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Eh I watched the first half or so, it seems to be based on the premise that time spent playing video games is wasted time. It's entertainment. Just like any other form of entertainment. No better, no worse.
I get the impression from people who say this kind of thing that they are just trying to be cool. Is it so different to play a game online with friends than to go to a movie with friends? I'd argue playing a game online is better than going to a movie because you have a lot more interaction time. Obviously there are other things you can do with friends that will have more interaction time, my point is just that it's not as simple as "video games = wasted time, anything IRL = good use of time".
In the end when you look back would it be so different to have spent all your video game time doing a martial art or something? I think if you take away your societal biases, there isn't really much difference.
The video says "experiences that don't really exist." This is such a standard dumb argument IMO. The experience of playing a game is as real as any other. Playing solitaire with cards on your kitchen table is as real as going to a movie with friends is as real as snowboarding is as real as painting a painting is as real as playing Starcraft.
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lol moderation is the key.
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Ah, I remember talking about something like this with a friend of mine. He asked me if someone were to tell me spending my time in video games was a waste, how would I respond? Well, if you really want to get to the bare bones of things, then yes. Playing video games is indeed a waste of time. But, if that's the case, isn't everything where doing just a waste? I mean we're going to all turn into dust at the end of the line anyways, so why bother going through life right? It'll just all be a waste?
I know that that's a pretty black and white view of things, but it's relevant in that entertainment in general ISN'T supposed to be so black and white. I think that the video maker is an extreme case of indulgence in video games if he's spent thousands of dollars and tens of thousands of hours in video gaming. As CultureMisfits says, moderation is the key. Video games can certainly be a healthy hobby. How is it any different from the other variety of strange activities seem to enjoy?
I guess the argument is that video games are a degenerative experience because people imagine it as sitting in a dark basement by yourself, but what most don't realize is that most of the joy of video games comes through a community and playing with others. Like, take WoW for example. The game itself is pretty...eh. But I really enjoyed it and kept playing for such a long time because of my guildmates and interacting and doing stuff with them. Same thing for Starcraft. I'm sure that interest would die off if there was only single player, but because there's such a large community around it, (and it's a great game D: ) that it's still thriving to this day.
Edit: Sorry if it's all muddled, it's 6 A.M. over here and I'm trying to finish a paper -.-----
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The big joke is that life IS a big game, and you think you have only one life until you die. And then you go for another ride.
If people(myself included) could just relax and start playing this life game without taking it too seriously, we wouldn't have to make cheap replicas of it in which we can truly relax.
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Ahh the neverending debate.. Well, logically, if the things you do in your free time are not going to contribute to anything in the future, it is a waste. Whether you smoke weed and hang out with friends or play sc2 all night long won`t make a difference in the long run, you will forget about that night the next week. From that perspective, as long as you keep a healthy balance between entertainment and studying/working etc all is good.
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ughhh make me feel bad for staying up and playing sc2 all night sheesh 
Its an interesting opinion though. I watched the entire video and it DID get me thinking that there are much better things I could be doing with my time than playing starcraft, using forums, going on facebook... luckily for me I ignored these feelings... going to go ladder.
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Canada5565 Posts
Very, veryveryveryvery bias. His black and white perspective of what's real and what's not makes me unable to take anything he says seriously. Not that I would anyways because it's all just opinionated rambling.
edit - I came across a Daoist saying a couple weeks ago that is interesting when thinking about this.
"He who never leaves his home can know the universe"
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time wasted fun is not time wasted.
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honestly i don't regret playing video games at all. beating an extremely epic game is one of the more entertaining things that a person can do. and if I wasn't having a shitload of fun playing epic games, I'd probably be having less fun by doing something that's equally a waste of time ><
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Bertrand Russell
"The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time"
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playing games is fun! it doesn't feel like wasting time to me. i know i'm not addicted anyway since i can just get up from my chair at any time and go do something else whenever i feel like it.
so for me, playing games is not a waste of time as long as you are not addicted and doing it is still FUN for you.
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You get people who watch 4-5 hours of TV a day. How is this any different?
To be honest though I don't play many videogames any more because I'm just sort of growing out of it, I guess. I play a lot of Civ IV and that's about it; I have some free time outside my job and I spend that playing chess, scrabble online or watching TV shows.
I'll be playing a lot of SC 2 though.
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In a perfect world everyone has a strong enough will to see the value in hard work and want to help improve society. Sadly this is not the case, we live in a post modern society where our ancestors found ways to make gathering food and having a luxurious life very easily to the point where hard work doesn't seem worth it, since most middle class americans/europeans are living in homes with food that people 100 years ago would've deemed only heavenly. We are sitting on the hard work of our ancestors and look lazy because of it (hey maybe we are)
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I don't see how anyone can disagree with him.
