"You Will Not Wish You Had Spent More Time Gaming"

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Speak for yourself. A few of us are uncomfortable around other people and find experiences with them physically and emotionally exhausting.

I used to think like this. Until I met my current girlfriend. It can be hard for us introverts to find someone deem deem worthy of our time and devotion, but it's not impossible. I hope it happens to you some day.

 

[The Gnome King]

I'm only in my late-twenties and I already regret spending so much time gaming and less time with girls. I pretty much missed out on teen sex, it's pretty depressing think that I am now too old to ever get that experience.

You can only have so much sex, and I'm a pretty darn sexual person. Even if you have sex every day for an hour a day that leaves about 23 hours a day left to fill up with... something.

Though I can see somebody dying and regretting that they didn't have much sex.

 

[The Gnome King]

For me it comes down to whatever I feel like doing. For example, sometimes I want to scrub the house from top to bottom, and sometimes I want to grab a cup of tea, sit in front of the computer and just lose hours doing nothing productive.

I think this is called "being human" - I've met people who really enjoy surfing, for example, but not to the point where they do *nothing* else with their lives. I also don't know any gamers who do *nothing* else with their lives. One usually has to eat, sleep, and interact with others and reality occasionally to live.

Most of us do whatever we darn well please unless we're being forced to do otherwise, when it comes down to it.

 

[The Gnome King]

I'll raise my kids to be gamers and we'll do -that- as a family instead of camping. And grilling. And whatever.

Your kids are going to think you are the coolest parent ever. I hated being dragged camping when I was a kid.



In all seriousness, it boils down to what people like to do. I thought the author's premise was ridiculous because doing something "outside" isn't inherently more valuable than doing something "inside" and going camping isn't more enlightening than gaming - please, spare me.

The one thing that actually might be on the moral or ethical high ground? Volunteering.

Most people gain a lot of benefit from helping others, I've found.

Swapping one hobby for another hobby the author likes more?

Methinks the author sounds boring, pedantic, and no fun at parties.

That's what I think.

(My wife and I of 14 years? We game together, nearly every day. Tabletop, MMO, FPS - we do it all.)

 

[The Gnome King]

One has to wonder at the agenda of the author of the article.

I thought that was a little strange, too. It read like this to me:

"Hey, you pasty faced worthless gamers, get out of the basement and take up a REAL hobby, like camping. You'll end up dying full of regret and sadness if you waste your time gaming, so choose a hobby I find more suitable, and get some Sunlight."

It's kind of like those people who post things like:

"I'm 6'6, chiseled like a Greek God, and women flock to me, and yet I GAME. Why are all those OTHER gamers such unathletic losers? I'm not!"

I suppose it made him feel better about himself?

 

[The Gnome King]

I'm not going to wish that I'd spent more time watching TV or films. Better cut that out.
I'm not going to wish that I'd spent more time eating. Better make all my meals as brief as possible.
I'm not going to wish that I'd spent more time on the toilet. BETTER START LEARNING TO TURBO-SHIT.

You win the "made me shoot a small amount of liquid out of my nose" humor prize for this post. I laughed.

Indeed, I think a lot of us will have more pressing matters. I mean, what about the biggest time-waster of all, SLEEP?

"I wish I hadn't slept so much of my life away, better get a doctor's prescription for strong amphetamines, fast."

 

[The Gnome King]

I think one of the reasons people put less value on achieving something in a game is because while it might take time and skill to complete etc, ultimately you haven't made a physical and long lasting change to the world other than removing yourself from it for X amount of time.

Really, out of the teeming billions of people, how many humans really make any physical or long lasting changes to the world that matter? I'd argue not very many, actually. Somebody, somewhere just died. Right now. He or she will be remembered by nobody and accomplished nothing anyone will ever remember. They left no children, or the children they did leave let their parents die in an old folks home, forgotten.

I'd say living just to "make a mark on the world" is an interesting motivation. It's one not many people achieve.

 

[chikusho]

The argument presented in the article is invalid.

