Envy of gamers

This has sparked up in a big way reading the Torchlight and Demons Souls threads - I'd really like to play torchlight! I'd really like to play Demons Souls! I think I'd really enjoy these games a lot!

But I have, you know, work, and my own programming projects in spare time, so something would have to give?

But that's not it! Like, I don't have any problem finding the time to play Go and WYPS on Little Golem; it's not like there aren't weekends.

It's more - does anyone else feel this? - I just feel like I couldn't justify spending two/three weeks making imaginary numbers go up any more? I don't know why not! I love making imaginary numbers go up! I'd just feel ridiculous? Like, I already worry a lot that I'm wasting my time with all the procrastination I do now (like typing this post) - actually going out and buying something seems so calculatedly self-destructive! Ugh idk.

Does anyone else know what I am talking about?

I'd love to play Torchlight but I have a Mac and it hasn't been ported yet. But I don't think that's precisely the same thing.

system envy is a real thing

I have a mac but it runs in vmware fusion like a champ.

but on the topic: most people have a big chunk of their leisure being "calculatedly self-destructive" in your sense: watching film, reading fiction, doing crossword puzzles, watching tv, etc. I don't see why gaming is any more self-destructive than those.

Then again I don't play games obsessively anymore either: I'm lucky if I get an hour a day (but I don't do any of the other activities listed above except verrrry occasionally so a little vg now and then fits in just fine). My brother is having a hard time finding time to play games but he watches lots of films and "into" a bunch of tv shows and then yeah how do you have the time.

I will only play a couple of games a year all the way through because they have to really click with me straightaway and also have their difficulty/content level pitched so I can complete them in 20 hours or less before weariness sets in. The result is that I basically buy the new Mario/Zelda game every 6 months or so and normally on the DS so I can play it on my commute. I can't justify purchasing anything I know I will never play these days.

It isn't because I don't have the leisure time - I currently have plenty of time and income to spend as long as I want doing whatever. However I tend to fill it with books for the most part and then when I am at home I watch television shows, and occasionally films, because games are fundamentally antisocial things to do if you live with your occasional gamer partner.

The last time I decided I was going to stick with a really long game through thick and thin was Final Fantasy X, but after 40 hours or so, I felt so guilty of wasting all that time that I had to stop. I could never bring myself to play something like World of Warcraft now.

The strange thing is it isn't like reading fiction and watching television shows is necessarily any more productive, but I don't get the same feeling of staleness that I get when playing a game for a really long period of time. I actually find that playing games for long periods of time, becoming totally focused on the game world and its problems, weirdly makes me feel less confident and sociable afterwards.

I couldn't stop reading - my family are all big readers, I've read everything (fiction and non-fiction) voraciously since an early age, it is almost a reflex action. From a utilitarian perspective I think it at least makes me more informed and knowledgeable. And I can at least talk about television shows and films with other people as banal as that sounds.

Obviously it is ridiculous to try and rationalise your leisure habits like that. Fundamentally I do those things because I am lazy and they give me short term pleasure. But still if I spend 100 hours completing Final Fantasy X, I literally have nothing to show for it at the end. The time is simply lost.

I should point out though that, apart from my girlfriend on occasion, and unlike when I was younger, I don't really have a group of friends to hang out with and play games with any more. I think if I did I would probably play a lot more just for the social aspect.

I don't think that time spent playing video games is "wasted time". If video games are art, then an hour spent playing a game is no more a waste than an hour spent in an art gallery, or an hour spent listening to music.
The problem I have is that I just don't have the free time. Or rather that I have the free time, I just pish it away procrastinating.

