New York Post joins the train, saying the same thing, basically.
If it wasn’t for games, we’d probably see a huge spike in crime, and probably the equivalent of drone riots.
Soma does hide bigger problems.
I also believe as others have said above there is something to this- I remember my absolute bottom, and stuff like GalCiv I and EU2 getting me through it so hard, but it might have also allowed me to wallow. The only thing that kept me from sinking was the knowledge in the back of my head that I had to do something, which led to me dropping enough to struggle through 4 years of the military, which led me to a better situation- for now at least. I dread what will happen whenever I lose this job though- I kinda have the sinking feeling in my gut that I may wallow again.
The big thing with gaming is that it’s the cheapest form of entertainment out there in terms of cost (overall, including non-economic costs) per hour. It’s not going to rot you quickly the way opiates do. You can get thousands of hours for very little per month now.
Tying this into Gamergate, gamers are an identity, and Gamergate was identity politics at its core, just in a direction that isn’t normal, and ended up tying into the larger white identity politics that happened due to Obama being president. Ironically, Gamergate got co-opted by Trumpists the same way the Tea Party got co-opted by the Kochs.
The same article gets published every generation, with a slight adjustment to update;
“We’re losing a whole generation of young men/women to _____”
Because yes, while a handful of people get addicted to whatever, most simply choose whatever as their main leisure activity. That choice always has economic and social impacts, both positive and negative. It’s important to recognize for those who don’t partake, as we’re all a part of society and life is a less extreme version of “adapt or die.” Despite the value of considering the implications of a changing social landscape, these articles remind me of how people demonized D&D when I was younger and how many awesome friends I would have missed out on without it.
The best games, the best books, and the best movies all fill the same void in my heart. But if someone breaks into your apartment and steals all your stuff, you can still go to the book store or theater and buy a book or see a movie. With gaming, you are tied down by all the stuff. All the equipment and junk. Maintaining a gaming PC is kind of like maintaining a pet. You prepare and plan for it on a day-to-day basis. You groom it. You make sure it’s healthy. Maybe all the paraphernalia and the time and care put into them make gaming different psychologically from other media? Though my quest to downsize and eliminate excess hardware has had no lowering effect on my gaming habits. Quite the opposite.
Are you saying you maintain your gaming PC on a daily basis? Like what are you doing to it every day?
LOL, cleaning dust, wiping the screen, scanning for malware, removing excess program icons from the desktop, performing a backup, etc. etc. I also use my PC for stuff and need to organize files, make sure some files are up-to-date, commit changes to GitHub, etc.
Everyday? What kind dust build up do you have over there? Are you located in the middle of a dirt field or something. Sure, I get that there is some maintenance but compared to my pets… haha, nothing. When my computer gets up and chews on a random nerf dart my nephew left, or decides warm laundry is a good place to snuggle, or requires food and water everyday or it dies… maybe.
I mean I work from and can have almost a dozen screens going between the personal work stuff, and I don’t dust those everyday.
I have no idea what this statement is supposed to mean, but I am intrigued by your daily routine, not in a condescending or bad way, just really find it curious. I take my compact air compressor to my keyboard and case when one of the keys doesn’t press down anymore or a fan makes a noise and I think hmm, maybe it needs a little cleaning.
I have about a dozen hobby projects in varying degrees of completion. And I need to be able to “clear the desk” so to speak quickly and neatly so they don’t distract me from when I do real work. I have also had “accidents” in the past, so I need to be fastidious about organizing and backing everything up. Sometimes I play games, and need to keep the number of running processes to a low number.
My dog and cat are both over 10 years old, and don’t really require that much maintenance. (For now. They are old.) I feed them, pet them and clean up their poop.
You’re lucky. My cat is 17 years old. I have to tackle him every day to medicate him and clean up his various bodily grossness every few days. Nothing as drastic as actual cat diapers… hoping to avoid that, but yeah I consider the maintenance of pets to be a daily necessity, even when they’re younger. My computer though sits there quietly and performs on demand with little attention needed from me.
