Comment by _slyo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by _slyo | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

My grandfather believes that video games are a "scourge" for young men today. I used to think he was old-fashioned for believing this, but I have come around to agreeing with him.

I wasted a large chunk of my life on Counterstrike, Arma 3, DayZ Mod, PUBG, and countless console games. _Thousands_ of hours in total. For me, games were more than an escape or simply a way to unwind. For me, they were a well-hidden addiction. They were an obstacle to reaching my potential. I can't see myself going back to games again and still being as happy as I am now.

I miss games sometimes -- I still occasionally watch them on Twitch or YouTube -- but quitting cold turkey over a year ago has been one of the best decisions I ever made. That I didn't give them up 10 years earlier is a source of great regret.

I'm probably not going to ban my children from playing games they buy with their own money, but I'll definitely have plenty of long talks with them about the dangers of gaming.

> I wasted a large chunk of my life on Counterstrike, Arma 3, DayZ Mod, PUBG, and countless console games. _Thousands_ of hours in total. For me, games were more than an escape or simply a way to unwind. For me, they were a well-hidden addiction. They were an obstacle to reaching my potential. I can't see myself going back to games again and still being as happy as I am now.

Substitute "football" or "drinking with friends" or other outdoor activities for the videogames here. Or "reading a book". It's all the same thing. It's natural for young people today (at least those in more well-off places) to spend absurd amounts of time in a way they later on may consider waste. It's natural for adults to spend some time like this too. We call this entertainment - stuff you do for fun.

Grass is always greener, but you'd probably burn out if you tried to spend those thousand of hours working in your economical self-interest instead. If you were doing something else for fun instead, you could be regretting that today, wishing you played some videogames a bit more. And even if you wouldn't, you would be a different person. The time you spent on videogames - the experiences, the stories, the people - are a part of you right now. And it's not like videogames are unique in enabling escapism; if you look around, plenty of people are escaping from their lives into books, or sports.

People did divorced or slacked at work over too much "football and drinking with friends". And too much of both indeed prevented people to reach their potential.

It is not like games would be special in impact when you do it too much. What is special is that most people cant play football that much due to physical limitations.

So when book reading has the same addictive quality that makes one play till night regularly or that makes you yell at kids because they interrupted your play, people complain all the same. It just happen less often with books and movies, because of their shorter length and easier way to space out sessions.

There are numerous cases of gaming addiction out there, with the most extreme stories occurring in some cafes in China. Just because gaming has a high utility value for you doesn't mean others can't be affected negatively.

I have yet to see anyone seeking treatment because they read too many books or spend too much time with their friends.

>anyone seeking treatment because they read too many books or spend too much time with their friends.

I do find it disingenuous that you happened to leave off many of the negative interactions that have also dropped in occurrences when people don't 'hang out with friends'. Young men in particular, when hanging out in groups, have a penchant to find trouble or commit crimes. People don't seek treatment for hanging out with their friends, they seek treatment because they hang out and drink/do drugs with their friends, etc.

Almost any behavior can become negative. People also tend to min/max.

Background: I have been playing video games for 25 odd years now. It has highly reduced, I revert to a bunch of youtube let's plays now.

- Equating games to watching football is disingenuous at best. Games tire you out mentally. I liked games because it gave me a thousand things to track at once and optimize (big fan of cataclysm DDA/Aurora/factorio/rimworld). But that came at a cost - am a zombie at the end of the session, fully drained. (Definitely happy). This is a big reason why I switched to watching videos instead. I definitely don't have the mental bandwidth for this.

- equating videogames to outdoor activities is again disingenuous. Outdoor activities have a definite social component to them (NO - eve didn't replicate this to even a small extent). Not to mention the health benefits. I know the general world is going towards more of a 'controlled experience', but I am still a strong believer in outdoors and semi-controlled experiences.

- Video games and books are definitely escapism. But fiction just doesn't engage your mind in the same way. Most non-fiction books either I will have to dedicate study time for it OR just fall asleep 30 pages in. All the motor function engagement and quick dopamine hits are just not the same in books.

I am not against video games, my thousands of steam / youtube hours should make that clear. BUT diluting the effect of them just makes the argument muddled.

IMO Video games are essentially alcohol without the liver-effects. Yeah it's a lot of fun in moderation if you are in control (OR if it doesn't pull you in like it does to addictive personalities) but they can pull you down a rabbit hole too deep to climb out of.

> Equating games to watching football is disingenuous at best. Games tire you out mentally.

I'd say such blanket statement is disingenuous as well. I can understand that playing complex games (like the ones you mentioned) can be mentally draining, but I don't believe a simple shooter or racing game would have the same effect.

And the same is true for watching videos - it all depends on the content you play/watch. If I'd be watching a video of someone teaching quantum physics, then I'm sure I'd also find myself mentally drained afterwards, even more so.

> equating videogames to outdoor activities is again disingenuous

Well, they are obviously different, not only because of the social component (which, as you wrote, is deeper in team sports) or health (but the balance is still shifting due to VR). They are also different because games train the mind, while sports do not.

> IMO Video games are essentially alcohol without the liver-effects. Yeah it's a lot of fun in moderation if you are in control (OR if it doesn't pull you in like it does to addictive personalities) but they can pull you down a rabbit hole too deep to climb out of.

Pretty much anything is "esentially alcohol without the liver-effects", if consumed without moderation. An adult person should know their own limits and be able to stop an activity, before it pulls them in, regardless of the type of activity.

> "football" [...] "drinking with friends" [...] videogames

One of these is not like the others.

I know right, drinking with friends keeps you in direct contact with your friends.

Addicting behaviour is dangerous, but you can get addicted to TV shows just as well. Gaming tends to be more addictive because it actively engages your brain, compared with traditional entertainment (movies, theatre, concerts) which are static, you just sit and watch.

As graphics keep improving I would argue that it might even replace cinema in the future, to some degree.

Also, gaming is just a vast area that it's hard to generalize the whole thing as "scourge". Some games improve critical thinking and can actually be great educational tools. Would you just read a boring history book or activelly engage in the political situation of medieval Europe by playing something like Europa Universalis.

> Addicting behaviour is dangerous, but you can get addicted to TV shows just as well. Gaming tends to be more addictive because it actively engages your brain, compared with traditional entertainment (movies, theatre, concerts) which are static, you just sit and watch.

The mechanism is strongly dependent on the person. I have much more of a problem with TV shows and fiction books than with videogames, because I'm a sucker for stories. A TV show or a book series can offer couple dozen hours of engaging storyline; most story-based video games are either much shorter, or the story is crap; the book-series-quality videogame storylines are few and far between. That's probably why I never got addicted to multiplayer games. By their nature they have no quality stories, so they bore me out quickly.

(I'm aware that there are people for whom the "active engagement" part is a core ingredient in addiction. I'm just saying that it's not the only mechanism, and different people are susceptible to different things.)

What I see not being discussed in such discussions is that Gaming is a high effort activity compared to watching TV. It requires patience, and adaption to delayed gratification, even some discipline to play many games, compared to watching video content.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com