*EDIT*

While the above video is good, this is the one I was referring to:
http://kotaku.com/5919656/when-we-are-on-our-deathbeds-will-we-regret-the-hours-we-spent-playing-games

 

[Not Lord Atkin]

you will not wish you had spent your time pursuing any other hobby either. But you will not regret having pursued it either. Unless you yourself consider your hobby inferior and not worth your time - in which case, why do it in the first place?

I play games because I choose to play them. I do not devote all of my time to them, just the amount I wish to. I do not prioritise them over things that are actually important. And I do not regret one moment I've ever spent playing games which I enjoy.

 

[Jenny Jones]

I think one of the reasons people put less value on achieving something in a game is because while it might take time and skill to complete etc, ultimately you haven't made a physical and long lasting change to the world other than removing yourself from it for X amount of time.

Really, out of the teeming billions of people, how many humans really make any physical or long lasting changes to the world that matter? I'd argue not very many, actually. Somebody, somewhere just died. Right now. He or she will be remembered by nobody and accomplished nothing anyone will ever remember. They left no children, or the children they did leave let their parents die in an old folks home, forgotten.

I'd say living just to "make a mark on the world" is an interesting motivation. It's one not many people achieve.

It depends what you mean by long lasting. An argument could be made that because the sun will atomize us all in a few million years means there's no point doing anything. Let's pretend we're talking about a time period of over a year or two, possibly up to a decade. Changing half your current video game playing time if you played for 16 hours a week would mean you could perhaps take up another hobby like gardening, car making, wood work or something else where you get a physical object that you can enjoy for years to come and will last.

Completing a hard challenge in a game is very rewarding as it takes skill to do that but there are other hobbies that do require skill but ultimately can teach you more, give you skills that will build your character and give you something to physically have and show people at the end. It also doesn't help that video games are data and data can be switched, changed and deleted in a matter of seconds, which certainly lowers the value of getting items and high level characters, well in my mind anyway.

 

[spartan231490]

So Massively recently tossed up an article with the tagline of "You Will Not Wish You Spent More Time Gaming" where the author proceeds to explain to his readership that we're finite creatures and much in the same way nobody ever says "I wish I had spent more time working" on their deathbed, nobody will ever say "I wish I had spent more time gaming" with their dying breath, either.

Ignoring the somewhat morbid contemplation of death, I found the article and the comments to be amusing. (You can imagine some of the comments, I'm sure.)

Link to the article in question:

http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/07/09/the-soapbox-you-will-not-wish-you-had-spent-more-time-gaming/

So, I ask you all. Is gaming somehow inferior to, say, grilling on the porch with friends? Or any other hobby, like camping or hiking or cooking or wine tasting or... I don't know, any other dozen of entertainments we amuse ourselves with? Do our memories earned gaming mean less than memories earned in any other pursuit?

I had a multifaceted feeling about the article.

It's not that gaming is inferior to other hobbies, but no one wishes they spent more time watching movies or reading pop fiction either. They wish they'd spent more time with their family, or maybe they wish they'd gotten around to finishing that novel(or game) they started.

 

[Gatx]

I definitely won't. I can't think of any time I've spent grilling or camping, or anything like that with family and friends, that I actually enjoyed.

You know what I will remember? The countless laughs I've had while gaming online with the friends who -do- matter most to me. Most people get a tattoo of some family in some shape or form. I got a tattoo of my damn WoW guild because those people meant the world to me and they saved me in one of the worst times in my life. My family didn't do shit for that. My family couldn't stop fighting.

Gaming, and anime, brought me my fiance (who I've dated for over five years now). Gaming taught me a lot about myself, helped me grow as a person. Gaming saved my life and brought me more friends than camping and grilling and shit like that ever did, and the friends I did get in real life? Guess what we did? We gamed all night together.

I'll raise my kids to be gamers and we'll do -that- as a family instead of camping. And grilling. And whatever.

On my deathbed, I -will- wish that I had been able to spend more time gaming.

For me, the grilling/camping or whatever isn't important - the point is that you'd wish you'd have spent more time with friends and family doing ANYTHING. If you don't like your family, okay, you still have friends right? You won't be wishing you'd have finished Halo 4 on legendary or something but you'd regret you didn't finish this one raid with your friends in your guild in WoW or something if that's what you and your friends do.

