Video games are terrible. They are immensely addictive and--like all addictive things--they take up time that people could be spending building more meaningful relationships with other people in their lives.
Videogames also warp a person's perspective of the relationship between effort and reward, as video games necessarily provide achievements and advancements far more readily than real life.
Time spent on videogames in childhood or adolescence is time that could have been spent developing social skills or the skills necessary for adult life.
Time spent on videogames in adulthood is time that could have been spent with our families or building our communities.
Our lives are so short! And videogames steal our time so easily. The internet and social media is nearly as bad, but devours your time less readily. Television is less engaging.
Videogames:television::cocaine:alcohol
2.2: That's why you play on the higher difficultly levels.
I assume that video games are like any other escapist recreation: if you're self-medicating for life problems, it's going to take over and be unhealthy, but it's really the life problems that are the problem. If you're not self-medicating, you're more likely to do it in moderation and not to the detriment of other joys in life.
That said, I do get a little creeped out by the extent that marketers of social media and video games implement psychological hooks into one's psyche. You read that it's being done on a mastermind level, but it's hard to know if that's hyperventilating journalism, or understated journalism.
Yeah, those games set up to exploit with fees are bad. But Civ V is from before that was even possible.
@4 But videogames are more addictive than, for example, reading a book or engaging in a hobby. Saying that videogames are like any other escapist recreation is like saying that cocaine is like ritalin.
One can even adapt the AUDIT questionnaire for alcoholism and map the questions to videogames. For example:
How often do you have 5 or more drinks on one occasion? --> How often do you play videogames for more than 3 hours on one occasion?
How often during the last year have you found that you were not able to stop drinking once you had started? --> How often during the last year have you found that you played video games for substantially longer than you originally planned?
How often during the last year have you failed to do what was normally expected of you because of drinking? --> How often during the last year have you failed to do what was normally expected of you because of playing video games?
How often during the last year have you had a feeling of guilt or remorse after drinking?-->How often during the last year have you had a feeling of guilt or remorse after playing video games?
@6 The addictiveness of games in the civilization series is a meme
Anyway, I agree with 4 because I know that when I'm supposed to do something and I don't want to do it, I go drinking.
Videogames also warp a person's perspective of the relationship between effort and reward, as video games necessarily provide achievements and advancements far more readily than real life.
I have not found this to be the case.
Second 5. With two teenage sons, both former voracious readers, firmly captured by youtube and video games, I am grimly in the "well, it's the world we live in and now they have to navigate it" camp. But grimly. Early exposure to so many modern electronic stimulants or toys for the more susceptible/impulsive of the two was marked by advanced (compared to elementary school kid decision making) marketing techniques designed to suck the kid dry of whatever little money he had. I didn't like that. Nowadays I'm a lot less aware of the details, except in the amount of time video games suck up.
But now that they're near-adults I don't want to be that parent who's scared to send their kid out into the world either.
7: I don't know. As I see it the real problem is that goddam rock n' roll music.
A Brief History of People Read Too Much:
https://twitter.com/paulisci/status/1555906361065541633
How often do you have 5 or more drinks on one occasion? --> How often do you read books for more than 3 hours on one occasion?
How often during the last year have you found that you were not able to stop drinking once you had started? --> How often during the last year have you found that you read a book for substantially longer than you originally planned?
How often during the last year have you failed to do what was normally expected of you because of drinking? --> How often during the last year have you failed to do what was normally expected of you because you were reading a book instead?
How often during the last year have you had a feeling of guilt or remorse after drinking?-->How often during the last year have you had a feeling of guilt or remorse after reading a book?
My conclusion is that I have a serious reading problem, and I need to read less and probably play a lot more video games. I've never in my life stayed up playing video games until one in the morning. Books, though.
Videogames also warp a person's perspective of the relationship between effort and reward, as video games necessarily provide achievements and advancements far more readily than real life.
Tabletop RPGs are even worse because they trick kids into believing that if you accumulate relevant experience and a record of useful achievement and good performance in your job you will inevitably be promoted to a higher level in the same job which will grant you more power and privileges, and this is a pernicious lie.
