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Are You Gaming For the Right Reasons?
An editorial at IGN discusses healthy (and unhealthy) ways to play video games. The author says that while gaming is a perfectly legitimate hobby, it needs to be approached with moderation and an understanding of what you get out of playing. Without understanding your motivations and compulsions, it's quite possible to play video games in a way that's detrimental. From the article:
"Games, especially modern ones, revolve around the principle that if you put the time in, you will be rewarded. Many gamers claim to not understand how anyone could put up with grinding in a video game. But grinding is comforting. Grinding tells us that, no matter what, if you keep playing you'll become more powerful. ... The real world does not operate this way. You can 'grind' at a job for 10 years and still be laid off. You can 'grind' at your physical health your whole life but if you switch to an unhealthy lifestyle you will immediately begin losing this progress. ... It's important for gamers to have mastery of their own mind. Are you grinding out a level in World of Warcraft because you're truly enjoying the experience, or are you doing it to replace missing feelings of self-worth that you don't want to confront? Do you revel in your virtual successes to avoid the uncomfortable internal dialogue regarding of your abandoned gym routine? Are you playing games because you're having fun, or because you have an unconfronted fear of failure?
Sometime during the last year I realized that I was not eating healthy. My lifestyle mostly consisted of eating nachos and pizzas and playing World of Warcraft. While perfectly ideal lifestyle for young gamer, I realized I was getting too old for it.
Since then I've gamed and eaten healthy. I play with my Wii. I use Kinect for Xbox360. I eat Subway sandwiches.
And I feel better. You can't even imagine how good Subway's The Big Philly Cheesesteak and Subway Melt tastes. Omnomnom, some extra cheese and bacon to go. My choice of sauces usually includes light mayo and chipotle southwest in Italian Herbs & Cheese bread. I order all the veggies except for tomatoes. I don't know why but I just can't eat tomatoes on a subway or pizzas. Do you know what happens if my mom haven't bought me that days subway in my basement? I feel angry.
This new healthy lifestyle has not only improved the quality of my life but given me a reason to make it through Mondays. Sweet Onion flavor, mmmm. Ranch sauce.. Breakfast B.M.T gives me the extra power I require for Mondays!
Remember to game and eat healthy, folks!
I play games to shoot people in the face. Call it end of day "stress-relief."
I play games to escape reality, hence I dislike the attempts at reality in a game as the current tech generation does not handle it very well. I also play games to socialise, and PVP is a great way of doing that, especially fighting games and shooters, but other arcadey genres are welcome too. There is a social aspect to gaming that I keep returning to when I am not busy playing Fallout 1 or Fallout 2 just one more time to get all the possible combinations of endings like I have done since 1996 and 1997.
If you are GAMING and think you need any sort of reason, you are one messed up dude !!
Or because it is a better means of escapism than reading cod-psychology online?
all they have to do is play it 100 hours a week and they're gods. that's why i don't play multiplayer rpgs, i don't want to be in a "no life contest" with some unemployed fat guy in kentucky.
I confronted my fear of failure long ago. Now, grinding has more to do with my hatred of [unnecessary] failure.
Good idea: Playing a game to have a good time, challenge your mind, and reduce your stress.
Bad idea: Playing a game instead of having a good time, boring your mind, and causing stress.
In other words, the moment a game starts interfering with your friends, family, work, marriage, etc, stop now! The game will be there for you if and when you come back to it.
I am officially gone from
I'm 'grinding' to get 'first post'.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Are you sure you're reading Slashdot for the right reasons?
Humans generally carry around a set of mythological symbols and constructs in their minds, as part of what's called culture.
For example, as a European: Farms are good. Animals are good. Money is good. Baking cakes is good.
Very many games with grinding systems basically play on these cultural symbols and to let people achieve them with minimal effort. Touch the screen a few times and you have a successful bakery shop. Wiggle the controller for a few hours and you have a thriving farm.
Essentially, achieving the same cultural symbols in a digital world just with minimal effort.
"Many gamers claim to not understand how anyone could put up with grinding in a video game."
hmm.. ok.. the other gamers realize they're all grinding in some sense.
"But grinding is comforting."
no, not really.
"Grinding tells us that, no matter what, if you keep playing you'll become more powerful.",
Well, in e.g. World of Warcraft, you grind to get to max level, because that's the entry point of the game. Or are they claiming that playing more makes your character more powerful? I'd sure hope so.
