an engine to keep you online and spending money. As an excellent example of this, almost anything made by the company Zynga. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zynga
To be more specific, there are consequences if you don’t play. Take Farmville. If you don’t play, you’ll experience disutility. Not just from “I could have leveled up if I had another hour to finish that quest.” that you might see in any videogame, but an additional crushing of resources when all your crops rot.
Or in Zynga’s cooking game, you have to cook at least once a day for 7 days to earn specific prizes. Played 6 days in a row and want to take a break on the 7th? No best prize for you, back to the beginning of the week.
Another characteristic of Zynga games is the way they guide you to the payment screen. “No Energy? Want to buy an energy drink for 8 coins?” “No Coins? Want to buy more for real money?”
Also want to get the best bonuses? Better get your friends hooked on the game to, you need their help to build your super stove. Well, unless you want to buy super stove parts with real money, we do that to.
This is not to say that Zynga is the only company that does this. But they make such a very, very good example of a video game that you should avoid.
Now, I don’t want to give the impression that all games are this bad either. I remember having fun on Sundays playing Heroes of Might and Magic IV with my dad. It’s hot seat, so only one of us could play at a time. My Mom would frequently take advantage of this to get whoever wasn’t playing to do the dishes, and my Dad and I would switch off. This helped break up a boring task with a fun stimuli, while allowing me to enjoy interacting with my Family.
However, recently I was playing Dungeons and Dragons Online. I was feeling bored (and more then just a little sleepy), and I actually ended up being so bored/sleepy that I was dying and didn’t even notice it (I had the sound off.) I actually had more fun cleaning up the house for my Inlaws then I did playing that game, In this case, the game had gotten so boring that the cleaning was the fun stimuli, and playing the game was the boring task.
In a twist, I had more fun playing through that exact same level again the next day, when I was freshly woken up, and thinking to myself “Alright, THIS TIME, I’m not going to let the boss kill me through sleepy inattentiveness.” I then crushed the level by setting almost everything that wasn’t me on fire. And it was fun.
Which brings up another excellent point: Games can be fun. But games can also make you lose sleep. This is not a generally not a good tradeoff. I specifically deleted my accounts on one game (Pardus) when I was bothered by the amount of sleep I was losing over it.
I think another reason that I stopped playing it is that my best friend had stopped playing it. This is something about games: If a substantial amount of your friends are playing a game, then playing the game is socially inclusive: It gives you something to interact with your friends about during times where you are socializing. This isn’t limited to just video games either. People do the same thing with sports when they say things like “Did you watch the game last night?” and then talk about home runs and touch downs. If none of your friends are playing a game, then the game is exclusive. You feel more distant from people and no one really cares when you are talking about it. In my case, Pardus was being socially exclusive, which is another reason I stopped playing.
Another perspective on devouring lifes potential is that games essentially delete substantial amount of time where you are bored. If you didn’t have games, you might think to yourself “I’m bored. Let me go write that story.” or “Let me go smash that rotting bookcase into pieces small enough to fit in a trash bag.” But if you are a gamer, you might instead think “Let me play some games.” and then the more productive work doesn’t get done.
Of course, this isn’t necessarily the case. If you were to replace video games with rereading TVTropes, then it doesn’t really matter: You weren’t going to spend that time doing productive work just because you removed video games from the equation. I’ve been in both cases, although I haven’t tried to gather statistics.
I suppose one factor which is likely to bias my opinion in favor of video games is that I met the first woman who I seriously dated, and who later became my wife, when she thrashed me in a video game tournament. That was Soul Calibur 2, specifically. But comparing Soul Calibur 2 with something like Farmville seems bizarre to me. I mean, yes, they’re both games, and yes, they’re both played on video screens, but they have so many large differences.
The set of people who have died due to video games seems to be so small as to not be at all relevant.
The set of people who’ve died due to video games is a very small portion of the set who lose large amounts of time from them that would be be better spent on something else.
Sure. No disagreement. My statement was only about Michaelos’s remark about people who have died from playing them.
I may have felt obligated to post it because I myself game. I was trying to to think of anything I could think of that seemed to related to the concept “Do Videogames devour life’s potential?” And I wouldn’t want to discard something which may indicate the conclusion that I should abandon my hobby even if it seemed like it might be irrelevant because that would be a source of bias.
Although, that is probably simply a rationalization. My ACTUAL thought process was probably something like “I have been typing this post for an hour and I need to get back to work. I don’t want to save it on Google Docs as a Cached post and not get back to it, because I already have an enormous number of partial thoughts backlogged there, some from years ago. I’ll just post what I have at the moment and stop thinking about it.”
Similarly, my response to you would be “Yes, I would probably agree with you, but I’m worried I would simply be agreeing with you because that’s what I WANT to think.” Because I prefer a convenient world in which my hobby doesn’t cause deaths that I have to care about.
But, that doesn’t let me off the hook either. Just because I have biases which would lead me to believe that it is irrelevant, doesn’t actually mean I can simply bring it up as relevant and think “And now I’m NOT being biased.” That actually doesn’t work at all and is still too convenient.
I could start a side conservation about how many deaths something would have to have to be relevant, but that seems odd because it’s really past the scope of the original topic and I nominally agree with you, so it would just be arguing for the sake of arguing as opposed to actually trying to prove a point.
Although, this entire conversation, taking one step back, could be an indicator that I’m entirely to self conscious and wordy for what are one line comments and I don’t need to write books on every answer. Certainly my Wife has pointed out similar flaws in my speech style.
Regardless of any of that, thank you for your thought provoking critique.
If it helps you calibrate at all, I used to play a lot of games, consider them to be a massive waste of time, and have elsewhere on this thread argued that they are a massive waste. And I still think the deaths are so rare at to be irrelevant. So I don’t think you need to worry about biases in this context impacting your judgement if I’m reading you correctly.