Videogames:television::cocaine:alcohol
20.9% of people who try cocaine will become dependent on cocaine at some point in their lives.
The figure for alcohol?
22.7%.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0376871610003753
Pac Man was useful. It taught me to eat fruit and to take pills to keep the ghosts away.
16: Alcohol is mind-bogglingly dangerous for something you can buy so easily. If it weren't absolutely necessary, this would be something to fix.
I avoid the social features of video games and barely play any at all myself but I'm pretty sure I know multiple people who met significant others via games. Also via alcohol. Not sure about cocaine.
Video games are far less addictive than either cocaine or alcohol - an estimated 1-3% of gamers have a problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_addiction and it's normally the result rather than the cause of some underlying pathology.
Time spent on videogames in childhood or adolescence is time that could have been spent developing social skills or the skills necessary for adult life.
Time spent on videogames in adulthood is time that could have been spent with our families or building our communities.
Jesus Christ LET PEOPLE HAVE FUN you pitiless Gradgrind. I'm sorry I can't be at work, sleeping, eating, cleaning the bathroom or organising self-criticism sessions for every hour of my life. Some of the time I just want to do pointless shit that makes me happy. It's what differentiates me from plankton.
One of my favorite scandals was the government employee who shared various docs and complained about work via some in-game chat.
15: My friend who was most into RPGs as a kid is now in the Army and I always like to joke about him leveling up or getting new gear (+1 paratrooper boots!).
"Jesus Christ LET PEOPLE HAVE FUN you pitiless Gradgrind."
People should have fun!
Put down the controller and make plans to meet a friend for coffee. Do an art project with your child. Learn to play the violin. Read a book. Go to the MFA. Ride a bicycle. Go for a walk. Call your sister who lives in another state and catch up.
Just put down the controller.
24: Thanks for the advice! We were all waiting for you to tell us how to live!
I assume Nope is mostly trolling, but for the record I think it doesn't really make sense these days to talk about "videogames" as a single phenomenon about which general conclusions can be drawn. It's a whole huge industry with a wide variety of types of games and behaviors around play. There are some types of games that are definitely very concerning, especially the ones that target very young people and try to incentivize real-money payments, but there are plenty of others that are much more benign. It's like talking about "books" (which, yes, some people do in the same manner, including in this very thread).
This thread is too short to be a book.
Going out with my friend to the park to do cocaine, brb.
Don't know whether Nope is trolling, but if they are, I straightforwardly agree with the troll.
My college friend is a videogame designer. He has serious qualms. We were talking about the addictiveness of it. I said that 90% of alcohol is consumed by 10% of drinkers. He said the skew is worse for games. That more than 90% of gaming sales are to the addicted few (less than 10%) and that he feels guilt about them.
My friends down the street came over for a bonfire; their teenage boys stayed home. They said their boys don't seem to know how to hang out with their friends in person. They have close friend groups who game together. The friends come over and are awkward, then go home and are back to fluid online interaction. I'm horrified by that.
I know we're all brains in a jar here, but I don't think people can be happy without being embodied. So I'm not going to think that a life spent only as brains is actually satisfying. Distracting maybe.
And yet, I have to fight, fight, fight my kid. I lost on screen time during the pandemic and am fighting to winch it down to levels I would never have considered acceptable before parenting.
To be completely honest - the games that are most concerning are single-player games or games played with remote multiplayer. I'm less concerned with local multiplayer (e.g., people playing a party game in the same room).
And people are playing video games a lot! An average of 16 hours in an average week in 2020. And the underlying distribution is likely right-skewed by NEETs. Such a time commitment would likely be very socially isolating. With all the characteristic sequelae of social isolation.
It is interesting that people in this thread appear unwilling to recognize harm apart from financial exploitation.
I don't think I'm differing in what I consider harm. I think the causality is where I differ.
@31 The socialization effect is huge. Particularly for boys who lack other channels for socialization. People need to learn how to interact with each other. And virtual interactions are not the same as in-person interactions.