"The real world does not operate this way. You can 'grind' at a job for 10 years and still be laid off. You can 'grind' at your physical health your whole life but if you switch to an unhealthy lifestyle you will immediately begin losing this progress."
Well, sure, you can 'grind' fishing in a starting zone for years and make nothing.. There's many, many ways to grind in games and have nothing to show for it, just like real life. Grats.
Are they claiming IRL, working hard is meaningless? The "health" analogy sounds _exactly_ like a video game; a capped "health", a decay once an unhealthy lifestyle begins.
"Do you revel in your virtual successes to avoid the uncomfortable internal dialogue regarding of your abandoned gym routine?"
Really? I guess I can't abandon a routine I never had. Or have an uncomfortable internal dialogue about it.
Let's file "avoid the uncomfortable internal dialogue regarding of your abandoned gym routine" in first-world-problems.. actually, in the tiny corner of FWP where you put things that aren't problems.
Is it just me who reads TFA and things "this guy's just taken a basic intro-to-psychology course and is all excited thinking he can now explain the whole world"?
If you like gaming, are able to financially support yourself and your gaming and can do so without ruining the rest of your life, then play whatever the hell you like.
Also, the guy doesn't understand modern (Western) MMOs. These are MUCH less about grinding than is commonly considered to be the case. The level "grind" in World of Warcraft is so short as to barely merit the term. Going from 1-85 is best thought of as an extended tutorial where you learn how to play your class ahead of the real game, which begins at level 85.
And once you're at level 85, the game is fundamentally skill based. On the PvP side, that's so obvious that I don't even need to explain it. On the PvE side, it perhaps deserves a slightly longer explanation of what the commonly perceived "gear grind" actually is.
WoW's end-game PvE content is, over the course of each expansion, a series of co-operative challenges of increasing difficulty. The series starts with relatively short 5-man dungeons, which require fairly simple tactics. What then follows - released gradually via patches - is a series of challenges for larger groups (10 or 25 people) which require better reactions, better planning and more complicated tactics.
It's a common misconception that the only difference between the bottom end raids in a WoW expansion and the top end raids is the gear requirement. Yes, you will need better gear to tackle the top-end raids, but this can essentially be thought of as a skill-check system. Before you can progress to the top end raid, you need to prove that you have the skill to defeat the easier, lower-end ones. If you don't have that, then you'll end up banging your head against a brick wall, no matter your gear level.
So back when I was most deeply into the game, in the Burning Crusade era (1st expansion), the bottom end raid was Karazhan and the top end raid was Sunwell Plateau. Karazhan's bosses required fairly simple tactics, with generally just one or two mechanics that players needed to respond to during each fight. The difficulty increased substantially throughout the raid, culminating in a fairly tricky final boss. Said boss was, however, massively simpler than even the first boss in Sunwell Plateau, which required each player to keep track of a large number of factors at once, with any failure resulting in more or less instant death. Also, as you are level capped for this, the fights are not magically getting easier just because you put more time and effort in.
So the attraction in modern, Western MMOs isn't the grind at all - it's about team-work and overcoming challenges co-operatively. Indeed, Western gaming in general has been remarkably successful in eliminating "the grind" - you don't tend to spend much time running in circles doing random encounters in a Bioware game, or one of the Witcher games.
The grind does still live on in some Japanese gaming and in some Eastern MMOs - but that's likely just due to the conservatism of Japanese and Korean developers. It would be great if at some point during the next few years, a high profile Japanese RPG developer (perhaps Square) could take the step of eliminating grinding from its games.
I'm bored, that's why I play video games.
I game to pass time. It helps winds down the time till I die. One of the games I play is Everquest II. You end up doing a lot of grinding in the game. But grinding for purpose, not because it makes my mind numb. I grind to level up toons, for a quest, or probably to get a rare item to drop. But grind because I think that is what life is about? No.
Life is the grind. Does it make sense? No. Do you always get rewarded? No. Is it going to change? No. So is it so weird that we grind in a game for rewards? No, I don't think so.
And who is to judge why people play games? Does it really matter? The games are for escape, we all find our own way to escape reality. So what if someone is making up for whatever from their day job in a game? As long as they aren't being abusive towards others, I think whatever they want to do is fine.
The article? Stupid. I'm not even sure what the problem is. Apparently, if we play games where we do good, and in real life we are doing bad, the video games are bad for us. Because we are trying to get over are real life failures online.