Hobbyist stuff, sure I get that.
PC gaming sounds like a lot of work.
There’s some truth to this article. I lost my college years to MMORPGs, Everquest and DAoC. Lots of regret there, I should have been out doing things instead of camping Drelzna.
Sure, but didn’t it feel great when you finally got your Jboots?
It felt awesome.
[quote]
The problem is that for many young men, video games have become a substitute for living. They’re so addictive and soul-consuming that they’re unlike other leisure activities. Every hour spent on “Ghost Recon” or “Grand Theft Auto V” is an hour that could have been spent more productively.
Sure, that’s also true of golf — but rarely do you hear that someone has quit his job and is living in Mom’s basement obsessing over putting.[/quote]
I guess the anti-video game folks realized that their “video games turn kids violent” effort was a bust, so they found a new angle.
so maybe I do not want to be productive? Are we all work slaves now or what?
ps. it is a doublequote from the original article
First, “productive” would have to be defined. Some people consider gardening to be productive, but others consider it a waste of time. It would be interesting to see what the author considers leisure activity and what percentage of it should overlap with productivity in the Venn diagram of life.
Yes, this is an argument old as time. “We are losing young people to _____”. It’s bullshit.
What is not bullshit is that there are a greater percentage of people in their 20’s and even early 30’s who are living at home and either unemployed or more likely underemployed than we have seen in decades. Video games has nothing to do with this though. It is a direct byproduct of the current issues with our higher education system. In the 1990’s and early 2000’s, a college graduate could look forward to starting a new life with a entry-level job in their field, a new apartment, perhaps an upgrade to the clunker car they drove from high school through college, and lots of nights out with old friends and new workmates to provide social interaction and a sense of completion and success. Congrats kid, you made it, welcome to adulthood!
For the past decade or more that rite of passage into adulthood has been delayed for a large number of young people. For non-college young adults, it is often the lack of well-paying, self-sustaining jobs of the kind that used to be readily available to people without a college education. Automation and globalization have eliminated many of those jobs, leaving only lower-paying, no-benefit retail and service industry jobs for people in this category. This had led directly to the increase in calls for a living minimum wage. For college graduates the situation is not much different. While they may find entry-level work in their field, they’re also saddled with crippling amounts of student debt. Combine this with the increase nationwide in housing costs, including apartment rents, and many people in their 20’s find it impossible to be able to live on their own, maintain transportation, purchase necessities (food/clothing/utilities), pay student loans and still have money for entertainment/socialization. Since student loans can’t be ignored, the next highest expense on the list is housing, so hello mom’s basement.
So at this point you have a decent percentage of “people under 30 living at home” who are not doing so by choice so much as necessity. Living at home when you’re in your mid 20’s is not something most people are particularly proud of or comfortable with…this is the time when they feel they should be out on their own, starting a new life, making decisions, exploring, socializing and feeling accomplished and successful. But with a limited budget and no place of your own, how can you feel that way?
Enter videogames. If you can’t go out into the world and explore, make decisions, solve problems, be independent and experience feelings of achievement and success, then you sure as hell can do it all virtually. This directly relieves the stress of your situation, it’s a coping mechanism, plain and simple, and a very good one at that.
TL;DR : Video games aren’t a symptom or the problem, they’re an acceptable distraction until we can find a solution. The vast majority of young people living at home playing videogames aren’t doing so because they’re lazy knobs who would rather lay around gaming than earn an honest living, they’re doing so because it gives them a positive escape from their forced delayed independence brought on by economic conditions. I bet you 9 out of 10 people these articles reference would much rather have a decent paying job they go to 5 days a week and then game in the evenings and weekends in their own apartment/home than have 12-18 hours a day to game and only work a shit job part time while living in mom’s basement.
This whole post it exactly what I wanted to say. Well done.
I thought these articles defined productivity as basically being employed, working as opposed to not working and playing. There are too many factors in there to make the connection to video games though. I mean if not video games, it would be something else… like TV rots your brain!