I don't know, man. I have teens who spend a lot of their time gaming, and I don't see much of an impact on their social lives outside of that. They're not the most social people in general, but they have plenty of friends and hang out with them when the opportunity arises. I'm most concerned about the financial exploitation because it's the main impact I see on them, although they seem to be cutting back on game-related purchases lately and switching their irresponsible spending to DoorDash and InstaCart. I don't doubt that there are serious social impacts for some people, but I'm skeptical that it rises to the level of a societal problem.
I mean, most kids go to school. They are not literally lacking in opportunities to be physically present around other people. Homeschooling and some pandemic-related remote school may lead to bigger socialization issues where gaming plays a part, but I'd want to see some actual evidence.
I have a hard time engaging with someone who analogizes to "cocaine" right off the bat. Analogy ban aside, it leaves a lot of ambiguity on whether you're calling for people to improve their lives individually or for policymakers to impose restrictions with coercion on public health grounds.
The friends come over and are awkward, then go home and are back to fluid online interaction.
I feel seen.
(Actually I think I'm quite charming in person, but it's tiring in a way that being online is not.)
"Imagine your kids taking a shower before they go to school
They douse their skin with ice cold water
A huge shock to their little systems
At first it's downright unpleasant, but then
It gets them wired in a way they've never felt
And they think to themselves:
"That shower felt great, maybe I'll try cocaine!""
I think it doesn't really make sense these days to talk about "videogames" as a single phenomenon about which general conclusions can be drawn
Yes, I was thinking that I don't play video games at all, but then I remembered Wordle. I play that every day!
You can buy a sign that reads "Please don't do cocaine in the bathroom"
41: That's not very friendly. If you have cocaine, you should do it in the living room and share.
My kid spent $20 here and there for games or in-game purchases but now he wants to spend $1000 on an erg so definitely being on a HS team is more financially harmful.
"Please don't do videogames in the bathroom."
I am aghast that teenage boys are now awkward and monosyllabic in the presence of their friends' parents. This never happened when I was a teenage boy. We were suave and articulate, charming but never over familiar. Like small spotty David Nivens.
Of course we didn't have video games, which must be the reason.
Look - if you have a child that is spending 20 hours a week playing video games then that is 20 hours a week that they are not developing other interests (or even realizing that they have other interests). I remember a party where a woman in my graduate program dragged her soon-to-be-ex husband along (he rarely left the house). It was hard getting him to go to the party, because attending the party took him away from World of Warcraft. I asked him if anything interesting happened to him that week and he responded with a mad rush of words involving "his" wizard, being eaten by a dragon, and fireballs. My sister's boyfriend in college nearly flunked out because he couldn't stop playing WoW. My nephew cannot relate to other children in part because his hours of playing video games have denied him any grounds for common experience with other children (unless that common experience involves playing the same video game).
Playing video games can be intensely pleasurable, causing a person to develop a strong drive to seek out that pleasurable experience repeatedly. Some people can handle this - they can limit their use of video game systems to one hour or less a day. Others cannot. In this way, video games are no different than gambling, or alcohol, or hard drugs. Or TV. Would you allow your children to spend 20 hours a week watching tv? Would you feel a life spent watching tv was a life well-lived?
But the big difference between video games and these other addictive things is that we don't have a society-level recognition of how dangerous video games can be.
I don't think I grew up with anyone who didn't watch more than 20 hours of TV a week.
20 hours a week is less than two hours a day. Lots of people devote that much time to one of their interests to the exclusion of other potential interests they might develop.
I guess it's more than two hours, but less than three.
Anyway, it's not like an insane amount of time for a leisure time activity.
Anyway, I'm an currently directly pushing a teen to interact more with peers (as opposed to reading, not video games or tv). But at the same age, I was drinking in moving vehicles where the driver was also drinking. So, I'm not that worried.
I wasn't driving drunk myself because my friends thought that my driving while sober was bad and they wanted to be responsible.
49: has anything interesting happened to you this week? Are these online discussions interesting to you?
Frankly, 20 hours a week is less than ten minutes a day. Practically the cost of a cup of coffee.
It's less than most Americans purchase in shoes every month.