Here's my take. Dude is a gamer that is hitting middle age. He's think back on all his wasted time in life and what he's missed out on, and want to blame it on video games. yes, another person blaming Real Life on video games.
Be seeing you...
This article should be required reading for kids today. This is an issue I find myself wrestling with from time to time. I spent two years wasting time in Star Trek Online with the purpose of wasting that time. It was a pretty game and I decided this was where I was going to grind away in thoughtless leveling-up--and it was brainless, repetative nonsense. I basically voluntarily put myself in a Skinner Box, holding down the "fire" button while runing around for hundreds of hours in order to get that little hit of dopamine each virtual reward of experience points brought me. Finally, I decided it was time to just uninstall the damn thing and walk away from it incomplete (not that it could ever be completed).
That one was voluntary, when Skyrim came along, I got sucked in again, playing heavily for several months before my family and job responsibilities forced me to shelve it for six months. I recently started it up again long enough to complete the main quest, and that felt like a chore. The months of not playing broke the spell, so that I didn't feel connected and invested in the rewards anymore. Why the @#$% would I spend hours saving to buy a virtual house or read a hundred vitual books about a virtual world when I've got the real thing to work on here? Skyrim was epically beautiful, but so is a weekend hike in the mountains.
Gaming is an important, healthy activity. It increases mental alertness and improves reaction times. I think all kids should play video games--or rather, play the right kinds of video games. My new rule for games is no more "forever" games like MMORPGs and Skyrim. I'm currently looking for a new game, and the most important characteristic is that it that it take <=20 hours to complete. I'll pay $20 to see a two hour movie with my wife, so $50 enjoying 20 hours of Portal II is a bargain.
i ~ Celebrating Science, Cyberspace, Speculation
"....it's quite possible to play video games in a way that's detrimental."
Say it ain't so!!1!1!!1
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
I definitely don't look on grinding as an aspect of gaming that has no real world analog. While the implementation varies from game to game, it can almost always be looked upon as akin to saving up for what you want, which definitely has real world parallels - especially if you equate things like optional side missions to volunteering for overtime and so on. Sure, you can 'grind' at a job for 10 years and still be laid off, to use the example given in the article, but you will still have been earning during those 10 years and will have probably put away some cash for stuff you wanted; cars, gadgets, a home, holidays, etc. Grinding in a game is no different, only the stuff that you are saving up for is more focused on the needs of the game world than real life; abilities, vehicles, weapons, etc., and just as in real life if you stop grinding for whatever reason then you are going to find it a little harder to acquire/retain those trinkets.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Are you playing games because you're having fun, or because you have an unconfronted fear of failure?
Umm that's why I don't play games. Nothing says 'failure' like getting killed repeatedly in quick succession.
It's interesting to contrast articles like this one to the findings of people like Lynda Sharpe.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2011/05/17/so-you-think-you-know-why-animals-play/
I play mostly FPS games, and I get sheer enjoyment after a long day at work of blowing the heads off of the "enemy" Lately I have been getting extra joy out of doing it creatively.. Like falling off of a building directly behind the guy and shotgunning his legs off.
It's very stress relieving and calming.....
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
If "fun" were the only motivation behind gaming we would be missing out on gems like Flower and Journey, those that support negative consequences would be missing out on Dark Souls (don't try to tell me dying is fun either, you rage and you hate it and you convince yourself it's worth it but it's not fun). IGN arrives at a conclusion contrary to what gamers have been trying to hammer home for about 10 years now: just like movies are not always fun, neither are video games. Gaming has just a wide an array of emotional consequence as movies and books do.
I'm 28 now, and I'm finding I just don't get much enjoyment out of videogames anymore. I don't know if I'm depressed, or this is just part of getting older - but my mind just balks at the thought of spending many hours playing a game.
Trouble is, I just don't know what to fill the void with now. I'd work on my software development hobbies, but most weekdays I just don't have the brainpower left after work.
I thought I'd seen it all ... but a Sunway fanboi!
Slow news day, it seems, both at IGN and Slashdot.
Gaming can be a fun past time, but if abused, it'll consume your life, much like drug or alcohol abuse.
Nothing to see here.
There is no philosophy on playing 1st person shooting games...
Kill other people, drink a beer while playing and reduce stress is enough to me.
Or because it is a better means of escapism than reading cod-psychology online?
Or writing cod-psychology online.
