I lean toward “efficient entertainment”, but I do sometimes wonder what that chunk of my free time would look like otherwise.
I’m in the computer industry, haven’t played video games in decades. The time sink that video games demand, on top of working with machines all day every day just isn’t appealing to me. From the outside, seeing the vegas style “no clocks, windows and plenty of air conditioning” gamblingification of the games industry, from microtransactions, loot crates, games as personal identity, leads me to reckon they’re absolutely a thief of focus, as that’s what garners the most revenue for the games producers themselves. It’s a snake eating it’s own tail, with lifetimes spent, just clicking away.
The time sink that video games demand
Video games don’t demand your time more than any other hobby… do you avoid woodworking because you’re scared you’ll make an elaborate wardrobe instead of a little box? Do you avoid swimming because you don’t want to go across the English Channel?
You can play small games and you can play for an hour a week, there’s no need to burn every hour of every day on it like a teenager.
I can see some indie games as being easy to pick up and put down without a huge time commitment.* However, we shouldn’t discount the fact that a lot of games today, especially some of the “AAA” types, are purposedly designed to be addictive.
*Despite being a small indie game,
CracktorioFactorio will ruin your life. The factory must grow.Bigger games can also be quick. A match of rocket league is like 10 minutes. There’s no story so you can pick it up and put it down whenever you want.
We also live in the golden age of indie games anyways, plenty of smaller quality games that don’t demand all of your life. I haven’t played a AAA game in ages. The biggest games I currently play are league of legends and that’s cause I started when it was an indie company before it became AAA and ff14 and I only do ff14 like 3 hours a week or so with my fiancee cause she loves it.
It’s possible, but it can really change the type of games available to you too. I used to love Skyrim and similar, but eventually found I needed a minimum session of 2-3 hrs, otherwise I hadn’t even done any real playing, just inventory management, or getting crafting supplies. These days, with kids and work, I like rally simulator games, it can be satisfying to just do one or two stages, which can take as little as 5-20 mins. But it’s a whole different thing, no story, character development, surprises…a bit like going from watching Kurosawa films to watching the sports highlights.
Agreed. It’s the same reason I occasionally pop in Madden or 2K. I can play a game or two and then just be done with it.
I want a TV show about wood working addicts. Please Jeff, you must stop crafting intricate cabinets. No more driftwood tables either. I’m sick of cleaning up resin goddamnit.
I want a TV show about wood working addicts.
If you look around, probably on YouTube, I bet you can find episodes.
It’s way too easy for people to be exploited through video games, just as with gambling, for it to be “just another hobby”. They can also become addicted.
Yes, it can be a very nice hobby; with some games you can even show something for the time spent (As in skills, not “achievements”).
But it can also become a symptom of dangerous reality abandonment. The worst for this is in my opinion still better than substance abuse, but a danger nonetheless.
Anything can be addicting. I knew a woman who was literally addicted to maraschino cherries. There are people who are addicted to work.
Anything done to excess is an addiction. So choose yours’ carefully.
Yes, everything can be, but games are designed to be addicting. Most are designed to keep you engaged as long as possible, some even to profit as much as possible from the player.
Almost everything you can buy is designed to be addicting. From video games to peanut butter. Because that’s how you get people to continue to use your specific product.
So choose your addictions carefully and try to keep them as under control as possible. Sadly, some can do that and some cannot.
True. This might be a more personal thing for me, which is why I felt the severity might be higher than it actually is.
Personal bias about addictions is a real thing and you aren’t alone. The shrapnel of an addiction can leave some pretty heavy scars on those who have to live around an addicted person. And it matters not a whit about what the actual addiction is.
If you have those scars, I hope you find internal peace.
Yes, it can be a very nice hobby; with some games you can even show something for the time spent (As in skills
Nah, miss me with this mindset. Not every minute of your life needs to be productive, you should have at least one hobby that you can’t show something for the time spent.
Agreed, not every minute needs to be productive.
Hobbies (like woodworking, to which I was trying to relate my text) can be very self affirming, especially if you get very good at them. I was thinking about this self affirmation, not about productivity when I was writing that.
For AAA, live service, “games as an industry,” sure. However, there are plenty of examples of games that are passion projects, respect your time, and have mutual respect with their community. You just won’t see them advertised on billboards.