It's less than the drinking water required to water an ordinary American lawn each week, to keep it looking green.
Is it common for parents to limit TV time, but not limit video-game time? When I hear that kind of parent-talk, it usually about limiting "screen-time" - seeing both TV and video games as being activities that need to be limited.
Of course lots of parents let their kids do anything, as long as they don't have to pay bail.
Graduate school was probably my biggest waste of life, time-wise. I should have reassessed my capabilities and interests more quickly.
It's more than most Americans set aside in savings, in case the unexpected happens.
59-61: Hey now, we're not all professional mathematicians.
@58
To be honest, work has been grinding me down. As a result I have been spending far too much time on this site. Which does not improve the work situation. And so this activity indirectly takes away time I would rather be spending with my family.
And so, recognizing that by temperament and upbringing I find arguing intensely pleasurable, I bid you good people adieu.
I just think it's important to quantify American hedonism. We're more greedy than a dozen Norwegians in a Spencer's Gifts for two hours/week.
Nopey, I hope you feel some balance soon, and I also enjoyed your contribution to the thread, because it is kind of fun when arguing stays at the right level of heat and doesn't make anyone too angry.
now he wants to spend $1000 on an erg
This could be a bargain if there's oil underneath.
68 is right. There used to be lots more pointless arguing here and it was fun.
Making dumb jokes while others pointlessly argue is truly one of my supreme pleasures in life.
66: I was thinking you and Halford could form a support group together, but you would probably just argue with each other.
Yeah. It's better than the whole "lamentations of their women" thing.
There's a lot of different ways to waste your life - it doesn't require any particular addiction. On the other hand, I imagine even the people we most admire, that we would never say wasted their lives, probably spent some time doing pointless stupid shit.
Like did Newton waste the time he spent on alchemy? On the one hand, it seems really stupid in retrospect. He never did make gold, but he did become head of the Royal Mint. I'm guessing that he may have made a bunch more money doing that than he made investing in calculus.
My kid plays a lot of video games and has done a ton of research into the history of video games. He's built a social life and youtube channel around video games, and learned to program so he could write his own games. He's looking for colleges with strong game development programs, and his first game to be published on Steam is coming out on Monday.
If I had chosen an interest for him to pursue it would not have been video games, but I do think games have done alright by him.
This thread reminds me that I have a gift card for Steam but don't play games enough to have figured out what to get with it. It's close to $50, I think - not a round number because it was one of those coinstar things where your pour in a bunch of change and get a gift card to avoid a transaction fee.
Do an art project with your child. Learn to play the violin. Read a book. Go to the MFA.
you mean...be more middle class?
It's not enough for a booze and cocaine fueled in-person multiplayer party.
If you want to do Civ off a hooker's ass you really need a projector.
Someone else will need to supply the cocaine though.
77: Have you played Braid?
86: No - that looks promising. Thanks!
72: Truly Ajay is more of the heir at the moment than Nopey.
Halford was great, but just remarkably contentious at times.
I'm with 2. Although I suspect that Tetris has helped supermarket baggers.
The addictions I worry most about are the ones that come with destructive behaviors. Like a lot of people engage in extremely destructive behavior when they drink.
I bet you could make the case that arguing online is just as addictive as video games and actually more associated with off-line violent behavior, via political radicalization.
The Calabat is coding a game in Scratch while I type so probably his brain is only half rotting?
He also plays the violin so no more than half
88: Sure, Ajay is the most consistently argumentative person on Unfogged nowadays, but as far as I can tell, Ajay doesn't see his arguing as a problem or addiction the way that Halford and Nope apparently do.
Didn't Halford blame us in a way no way related to what Nope has done.
Sorry I've joined this thread so late. It's definitely up my alley. I've mentioned before that World of Warcraft is my biggest hobby.
Three years ago if I had been playing as much as I am now, it would definitely be concerning. But now I work from home full-time and my job has enough downtime that I can play during the day just by alt-tabbing. Depending on details this could be concerning, or a sad but necessary adaptation to post-covid life, or me having a pretty sweet setup. Could vary from one day to the next depending on what I'm getting done in work, WoW, and my real/personal life. Like, should I go out and look for a job that has a commute and all that entails, just because it would be edifying for me to have face-to-face interactions? Maybe I should look for a job for other reasons but that doesn't seem like a good one.