You can grind away in WoW all day and still not get anything, just like the job example. However in the real world, you now have 10 years of experience to put on a resume, unless of course you dicked around the whole time and treated it just like a daily grind. Maybe that's why you got laid off.
Are you grinding out a [paycheck] in [employment] because you're truly enjoying the experience, or are you doing it to replace missing feelings of self-worth that you don't want to confront? Do you revel in your [monetary] successes to avoid the uncomfortable internal dialogue regarding of your abandoned [other factor]? Are you [working] because you're having fun, or because you have an unconfronted fear of failure?
If someone really was using games to gain a sense of self-worth I don't think they want some smart-ass article diagnosing their problem. It's not even posing a solution. It just exposes people to a problem they might have and then leaves them in the cold.
"Hey J. Random Gamer. Are you gaming to to hide from your own short comings? If you are, then that sucks for you. Avoiding social situations with games is a BAD thing. I bet you never thought of that, now did you? You should really get control of your life, like I did."
I don't think this article is helping anyone.
I have a paycheck, a house to live in that is paid for, and no debt. I may not have a wife and kids but that isn't as big of a deal really since I'm surviving. I think my gaming is just fine.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
I play games because I fear death. I realize every time I play that's what I'm doing. For that short period, in the game, I am not an aging, fragile, cowardly creature balanced on a ledge surrounded by darkness, but for that short time, I am immortal, eternal. For that moment, my life has a shadow of meaning.
I also play because I'm hoping to see Bayonetta's camel toe.
You are welcome on my lawn.
This article is about World of Warcraft addict, and I totally agree with the fact that most WoW players don't gain any positive experience from it. It's just mindless zombie grinding and repeating the same action over hundreds and thousands of hours. I personally play single player campaign games, I love following the story to completion just as I would watching a movie and everything is always excellent. Each game I play is different (about 5-10h each) and I would never stop doing it for anything in the world. Unfortunately, it's only a small percentage of gamers that think like me.
I found that the thing that kept me investing time into two types of games (fps and mmorpg) was the camaraderie of my clan and guild (respectively.) I was absolutely substituting my lack of friends in the real world with faceless avatars of the digital. When I came to this realization about 7 years ago, I almost completely quit playing games except for the occasional single player campaign. Since I've cut back, my life has blossomed in countless ways, I have a stable career, a girlfriend I always have time for, and a multitude of hobbies ranging from sleight of hand to martial arts, to sketching and foreign language, to writing fiction and beyond. There will be those who quickly dismiss this article. There will be those who claim the author has only taken one psychology class and thinks he knows everything. But I think a lot of you are just afraid to admit how much your personal gaming holds you back in life. There are countless arts to master in this world. Ancient traditions that hold wisdom and have been passed on through countless generations are all around you and ready to be learned. Maybe I was born in the wrong generation, who's to say? I just know that the accomplishments I've made in the 'real world' far outweigh anything I've done in the digital. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against video games but yes, people play them for the wrong reasons and they could be putting their real life time towards things like curing cancer. You want to master the art that is artificial? Say it to my face that this is your heart's desire and I will beat you until you decide it would be better to invest more time in self defense classes. (I tried to put a less than sign and a 3 here to make a heart but I couldn't get past the filter so just pretend this comment was lighthearted and we'll all get along)
You have to have a reason to play games? And it has to be the right reason?
Damn. All those wasted years, doing it wrong...
Is that anything like salmon neuroscience?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I am simply grinding away so that I can meet that beautiful Orc, get married, honeymoon in Orgrimmar and live happily ever after.
I'm actually learning how to play guitar and bass guitar by "playing" Rocksmith. I took lessons for about 18 months to get a foundation and have now played almost 300 arrangements, some as many as 40 times to really learn it (most under 10 though). I find there are actually rewards when playing :)
[John]
Shit better not happen!
I did the same as you, however it did not result in finding friends or a partner. It did free up my time to read more books though, but I suspect that this might become more unhealthy for the mind, as my social contact has been reduced over the years since I have stopped socializing in games online (by not playing them) and not managed to increase my real world socialization.