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I came to the same conclusion a few weeks ago, although in my case it wasn't so much gaming in particular but just spending way too much time on the internet. I think everyone here knows the feeling where they're up on a school night at 4am for no fucking reason (ie. no PL or OSL/MSL  ), just randomly browsing the same sites over and over again while on AIM/MSN and then being tired as hell the next day.
I still play SC and other video games the same amount (that is to say, not very much) because I enjoy it, but I've really begun to cleanse out the truly wasted time from my schedule and replace it with more meaningful things. Made a list of all the shit I wanted to do but never will, and then I went and did them. I think that's a more useful message than this specific one talking only about video gaming.
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17070 Posts
On March 19 2010 01:07 StarN wrote:
In a perfect world everyone has a strong enough will to see the value in hard work and want to help improve society. Sadly this is not the case, we live in a post modern society where our ancestors found ways to make gathering food and having a luxurious life very easily to the point where hard work doesn't seem worth it, since most middle class americans/europeans are living in homes with food that people 100 years ago would've deemed only heavenly. We are sitting on the hard work of our ancestors and look lazy because of it (hey maybe we are)
Interestingly, a consequence of the fact that we can support many people with relatively minimal effort is the rise and development of culture and the arts.
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Thanks for showing this video. Worth watching, also increasing my motivation to not pick up any video games in the future!
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There's no disagreeing with this video at all. Anyone who is disagreeing with it is not listening or is just "contributing" their 2 cents without actually watching the video (extremely common on this and any forum). The guy was addicted to video games and it was unhealthy and ruined his marriage and his life. There are lots of people who are in the same boat.
Maybe you're the really athletic guy who is very outgoing, social, and moderates their gaming time perfectly and it is simply "entertainment" as you say. Sure, there are people who fit this profile. Moderation is obviously key, and if you can control the amount of time you spend playing games so that it doesn't affect OTHER things in your life, congratulations. But this guy isn't talking about that. He's talking about people for whom gaming has negative real life effects, which is to say many many many people.
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i feel like this is more about wow than other games
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How is reading a harry potter book not wasted time while playing wow is? And what would all those people do with their time if video games didn't exist? Go out and do incredible things?
So where does the list end? Imagine all the things you could achieve if you didn't watch tv, read books or watch fox news?
They're all some sort of entertainment/escape from reality for a few hours and for now video games is the most popular one until something else more fun comes along.
Funny thing is that I listened to a radio show last night while trying to sleep, and they were talking about video games, and this guy called in and explained what wow was about, and that he played about 40 hours a week, and the radio hosts said "Don't you see this as a problem?" and his answer was that it helped him get over his drug abuse and for the first time in a long time, he could do something with his son, who obviously played wow as well...what if he made a youtube clip and presented it like video games saved his life and re-established his connection to his family members, and that everyone should thank God for video games and the countless lives it's saved.
You can't paint it black and white, its stupid.
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Rofl, reading harry potter is just as antisocial as a guy playing the halo campaigns by himself on legendary 24 times. And so is driving between LA/NYC 3 times? why not take a plane if time is so precious to them lmao.
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Oh, he was a WoW player, that explains it all!
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On March 19 2010 02:09 krndandaman wrote:
can that guy tell me anything else I don't know? lol
Are you one of those people who have 2-3 lv 80 WoW characters?
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Baa?21245 Posts
Moral: Don't play WoW, play SC instead. You even get TL, a community, as a bonus~ ^^
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The community within a guild in wow is often reason enough for people to keep playing, as they settle with it as a substitute for a real social life, which is why I believe its so popular amongst girls...
Edit: Oh, and I just now (2 minutes ago) got a beta key from an old wow-friend of mine, since his rl friend is now a GM..downloading the client as we speak. Hah!
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iNcontroL
USA29055 Posts
I'm always on ventrilo with friends while I play.. and when I play console it usually involves my gf.
Everything in moderation. If you play TOO much you will see negative effects obviously.
Work out, get a job, go to school, spend time with friends AND play video games. If you are obviously benefiting from one more than the other balance accordingly.
Blanket rules like "play less games" is bad. Some people ONLY socialize through games.. that isn't optimal, but 20 years ago they would read comics and paint models by themselves and get made fun of for not being on the varsity squad or having a gf.
Games can do a LOT for a person and are good when used with moderation. I feel like videos like this and others are misleading and too generalizing. Also gaming gets bashed way too much (in the west at least) imo.
Anyways nice share  Just giving my 2 cents.