My 10yo girl told us she has been skipping outdoor recess to play D&D. I wouldn't call that concerning behavior, I'd say it's just doing something she likes.
(Physically she's a really good athlete so I have no concerns about activity. She skates 5 or 6 days a week and the girls on her team just won a chance to play a mini game on the ice of the local pro hockey franchise)
Ajay is the most consistently argumentative person on Unfogged nowadays
(offstage: noise of ajay wrestling with instinct to shout NO I'M NOT!)
97: True. I used to play Magic: the Gathering, and there's a store nearby that has regular Friday Night Magic events and I've thought about going to those again. More to the point, maybe I should look for a stable kitchen table Magic group if socializing is the goal, because Friday Night Magic isn't actually all that social. I used to have one but it drifted apart when Atossa was born, if not earlier due to other peoples' life changes.
Any of these would be a minor imposition on Cassandane and Atossa, but they've survived worse. They would also increase clutter and definitely be more expensive than WoW or other hobbies. Not saying I can't/shouldn't do one of these anyway, just thinking out loud.
One of the worst online developments in recent years is when someone says "I love MTG" you have to stop and go back to find the context.
I bought my son a chess program when he was like, six years old. Then I looked at the interface and realized it was too complicated for him to learn. So he taught it to himself and has been something of a chess addict ever since.
I'd be thrilled if my kid got into chess, M:tG (note formatting), or something similar. I think she's mature enough for them mentally, but she's not interested in learning or sticking to the rules and she's a sore loser and also a poor winner, e.g. gloating. I don't know if we've done anything wrong, if it's a phase she'll grow out of, or if she's just not the type for competitive tabletop games. Her favorite game like that is called Sleeping Queens, and when she wins, she'll often want to ignore it and keep playing until we go through the deck rather than start a new game. Maybe we just need to look into more cooperative games.
I have an Xbox and enjoy playing mostly FPS games (Halo, all of it, and some of the CoD games) but I only play from time to time. In the past I played a helluva lot but I was going through a messy divorce and my life just falling apart in other ways. It was a nice distraction. Right now I have one of my best friends here staying with me for the next couple of months because the major sporting event that's being held here has driven up rents to absolutely insane levels and we've been playing Halo 3 cooperatively a lot and it's a ton of fun.
The other game I play regularly is one of the Clash games and I do pay the monthly pass for $5 because it unlocks a bunch of gameplay that makes the game a lot more fun to play but I never shell out for shit like chests, emojis (emotes, in game) and the like.
Also, Universal Paperclips, which is even better on mobile and cheap is hella addicting.
I have a hard time thinking about issues of addiction, because I significantly overdo a lot of things -- including videogames -- without quite considering myself an addict except as regards cigarettes in my youth. I'm generally sympathetic to nope's point of view here without really agreeing with it. I certainly don't think nope is trolling here.
Right now, I'm overdoing Fortnite, and to a lesser extent, Civ 6. (Moby: I recommend 6 with all the expansions.) I really, really enjoy Fortnite. It strikes me as being the thing that videogames have been striving for my entire adult life. I wouldn't dream of spending money on it, though. (Admittedly, Fortnite was a consideration when I replaced my seven-year-old computer.)
When I was younger, I spent quite a lot more time on videogames, and had fun playing, and had fun talking about the games. I spent enormous amounts of time on Civs 1-4, and Everquest (an early MMORPG that has been supplanted by Warcraft, which I've never played.) I went from a massive expenditure of time on Everquest to quitting the game entirely the day my son was born -- I didn't know I was quitting it. I just stopped wanting to play.
When I was really young, it was pinball, D&D and other tabletop games. I don't think any of these things damaged me.
But I will say: Pokemon Go became a genuine problem for me. I had to quit that, and it was hard.
I own Civ 6 and all the expansions. I've tried it, but never gotten into it.
I'm only a million points away from level 44 in Pokemon Go.