An editorial at IGN discusses healthy (and unhealthy) ways to play football. The author says that while football is a perfectly legitimate hobby, it needs to be approached with moderation and an understanding of what you get out of playing. Without understanding your motivations and compulsions, it's quite possible to play football in a way that's detrimental
Sports, especially modern ones, revolve around the principle that if you put the time in, you will be rewarded. Many sportsmen claim to not understand how anyone could put up with training in a sport. But training is comforting. Training tells us that, no matter what, if you keep training you'll become more powerful. ... The real world does not operate this way. You can 'train' at a job for 10 years and still be laid off. You can 'grind' at your physical health your whole life but if you switch to an unhealthy lifestyle you will immediately begin losing this progress. ... It's important for sportsmen to have mastery of their own mind. Are you training to be better at football because you're truly enjoying the experience, or are you doing it to replace missing feelings of self-worth that you don't want to confront? Do you revel in your sporting successes to avoid the uncomfortable internal dialogue regarding of your [insert any of the 100's of neuroses sportspeople suffer from]? Are you playing football because you're having fun, or because you have an unconfronted fear of failure?
If you're in a union, you can grind for 30 years and end up with a really good paying job and 78% of your last year's pay in annual pension payments.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
The tag at the end of TFA says "Justin... thinks a lot about the role video games play in his life & in modern culture." I might suggest Justin read more, and think less. That does seem to be the issue with nearly all armchair philosophists. In this case, he might be well served by "The Grasshopper" by Bernard Suits. Then he might realize that most of what he just thought, and wrote and published, is bullshit, and things are much more complex. Then he can go back to thinking, but hopefully about some of the ideas as to the nature of work, gameplay, and life that the book raises.
Last night in DDO I lit myself on fire with blue fire, turned into wraith mode, and floated around throwing banked pumpkin head grenades at unsuspecting players in the main area, calling myself the ghost of Halloween past. It caused some lols. :-P So I think I'm good.
I game for these so I'm able to exercise my brain on a regular basis. Sports competitions are a test of discipline, pain tolerance, and genetics, but don't require as much mental effort as do computer gaming and its predecessors like chess. Gaming is the opposite. Its the mental fulfillment I need to be happy, considering I unfortunately can't get that kind of mental exercise at work. Whether you challenge yourself through your career, your education, or your entertainment shouldn't matter as long as you are able to be a functioning member of society.
Call of Duty: Psychology? Dude, when then did that come out? Imagine, gunning down the bad guys *and* rooting out their deep-seated anxieties! (Which are mainly about you gunning them down, but whatcha gonna do?)
I've known for awhile that I'm getting my fix of 'false accomplishments' playing games. I've always enjoyed empire building games, but that has fallen off over the years as I'm getting into my 40s and wondering what the hell happened to my 30s? Plus the games today suck, but that's a get off my lawn sentiment.
Sometimes I just love killing zombies in L4D. I don't care about 'progressing' into the harder levels, I just want the thrill of killing zombies. OK, maybe I should strive for less than 5 friendly fire 'accidents' a game. Yeah that sounds like a good goal. Yeap I suck at multiplay, but I don't care -- I'm here to kill zombies.
Yes
The things that people pin on "fear of failure" really crack me up. Some people are better at some things than others, and running with your areas of expertise while eschewing others seems perfectly reasonable.
And then so much of life is a roll of the bones anyway... Why aren't you playing the lottery? It must be your fear of failure...
Gaming is no different than sports, drinking, trivia, bar hopping, reading a book... Anything can be done for the right or wrong reasons... Everything is a form of escapism... Either from your job, your family, your problems, your whatever. It almost feels like the IGN editor is calling this out as something specific to gaming. Look at the bigger pattern... Everything we do (yes, even eatting and sleeping) can be done for the right or wrong reasons. *eye roll*
either to win in a dirty way (campers)
Since when is finding and securing an advantageous position "dirty"?
Who the fuck asked you to psychoanalyze me? Go stick your head in a pig. After that, let the pig cut your head off with a chainsaw.
If, according to the post, you can grind away at a job for 10 years and achieve nothing, but grinding in a game gives you some sense of accomplishment, what's wrong with that?
In the end, we are all dust in the wind - meaning our sense of satisfaction and accomplishment is more psychological that anything else. Who cares if it comes from your job or you have a lame job, but you get it while playing a game? It's all the same anyway once you are dead.
I am currently halfway through Secret of Mana
It's quite relaxing to play through taking advantage of game mechanics to avoid unessential or boring grinding and enjoy the game play
You have a sick, twisted mind. Please subscribe me to your newsletter.
if you can still call what you do 'work', you are doing it wrong.