I don’t know but I know if you raise this topic usually you will get stoned to death by downdoots and comments like “I could be doing meth or killing people but I am a gamer instead”
In my opinion it is delusional to not notice that these things are mostly just slop. Sure there are some games that actually enriched your life and changed your perspective but compared to movies they are few and between. It’s the lowest entertainment for pleb in most cases.
Take something like call of duty what does that game brings into your life? It’s nothing just digital heroin straight to the brain. On the other hand there are sophisticated games such as disco elysium.
There’s nothing bad with slop but if you only consume slop your brain will turn into it. It’s all common sense
TL;DR :
-There are good games and bad games but both are inferior to movies since videogames are “the lowest entertainment for pleb in most cases”
-Good games entertain you
-Bad games entertain you, buuuuuut they are bad games
Damn, you sound like that one asshole elitist teacher
I just like to face reality and not pretend that dopamine escapism is cool. Sorry if that personally hurt you but it’s better to be self aware and still do the thing than delusional that it is the same as more worthwhile forms of time spending.
Dopamine escapism IS cool. It’s fucking amazing we can hack our electric meat that hallucinates “reality” and has cool memetic self reproductive patterns.
Pretending we’re anything but wet sacks of chemical reactions is weird to me…
They probably have a gun collection that would make people pause.
I find the best games are challenging ones where I can watch myself improving at them, like training a skill. It’s not a transferable skill, of course, but I think the act of building your tenacity and accepting success/failure is healthy and good for the ego.
When I try games that I would consider “slop”: fetch quests and walking simulators in between cutscenes, I can feel my brain rotting and I don’t enjoy it.
It’s not an issue, since we have 10x more such guys than in 1820.
Please, I need these YouTubers for things like the “Coin Collector” subset of achievements in Super Mario Sunshine, you really have to get every single one!
I thought they were going to say now there’s a 26 part video on beetles. The beetle man never went anywhere. He’s also on YouTube lol
I can’t remember the name of the channel, but I’ve followed a guy rehabilitating a grocery lobster, one that took care otters, another with sea monkeys, and people just cleaning carpets. People with niche interests didn’t go anywhere. If anything, they’re more accessible because of the internet.
Oh man, those videos of people cleaning rugs are fantastic.
Right? That and power washing videos. Just 👌🏾
Leon the lobster! The channel just uploaded a new video a week ago. Channel name is Brady Brentwood, if you want the update. I haven’t watched it myself yet.
Thank you!
It’s not video games keeping me from doing my niche interests. It’s my 60 hour a week job consuming all my mental resources. Then I have to go home and do all the other things necessary to keep myself alive. Not much left for getting immersed in cool projects after that.
And the target demographic of rowdy young men would be challenging each other to gun duels instead of FIFA matches or games of COD.
Efficient entertainment, almost certainly. People in past eras had completely useless time-consuming hobbies too, like memorizing chess openings
completely useless time-consuming hobbies too, like memorizing chess openings
…yes, those silly people in the past.
The worst thing about (thing I don’t like) is that people do it instead of (working towards [goal]).
Why aren’t you (working towards [goal]) ?
And yes, I get the whole undertone that this is about people with autism or hyper focus or whatever you want to call it. It doesn’t make it any funny.
And then there’s the voynich manuscript, an old hoax/fantasy book documenting plants and animals that don’t exist, in a made-up language.
That some people have dedicated their lives to “noble” pursuits and others to “wasting time” is entirely a function of who is telling you the story and how much money they stand to make off that other person’s work. You get one life, do what you want with it as best you can.
Generations of monks did nothing but pray, work, and copy books for their entire lives. Is that a waste because they weren’t writing novels instead? Because every one of them wasn’t Mendel, obcessed with growing peas?
Play some video games, work on stuff if you want, or don’t. Most people in history worked very hard and have been completely forgotten, all their works erased. With how easy it is to share your work online, you could even be famous for being good at video games (speed running, lore analysis, gimmick runs, etc) which may not change the world but objectively has more impact on more living people than writing small business websites or small farming rice in South Asia.
It is not clear that the Voynich Manuscript is a hoax/fantasy book. The plant illustrations, whilst ambiguous, do look like plausible real plants (though some have features of multiple species), and while nobody has decoded the text, the letter and word frequencies are consistent with it being natural language rather than gibberish.
Perhaps you’re thinking of the Codex Seraphinianus?
Hey I just wanted to say, thank you for sending me down the rabbit hole of both of these texts. Fascinating!