I would quit any time I wanted. My family and friends should try to be more interesting is all.
Or at least they could come for walks with me.
106: I was never a serious gamer but there are a number of games on my Steam account that were last played the month my son was born. I just don't have the interest relative to other activities.
Nope isn't trolling, nor wrong about the harm of video game addiction, but seriously overstates the risk. I think it also depends on the kid how risky it is. We don't have any formal restrictions, preferring to operate on the "no/turn that crap off principle". Shiv loves games so it's not reasonable for him never to share that with the midd.
But the kids are different. The Calabat has a very low ceiling for being done with screens - he and I played 45 minutes of Minecraft Dungeons last night and halfway through he was suggesting that next Thursday we paint instead. My daughter? It would be TV all day if we let her. She loves it. So... most days she doesn't watch any TV.
104: we've had a lot of success with cooperative board games.
104: Wait, gloating when you win is wrong?
Re: 106 and addiction more generally, I smoked cigarettes in my late teens and early 20s and found it easy to keep it moderate, and to quit when I felt like it. I would smoke a pack a week, while walking home from work or in between drinks at a bar or when I was doing something late at night and needed a stimulant, and that was it. Obviously not good for me but not nearly as problematic as a pack a day. My parents used to smoke before I was born and I'm told it was much easier for my dad to quit than my mom. It depends on the person.
On the other hand I'm a tiny bit worried about my alcohol intake. Today is day 2 of 7 of going dry. It has never been that much, just a drink a two a night except for special occasions, but "a drink" can vary a lot in strength, and I've been having sleep problems and I hope a literal detox might help.
I wish I was smoking more weed, as silly as it sounds in this context. Probably only an average of once a month over the past year. It's probably less bad for me than alcohol and may help with other things. And I've been given a fair amount as gifts and some of it is old enough (2+ years) that I think it might be losing its potency. Unfortunately I only can or want to smoke outside and that's not comfortable in the evening this time of year.
Ugh. 113 was me. Sorry about that. I think "Remember personal info?" keeps getting unchecked.
113.2: I was in that situation and it did. I still resent it, but if I want to feel decent, I don't drink often, even in small amounts.
Steady would happily do a twelve hour day of screens, although he'll say that the last two hours were boring. And that's without playing (what I guess are) the good games. It is mostly about me, though. When I want to turn off the kid and garden or do my own thing, I could do that indefinitely by allowing him a screen. If I have patience for it, he'll play board games with me. We've been playing a lot of Wingspan recently.
107: The "heroes" expansion is particularly fun, as are secret societies. The barbarians are more interesting. Zombies I can take or leave, but I do play with that enabled. Governors are cool, but I think that might not be an expansion.
113: Cigarettes were a nightmare for me -- 2.5 to 3 packs a day. Thirty-plus years later, quitting remains one of my huge life accomplishments. And I still want a cigarette.
So, it turns out they're very bad for you. I can send links if you want.
I have not tried the expansion yet. Mostly what I like to do is play a game set on islands, build a big navy but no army, wait for someone to attack me and blast them from offshore.
I randomize everything that is randomizable. My favorite part of the game is exploring the world.
I do always play as English. Plus 2 sea movement is a force amplifier.
I play a lot of nonograms. It's far better for me than my other mindless hobby when I'm trying to get through work, which is browsing online thrift stores and purchasing things I don't need.
I browse Etsy for Filson wool things. I've only ever bought one (not from Etsy) and I really like it.
I'm looking for a good Canadian tuxedo.
125: But not new either. It has a repaired hole.
||
Yes, Musk is definitely applying his mighty brain to the problem that is Twitter, hence his alternating reassuring advertisers their brands will be safe with plans for a "thermonuclear name and shame" directed at them.
|>
It's wild to watch. I expected him to flail and fail but not quite this fast or spectacularly.
I'm watching a movie with my family because of peer pressure. "See How They Run" is starting great. Ronan is great.
Seeing Sam Rockwell look middle-aged makes me feel old.
Someone should make a sequel with those same characters. I'd go see a movie with Richard Attenborough.