Are video games a waste of time?

I guess so – Laurence Pope

This was always going to be a difficult piece to write, since the answer to the above question could be summed up succinctly in a single syllable – yes. Unfortunately, my editor isn’t particularly happy with one word articles, so I suppose I’d better make something out of this question. Apparently I’m going head-to-head with Omar on this issue, but because I’m a good sport I’m going to avoid digging up dirt to discredit his argument, irreversibly wreck his reputation, and shame his family for generations to come.

The first thing I’d have to ask is what people consider a ‘non-waste’ of time. If it is something that is considered fun, then one can hardly label video games as wastes of such time – unless you’re the kind of weirdo who plays them to increase their sense of crushing boredom, o’course. After all, in the words of Bertrand Russell: “The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.” If something is enjoyable, it can hardly be said to be wasteful (whether it is moral or not is another question entirely, and not entirely relevant to the matter at hand). If old Berty agrees with me on this issue, who are you to dare argue back?

[But] last time I checked, movie-goers didn’t quite get the same flak for seeing films as gamers do playing video games

If something has to be productive to be a non-time waster, then one has to ask themselves what ISN’T a pointless time sink. Films come instantly to mind – last time I checked, movie-goers didn’t quite get the same flak for seeing films as gamers do playing video games. There is a line of thought that says films can educate and games cannot, and I hate it every bloody time someone opens their gob to spout it out.

However corny it may sound, many modern games have storylines and plots comparable to that of a movie, the difference being you don’t normally sit through a movie with a mouse/controller in your hand. Hell, only recently the US National Endowment for the Arts declared video games, among other associated media, ‘officially-sanctioned art forms’. To proclaim video games a waste of time is to do the same to films and every other form of traditional art, and also brings into question why one activity should be better than another. Yes, this is imperfect logic, shut up. I’m a video gamer, not a logician with a PhD in being smart.

Look folks, let’s face the facts here. You can cut up the argument however you want, but at the end of the day, games do suck up time – anyone who’s played World of Warcraft can testify to this (just ask down at Blackett Labs). They are specifically designed to draw you in and a game that does, one that is capable of sapping away hours from your life, is considered successful. But that’s no reason to feel guilty about playing them, and I’m not just saying that so you’ll continue to read the Games page.

Having fun in life is important, and if you draw pleasure from video gaming then more power to you. Yes, I consider them wastes of time at the end of the day, but you should feel no guiltier indulging in them than a person who watches films, reads fiction or listens Justin Bieber.

Actually, scratch that last one.

Never! – Omar Hafeez-Bore

We’d need a whole year of Felix to crack this issue. At least. Even then, after discussing the importance of play and whether we actually deserve to have so much entertainment at our fingertips, we’d still come up short. This is Big Philosophy; a discussion of how Man Should Spend His Time, no less.

Yes, time. The very currency of our lives and we choose to spend it playing games? And then have the nerve to celebrate how much of this precious currency games cost us? ‘It’s very addictive!’ That’s it! The jackpot. The bullseye. The highest accolade a game can get. But why?

If people reviewed sweets – and if they did, I’d give the mega-sour balls from Mr Simm’s sweet shop 5/5 – ‘addictive’ would be the last thing people would praise about them. The Daily Mail headlines would write themselves: ‘Kids go crazy for crack candy’, ‘Lollipop lady lamped by lolly-loving Lolita’, ‘Immigrants stole my sherbert!’ et cetera.

Because too much of anything is bad for you. Think of the best thing for you in the world. Water, right? Well, even that is bad for you if you drink too much! No joke. I checked. And unless you’re really crap at, you know, basic actions of human instinct, drinking water takes up way less time to drink than games do to play.

So let’s make one big fat assumption right now. Let’s assume we are not good-for-nothing students who feel that spending a few hours each day in lectures listening (puff, pant) is strenuous enough an activity to justify frittering our free time on hard-earned-cotching. On streaming endless movies, watching 24 box-sets in real time or playing COD until we are the leanest, meanest button-presser-to-ever-press-a-button-to-pretend-to-kill-a-completely-digital-person-on-screen.

Let’s instead pretend that we are balanced individuals who work, play sport, contribute to the community and help old ladies and the occasional chicken across the road. Individuals who have satisfied their Good Human quota and have a few hours a week to spend on a hobby. Even in that (improbable) case, would games be a good use of time, when we could watch a film, or read a book, or tinker with model trains or something?

No one sticks on FIFA when they fancy a game of footy in the park. They play FIFA when they fancy pressing some buttons and waggling a couple of sticks

The smart readers will have already spotted the fundamental flaw in the previous sentence: that it was retarded. You know that feeling you get when you really fancy watching a horror film, but then decide that you’ll just read Bridget Jones instead? No, nor me.

Games are great because they are as different to film as books are. As playing guitar is to collecting stamps. They are games, and only they can satisfy that itch for a headshot or a pixel-perfect jump. No, they are not some geek’s substitute for real life. No one sticks on FIFA when they fancy a game of footy in the park. They play FIFA when they fancy pressing some buttons and waggling a couple of sticks until a screen pronounces them better at doing it than their mate. They stick FIFA on when they fancy a game of FIFA. And if I fancy exploring a hazy, sun-dappled world of surrealist melancholy I’ll play Ico and not just admire a De Chirico painting.

Should people try to balance their life so they don’t spend massive chunks of it in front of a screen? Should they ensure they don’t sacrifice social contact, going out, keeping healthy, working hard and all that in the name of raising digital digits in a digital world? Yes, probably.

But can people really dismiss a whole medium as a waste of time any more than another? I agree with Laurence on one point: maybe people should feel guilty about spending too much time on pure sedentary entertainment, on the pursuit of its own pleasure. But not specifically games. They’ve taught me as much as other, ‘worthier’ art forms, and given me plenty of things the others never could.