That's a very life stylist point of view. Who's to say that exercising, producing useful things to society, or social interaction is in ANY way "better" than spending your days playing video games?
I for one am an avid gamer and I would rather game than quite a large number of other activities that people find rewarding or fulfilling, but I don't go write on some blog saying that they're wasting their life away jogging down the street or writing Dragonlance novels.
Everyone should keep their negative opinions about gaming to themselves, much less people die playing video games than pretty much every other activity on the planet.
As a gamer myself, please understand that I don't have anything against gaming in general. However, I can think of an objective way in which producing "useful things to society" is better than gaming, which is that if everyone chose to spend all their time gaming, we would die from lack of basic necessities such as food, water, sanitation, etc. This would, of course, cut short the amount of gaming we could all do.
So, obviously, we have no choice but for some people contribute to society. Is there a fair way to decide who has to contribute, and who is allowed to opt out and play video games all day?
On an entirely different note, gaming probably causes a very significant number of deaths, due to its sedentary nature. Being sedentary is perhaps more dangerous than smoking: http://www.naturalnews.com/001547.html .
So, obviously, we have no choice but for some people contribute to society. Is there a fair way to decide who has to contribute, and who is allowed to opt out and play video games all day?
Not really, but we have a way anyway, and it's called money. It's the same way we use to determine who is allowed to opt out and read all day, who is allowed to opt out and go on lots of vacations, and who is allowed to opt out and study something abstruse in college for four years.
> who is allowed to opt out and study something abstruse in college for four years.
College is one of the last bastions of learning for the sake of learning. As programmers who often exalt creation for the sake of curation -- and discovery for the sake of discovery -- I think its better we commend that, rather than condemn it.
I am empathetically not condemning it. I'm pointing out that if we're measuring things by "how useful are they to society at large", it's not obvious that the time spent by a lot of people in college is ahead of four years spent becoming a World of Warcraft expert. But I don't think that's a measuring stick to which we should hold up everyone's lives, which is why I have a problem with neither college graduates nor MMO players.
mquander's response took the words out of my mouth. Video games, or anything else mentioned as an alternative to video games in this article, are things you do after you take care of the other necessities of life.
It was clear from the article that spawned this discussion that he was employed and simply took some time off like I did to play D3.
Firstly, I should have been more specific. I meant better physically -- physical activity, even overactivity, is better under the vast majority of circumstances to video gaming.
Secondly, I don't have negative opinions about gaming -- I play a lot of video games myself, in addition to other hobbies. I have negative opinions about obsessions, whether its an obsession with gaming or an obsession with work. (By negative opinion, I don't mean that I judge those with such obsessions poorly; merely that I consider them unhealthy.)
I for one am an avid gamer and I would rather game than quite a large number of other activities that people find rewarding or fulfilling, but I don't go write on some blog saying that they're wasting their life away jogging down the street or writing Dragonlance novels.
Everyone should keep their negative opinions about gaming to themselves, much less people die playing video games than pretty much every other activity on the planet.