Regarding the Voynich Manuscript, and to be fair to the person you’re responding to, with no current decipherment, there is a good possibility it’s a hoax.
Churchill acknowledges the possibility that the manuscript is either a synthetic forgotten language (as advanced by Friedman), or else a forgery, as the preeminent theory. However, he concludes that, if the manuscript is a genuine creation, mental illness or delusion seems to have affected the author.
Also the Codex Seraphinianus is much newer and self-admittedly describes an imaginary world in an imaginary language.
Anyway, thanks again for the Wikipedia adventure. :D
And I’ll watch every one
In the 1820s, you’d be watching beetle documentaries, you waste of space
What this meme is really saying is “the main issue with video games is you aren’t developing skills that can serve capitalistic interests via monetization of hobbies”
I love video games, but creating content for a publically traded brand to post on an advertising company’s streaming platform is inherently more serving of capitalism than documenting bugs.
That’s not a “video game” issue though, it’s a social media issue. Re-reading OP, it is more clear than I initially read it as (when I made this comment I felt it didn’t make up it’s mind who it’s swinging at, gamers or ‘streamers,’) so in context of the image you’re right.
However, I stand by my bigger point of “fuck shaming ‘unproductive’ hobbies.” Let people find their dopamine where they can find it so long as it isn’t bothering anyone.
Agreed with your modification. Being “productive,” especially in anticapitaliste ways may be laudable, but no one needs you to prove your right to exist
Normally I would agree, but the deeper implication is contributing meaningful additions to collective human knowledge, and I kinda agree from an objectivist standpoint.
(disclaimer: OP was more clear than I initially read it and maybe my original comment doesn’t hold up in reference to it. I’m just replying in reference to the bigger concept and it’s so long because I’m procrastinating pretty hard right now. I wanted to be clear that I’m not upset or anything, just putting off cleaning lol)
Hobbies shouldn’t have to be “productive,” whether financially or otherwise. Who is to gauge what counts as meaningful anyway? Not everybody can contribute “meaningful additions to collective human knowledge,” especially now. The bar to do so is so much higher than it was in 1820.
While Hypothetical German Lad could go collect beetles and have it be counted as a meaningful contribution as implied, I would have to (realistically, barring some 1 in a million happenstance) need a lab or something to make some big much wow discovery/contribution. If I went outside and collected beetles today, while it would count as a hobby, it wouldn’t be the contribution being implied here, I’d just be a bug collector. Mildly interesting, but no more productive than making some progress in Baldur’s Gate or doodling or whatever else menial pasttime.
I’m not interested in watching people play video games myself, but I’d argue it’s a productive hobby if it brings joy or information to others. In regards to OP: A 26 part youtube series about how to get all the rings in every sonic game is going to be useful to people trying to get all the rings in Sonic Generations or whatever entry they’re playing. There being 26 parts means they know that’s going to be a resource they can come back to when they boot up Sonic 8: The Ocho later. It’s still an addition to collective knowledge, just not all knowledge is deep cosmic understanding. I can have the knowledge of how to reach Burger King from work, bestow that knowledge upon a new coworker, but yknow nobody is going to write a book about me for it and that’s ok!
The world sucks right now and people are struggling, let folks have their silly hobbies without having to justify them. 🤷
Agreed. It’s like how Emperor Hirohito did very important work.
Not the war. He spent the later half of his life meticulously collecting baseline data as a (rich and connected) marine biologist. It’s not exactly glamorous, but that data is a significant data point on how Climate Change is affecting ocean life. It’s a lot more pointed than “I swear there used to be more fireflies”.
I think this way about sports savants, which makes me think that maybe it’s a bad take and that I should let sports nerds have their fun, without everyone having to worry about creating communal value in the world (explicitly, I am speaking here, as much as possible, in an acapitalist context).
If you really look through history, I think you’ll find that people did things like this because they were SO BORED. An entire town would come out to watch a small time trial because there just wasn’t anything better to do. Hell, my parents who grew up in the 70’s once told me “We’d be outside and bicycle around as kids all the time, after a while… we were so incredibly bored.” And during that time, tv and radio existed. I’m very happy we have the entertainment we do.
90% of them were so bored
the remaining 10% however
Guy probably never heard of Tom Scott. Or CGP Grey.
Two of the best, let alone all the cool content you can find on local beetles.