I don't want to open up the whole "are video games art?" debate, but IMHO games are not now nor are they ever likely to be art, unless one takes the broad abstract view that all cultural product that isn't eating, sleeping, breeding, and carrying out the survival tasks necessary to achieve those three things is in some sense art. Perhaps the root of my weird feelings of guilt about the activity.

idk, i figure that if im experiencing someones creative output, it doesnt really matter if its how i met your mother or a jon ronson book or batman:arkham asylum

I get where you're coming from, but fundamentally I can't get passed the fact that video games are essentially very sophisticated board games. For sure aspects of the game are "art" in the narrow sense, but taken as a whole it isn't Art, its primary purpose is not to be Art, no more than that of Monopoly, it belongs in some other category of thing.

It just seems a slippery slope: if I say Grand Theft Auto is Art, then I have to say Chess is Art. If I start saying that things that basically contains rulesets to allow you to generate narratives are Art, then Football is Art. Is that a helpful or interesting thing to say? I don't think it is really. Broadening the definition of Art only makes it less useful as a definition.

Sorry I went off about games as Art, when I said I wouldn't. Does fascinate me though...

EAW - thanks for your really good post!

I totally get what you're saying about utilitarianism - I do the same rationalizations with my leisure time and it's v.hard to say why one feels guilty when one neglects useless please X in favour of useless pleasure Y - I suppose it's primarily a self-definition thing, that the person one would prefer to be would be doing more X, if only because it's the less 'easy' choice?

TBH I find it really amazing that there are so many adults who play WoW! I mean you are putting so much time and effort and to some extent creativity into something that so transparently doesn't exist, will never reward you anything - I feel like that "I used to be the eighteenth-best Night Elf but now I'm the sixteenth! I gotta skip dinner to overtake the bastard in 15th" is basically a teenage impulse, before the adultifying realisation that other people are better than you at even what you're best at? OTOH maybe some WoW players are actually to a degree enlightened - "In a few years we'll all be ash, who cares if reading all the Virage Modern Classics will 'impress' some imagined person or internal voice, what does that even matter?". I'd like to think so!

I will only play a couple of games a year all the way through because they have to really click with me straightaway and also have their difficulty/content level pitched so I can complete them in 20 hours or less before weariness sets in.

Although that said I find the exact opposite of this! The only games I'm able to justify to myself these days are the ones with the difficulty maxed all the way into the red; I sunk maybe 25 hours into beating this on 'epic' difficulty because the badge was marked as "impossible" on kongregate and I felt I was achieving something - it felt great! But when I'd try out other games on kong looking for the same feeling they'd throw tutorial levels and gentle slopes at me, and I'd find myself v.conscious of the ticking seconds to oblivion etc...

Which I guess only shows that I haven't leveled myself past that teenage impulse after all?

games arent art but then neither are most of the tv shows, movies and records ppl waste time on and at least video games have some cognitive benefits like preventing u from getting alzheimer's or w/e

like any utilitarian rationalizing is totally retarded bs u can just as easily talk abt how u wish u had more time to read james but playing gta at least your honing useful motor skills and improving your capacity for abstract visualization whereas reading james is spending days immersing yourself in a world that has no connection or relevance to the one we live in

i mean basically all your going to do is make an attempt at justifying what shit u value - i fukken h8 ppl that try to nutrition nazi their leisure activities its so self-serving and self-deluding - ideally ure doing this shit because its fun and u like it - fuk tryna "elevate" that by making it "worthwhile"

going to go murder sum civilians now peace

Lamp very OTM but for the last few months I've started to feel conflicted and sad about the time I spend playing, say, Football Manager. Partly cos I feel like I should be doing something more constructive and partly because I want to do something more fulfilling but I have no idea what that niggling urge inside me is an urge for. But I love playing games. Why not spend your life doing something you love doing, since everybody's exit strategy amounts to the same? But yeah something inside me lately sort of wants to do something else with the time I'm spending on games. Sort of.

Off to play Football Manager now.

Everyone needs some down time. It's not possible to be productive 16 hours a day, so it's not a big deal if someone spends one or two hours playing video games or watching TV or whatever.