I started playing WoW a number of years ago, and at first, actually did have a lot of fun leveling, seeing all the sights and everything. But I quickly realized that the real fun was at endgame, and when I got there, I wasn't proven wrong. Raiding -was- a lot of fun. And every so often I'd decide I had some time to blow, and level another alt, which I also for the most part enjoyed.
Then I noticed that they felt compelled periodically to introduce boring grindy crap even at levelcap, if you wanted to raid optimally. Daily dungeons for badges were bad enough, and the once-per-expansion crap with new faction rep, but when they introduced that ridiculous set of unlockable gear midway through this expansion (the stuff up in Firelands), that was the first sign of the end of WoW for me. When I got to the last step in the legendary staff quest, and realized it'd be about 3 months more of grinding the same Firelands bosses that no longer dropped anything even remotely useful to anyone, that was the final one. Ironically, I continued to show up every week for that grind, so our guild could get the achievement and the pet - wouldn't want to be a jerk about it - and after receiving the legendary staff... pretty much never logged in again. It's been a few months now, and I think my life is better for it.
There is nothing that I hate more than grinding, repetitive work towards a virtual goal that is ultimately meaningless. Maybe if I got paid $50 for finishing the game I'd be more motivated. I feel the same way about jigsaw puzzles, a company prints a nice glossy photo and cuts it into 500 pieces, and I'm supposed to feel fulfilled by putting it back together? It's a complete waste of time to me.
To me games are about strategy, living vicariously, and the journey/experience. Nothing embodies that more than "sandbox" games. In Oblivion and Skyrim, I never did finish the main storyline, I just wandered and explored. GTA IV and Fallout 3 I finished, but there is still tons of fun in just wandering.
I guess when I'm not wealthy and am tied down to a job I wander in virtual worlds because I can't in real life. Plus the virtual worlds have no real penalties for screwing up, so I can go punch a deer or steal a loaf of bread and no harm is done.
Next question?
+1 Disagree
The summary immediately made me think of Cave Johnson.
"I'm no psychologist, but that sounds like projection."
Who would stop Caesar troops from taking New Vegas, if not for me?
Why can't
One correction, not FPS. Descent is more like flight simulator. It's ok to use joystick, even recommended.
For stress relief better fight hordes of enemies like "Serious Sam". Just turn your brain off and watch them falling...
I own a laptop; I'm typing this comment on one. But I've been told that trying to game on Intel integrated graphics makes you realize what GMA stands for: Graphics My Ass. I've also been told that most laptops lack a user-accessible slot for a discrete video card.
Your friends don't bring their gaming PC?
Correct. Either they don't own their own PC yet (just a user account on a PC owned by the head of household), or the PC they own is not a gaming PC (e.g. Intel integrated graphics), or they happen not to carry their PCs everywhere they go (common for owners of desktop PCs).
I started playing World of Warcraft on the day it came out: November 23, 2004. I was a sophomore in college at the time. Before I started playing, my grades were poor; I had no friends, no family, and I had never been in a relationship of any kind. I was underweight and sickly. I was becoming an alcoholic. I was asocial. I was severely depressed and sometimes even suicidal. I had nothing to look forward to and no will to live.
Playing the game didn't change any of that, but the past eight years have gone by a little faster than the eight before it. I log in every night when I'm done with work, get drunk, and find something to grind until I can't keep my eyes open anymore.
I play neither because I enjoy playing or because I have an unconfronted fear of failure. I play because I've accepted failure and am biding my time. Will things ever improve? Probably not. There will always be another game to play, though. I can take some comfort from that.
She apperently has a lot of friends out there.
...I'd end up having to design the ultimate virus and destroy all computing as we know it. So maybe it is a good thing that I'm leveling up in The Dead Zone and that gaming for the wrong reasons keeps me from doing those other bad things.
I hate my job. I hate myself. I'm going to walk the Appalachian Trail. How much are tickets to Brazil nowadays?
Ugh, sleight of hand and fan fiction? You're a fucking monster. Please keep playing games kids, or you'll turn into a faggot.
tldr - He got older.
Are you watching TV for the right reasons? Are you listening to music for the right reasons? Stop trying to single out Video Games as some sort of demon media that needs to be "justified" in some bizarre way before it's an acceptable activity. I play games for entertainment and to relieve stress; the same reasons that the majority of Americans spend hours in front of their televisions every day. That's all the justification anybody needs, period.
what paycheck
what employment
what monetary
what other factor
what working
You have died...returning you to bind point...
Athy, athier, athiest.
Why does the original author assume that everyone plays games?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"