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Everyone has their own tastes for what they do in their leisure time, stop judging gamers for doing theirs.
No but really, this isn't even an opinion thing. You're wrong and I couldn't even fathom a reasonable person agreeing with this blog.
Leisurely activities are a waste of time yes, but what the individual gains from them is something you can't judge. I'm so sick of hearing this on forums, "oh yeah I quit WoW to get my life back"
What life? You quit WoW and now you're on a gaming forum talking about how you quit WoW.
I played WoW and fit it into my life just fine, it was a very fun experience. A shame the game is basically entirely different now though..
Gaming is awesome. I beat a 50 hour RPG over spring break in a span of 4 days -- best spring break ever.
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Aside from Starcraft every now and then (and maybe some War3, too), I don't play any games at all and it hasn't stopped me from wasting gigantic amounts of time that I could have used doing something useful like getting ripped to make females like me or learning a new language. 
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So I'm gonna defend this video since I thought it was good. Seems like most people was just like "oh he bashes video games" NERD RAGE RAAAHH!!!!
On March 18 2010 23:22 meegrean wrote:
playing games is fun! it doesn't feel like wasting time to me. i know i'm not addicted anyway since i can just get up from my chair at any time and go do something else whenever i feel like it.
so for me, playing games is not a waste of time as long as you are not addicted and doing it is still FUN for you.
This is exactly what he said. The guy isn't bashing video games, he's just saying that it should be taken in moderation and that video games can easily be addicting.
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On March 19 2010 05:17 eMbrace wrote:
Everyone has their own tastes for what they do in their leisure time, stop judging gamers for doing theirs.
No but really, this isn't even an opinion thing. You're wrong and I couldn't even fathom a reasonable person agreeing with this blog.
Leisurely activities are a waste of time yes, but what the individual gains from them is something you can't judge. I'm so sick of hearing this on forums, "oh yeah I quit WoW to get my life back"
What life? You quit WoW and now you're on a gaming forum talking about how you quit WoW.
I played WoW and fit it into my life just fine, it was a very fun experience. A shame the game is basically entirely different now though..
Gaming is awesome. I beat a 50 hour RPG over spring break in a span of 4 days -- best spring break ever.
It's funny how you can practically divide this blog into smart people who understands the videos message, and the others who doesn't. You my friend is not part of the first group.
He's talking about the people who prioritize games over everything, over studying, work, friends and family.
Seems like most of you think he's comparing video games or internet to "normal interests", that's exactly what hes NOT doing. He's talking about video games and internet as a life style, spending most of your waking time doing it. Hell, I've never met or heard of anyone who spends all of their awake time reading books or playing sports, this is OFTEN the problem with gamers tho. That's why he's talking about our generation being the first to deal with this problem.
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The only thing i got from this video is that this person thinks that in the span of one college class, you can learn two languages.
i guess he must be a linguistic genius or i'm retarded in that area.
but, i've realized a while back i don't play games for the game itself but for the people i play it with. i have spent a lot of time on vastly different games ranging from competitive like sc to random RPGs that are a total breeze -- the only thing that stays common to all of that is that i play with people i know.
also i find it funny that the experience of reading a book is somehow more real or more worthy than the experience of playing a video game.
there's a lot of things to pick apart in this video, but i think the underlying message has good intentions, even if the way he goes about trying to communicate it is, for the lack of a better word, terrible.
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On March 19 2010 10:45 JeeJee wrote:
The only thing i got from this video is that this person thinks that in the span of one college class, you can learn two languages.
i guess he must be a linguistic genius or i'm retarded in that area.
but, i've realized a while back i don't play games for the game itself but for the people i play it with. i have spent a lot of time on vastly different games ranging from competitive like sc to random RPGs that are a total breeze -- the only thing that stays common to all of that is that i play with people i know.
also i find it funny that the experience of reading a book is somehow more real or more worthy than the experience of playing a video game.
there's a lot of things to pick apart in this video, but i think the underlying message has good intentions, even if the way he goes about trying to communicate it is, for the lack of a better word, terrible.
I don't think he meant to say books are more valuable than video games, even if it comes out that way lol
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On March 18 2010 21:58 Nadagast wrote:
Eh I watched the first half or so, it seems to be based on the premise that time spent playing video games is wasted time.
You should watch the rest I guess, starting here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKBRG_QgEAM#t=4m23s. He sees the positive in doing it with friends, with community. Like we are doing here. It's too bad we don't have more opportunity to meet face to face as TLers (or maybe it's just me, living in the middle of nowhere). But we are social, and are interacting with each other, and having fun and building friendships. That's the positive side he comes around to that you missed, and I think I agree.
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EPT