OTOH maybe some WoW players are actually to a degree enlightened - "In a few years we'll all be ash, who cares if reading all the Virage Modern Classics will 'impress' some imagined person or internal voice, what does that even matter?". I'd like to think so!

Haha yes I think you might be on to something here!

From my limited experience and understanding of the game, WoW just seems to be the ultimate time-suck; its like the plot of some awful science fiction novel where it's the first stage in some mega-corporation's diabolical plans to pacify the population with the gratification of endless worthless rewards.

But I'm throwing rocks in my glasshouse - just because I don't play WoW doesn't mean I'm exactly out there grabbing life by the horns.

And on another level I can totally appreciate the dedication of the hardcore gamer, the kind who will spend endless hours trying to complete impossible homebrewed versions of Mario and then posting the videos on YouTube. I think sneakily sometimes I feel like I wouldn't mind being this guy...if you are going to waste your time doing something you might as well *really* waste it.

xpost

Okay yeah I think my problem might be with not being productive for 16 minutes a day maybe

i fukken h8 ppl that try to nutrition nazi their leisure activities its so self-serving and self-deluding

I did admit in my first post that this was probably a pretty ridiculous way of trying to justify your leisure activities whatever they happen to be. It doesn't really reflect my actual thought process, which is more like "fuck, I should be updating my CV/tidying the house/going to the pub with my friends/getting some exercise, but actually I think I will just watch Season 4 of the Wire again/play Mario/post to ILX because it is easier."

Everyone needs some down time. It's not possible to be productive 16 hours a day, so it's not a big deal if someone spends one or two hours playing video games or watching TV or whatever.

I'm barely productive during my actual 9 to 5 job let alone for 16 hours a day.

I was reminded of something I read on this guy's Rubik's Cube site (and spent and/or wasted half an hour reading it!)

http://lar5.com/cube/menthol.html

When it comes to that guilty impulse of "why am I sinking so many hours into this unproductive activity" I feel that way all the time. I don't really read, but compared to comic books, movies, TV and music, video games take FAR more time than all the others combined together. But what the hell - it is what I love doing, and maybe I am deluding myself -- OK, quite possibly -- but I don't think cutting it down is going to make "real life" significantly less miserable (long-run) or more productive or any closer to achieving my dreams or what I "really want" out of life (take your pick - socially, romantically, career-wise, psychologically). I would make a trade, honestly, or at least in part, but all I can really do is just survive....

there's nothing that makes you forgot the time between now and the day you die than video games imo

*like video games imo

haha exactly

yeah I mean I know some pretty fucking productive people (measured in terms of output: books and articles published, e.g.) but as I get to know them better I start to learn about how they spend their time, and yeah they don't work all the time: they watch a fair amount of sports on tv, like, obsessively, and and play shit like sudoku: and I figure, sudoku is fun, no doubt, but Picross and Pic Pic are more fun. It's not like games are a completely different category of thing to do with your leisure time than what most people do. Yeah it's "unproductive" but are you really gonna start writing Wikipedia pages in your leisure time instead?

then again the point about self-definition seems key: if you see yourself as an educated person then it might jar to spend your leisure time jacking your frag count or grinding in some mmorpg. Maybe it's the types of games you play: is there a "hierarchy" of games in which some are only for kids and some are ok for otherwise productive adults? That seems wrong to me but maybe it can get at the kinds of feelings being discussed here.

I get this, or maybe it's not the same thing. I won't sit down to watch a film very often because I don't like writing off 2 hours at a time; I tell myself that I can't afford all that time just sitting still. But then I'll happily spend 3h in front of ILX doing even less, just because I can tell myself "I can stop at any time".

So I haven't started on a full new PC game for a while, but I'll dip into flash games or occasionally get the PSP out and spend just as much time on them, just because they feel more casual somehow. Like serious time investment is optional but not 100% required to get anything out of the experience, and I'm in denial that I will most likely actually put that time in anyway, or waste it in a way that won't even provide the benefits of gaming.

I often envy friends who manage to play games AND e.g. write music or program in their free time AND keep up with music, novels, whatever, because these all seem so time-intensive (increasingly feels like a v. limited resource) and I don't seem to manage of any of them never mind several, but that is my poor time management at work

More and more I see games as a social activity. I have L4D2 on PC and xbox but I hardly ever play single player, or even online with strangers, I just want to play it with friends. Singstar is perhaps my favourite game ever, and of course I don't play that on my own. I only ever play Rock Band when I go to friends' houses, and I absolutely love it, but am v reluctant to buy my own copy because a) it won't be the same playing it on my own, and ii) for that game more than any other it really does feel like I could be doing something more productive, i.e. learning the real guitar. (Yes we'll all be dust in the end but before I get there, if I could choose to be an expert Rock Band player or an expert (or even mediocre) guitarist I would hands down pick the latter.)

if I could choose to be an expert Rock Band player or an expert (or even mediocre) guitarist I would hands down pick the latter

I'm going through this as I just bought Rockband. The way I have justified it to myself is that I have to put RB & other video games into the category that they are a fun way to spend my time...

They are not learning a craft but they make me happy.

and hells there's not enough of that to go round these days. amitrite?

also if you never worry about wasting your life away making imaginary numbers go up, then that is probably the point where you actually are wasting your life.

i wanted to post something thought through on this thread so i could post it with 'games as shart' in my display name but i couldn't be bothered thinking of anything or changing my display name

you were probably to busy buffing up your frag count tbh

i am a so-so rock band player and i've invested maybe 15 hours in it TOPS. to get to my "level" in real-life guitar playing it'd easily be 10 times that, if not more. QED.

Oh yeah no denying it's easier, whichever old fart rocker said that if his kids had spent as much time learning the real guitar they'd be virtuosos, is nuts.

so it's basically not really a valid question to say "which would you rather be" tbh

hey would you rather be an amazing rock band player or totally rich and famous?

ok, would i rather spend my spare time becoming a rock band ace, or a below average bedsit strummer? still the latter, tbh. but i'm happy to play rock band with a group of people, because for me it's a social thing.

I would love to become a great guitarist, but three years of dicking around with a guitar did not result in any progress, whereas I am fucking killer at Guitar Hero/Rock Band, so it is what it is.

i think the manual skill bit of the whole ROCK BAND VS ACTUAL MUSIC argument gets overstated - has anyone seen the old carrie brownstein article about the other pleasures it leaves out and stuff

i think generally get bored with games slash gaming as a whole when i feel like the aesthetic and ludic aspects are getting too far apart - like i've been playing this dumb gold mining game on my phone a lot because the GAMES AS ART bit of my brain can be trusted to go 'oh ok nothing to see here' and move on

actually the sum effect of this thread on me is that i'm now sitting here thinking 'you know, i never did ascend in nethack'

As someone who has been playing crappy bedside guitar for about a decade (and other instruments long before) I really hate that false dichotomy argument, too. They are nothing alike, both in physical practice and emotional turmoil err fulfillment. Here's one thing though - it's hard as hell to get people together to play music, and then still manage to enjoy it - hopefully you all enjoy the same kinds of music, and are at similar or halfway decent levels of musical skill and knowledge. A game played at parties were half the people aren't sober and rock out and have a good time, in a massively improved version of Karaoke is fine! (I loved that comparison of Sudoku to Picross above, Euler.)

There's no reason a person can't love both - though like ledge, I have yet to actually take the plunge and buy the game myself, I've enjoyed it immensely at other people's houses. And even as someone who has invested many many many hours in various musical crafts, I'm not sure dumping 100 enjoyable hours of your life into Rock Band is really bad at all! I mean, even if you must look at it as a bad habit, there are lots of more useless and destructive vices people have in this world, dudes - everyone's got one or ten.