The iffy part for me is that some people regret never accomplishing certain things like climbing a mountain or finishing a marathon, or visiting Europe, which are very much singular pursuits, so whose to say those are more worthy of being mentioned on your deathbed that not beating Dark Souls or something.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

That isn't really how regrets or hobbies work. I have a hard time imagining recreational hobbies being on anyone's mind at the time of death, unless they failed to have one because of too many long shifts at the box factory or something. That's not really a statement on whether or not time spent engaged in a hobby is time wasted. People just tend to focus on core emotional issues, like loved ones, or dreams unfulfilled, or great errors in judgment that had disastrous consequences. No one is sat there thinking "if only I'd squeezed in one more game of DOTA", because that's not something anyone is like to have any regrets about one way or the other.

The entire statement is a pseudo-profundity that the author should, frankly, be more than a little embarrassed about.

 

[Vrach]

So, I ask you all. Is gaming somehow inferior to, say, grilling on the porch with friends? Or any other hobby, like camping or hiking or cooking or wine tasting or... I don't know, any other dozen of entertainments we amuse ourselves with? Do our memories earned gaming mean less than memories earned in any other pursuit?

Are you being serious?

No one, and I mean no one will ever be in their deathbed and say, "oh, how I wish I had Platinum'd New Vegas. Or no-scoped that fag in Blops." They will wish they had more time grilling on the porch with their friends and family, yes.

Indeed, but friends aren't available 24/7 and just waiting by the phone to be invited for a BBQ party. Also, not everyone has porch you know

I don't prioritise gaming over my friends or my girlfriend, but I enjoy it massively nonetheless. I can't really say "oh I wish I spent that time with my friends" because when I can, I do hang out with them. That said, with jobs, uni responsibilities and relationships, there's a lot of things that get in the way of hanging out with my friends and gaming isn't one of them (in fact it's one of the things that gets us together)

 

[Vigormortis]

I think if the question is "Will you regret not having spent more time gaming if it were holding you back from getting good grades or doing what you want?" then I'd say yes. That is something to regret.

But if the question is "Will you regret not having spent more time gaming in the place of another leisurely hobby?" then I think the answer is more likely no. If there's no productivity lost, then I don't see why gaming can't be just as fulfilling. Not everybody is an extrovert who wants to spend their free time around other people, and on that same note gaming isn't necessarily an unsocial activity. If you frequent a certain server or community in an online game, or have a group of friends in an MMO the way you interact with them is very similar to how you'd socialize with people offline.

My thoughts exactly.

It baffles that even here on the Escapist, a community built around the confines of gaming culture, we have a large number of people viewing gaming as some anti-social, solitary activity for lonely, basement-dwelling losers. Just look at some of the posts above. Especially Zhukovs.

I mean, seriously? Come on people.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I've had a thought. And, pondering it has made the OP and the linked article seem even more pointless than before.

Why are we questioning whether or not we, or anyone else, would lament "I wish I had more time to play video games." on our death beds? There's no need for any caveat to be tacked on to the end of the sentence. I think the thing we all want on our death beds is more time to live. Many will simply say, "I wish I had more time."

How they want to spend that time is irrelevant.

In fact, the real question we should ask ourselves now isn't what regrets we'll have on our death beds but rather what steps can we take so that we don't have any regrets to lament about?

 

[BarkBarker]

...But how do I game, I would certainly have liked to spend more time at it if I did it with friends and family messing around on a 16 vs match of two families versus each other, that would shake my life UP!

 

[Metalix Knightmare]

Spending time with people > Spending time with gadgets.

Speak for yourself. People suck. At least I know my gadgets aren't mocking me when I'm not around.

 

[Frankster]

Life is what you make of it ultimately.

And different strokes for different people, i know for a fact the whole grilling food on a porch thing is not something that i'd find fun, so definitly won't be regretting having done more of that xD Heck one of my biggest actual regrets at the age of 28 is ive already wasted a lot of time socializing with people i dont care for and who honestly didnt care for me all that much, so now im much more selective about who i choose to spend my time with.

Which reminds me...Ive had a lot of fun social experiences with gaming, heck i coop with this friend of mine very regularly on games we buy just for that purpose...And i wouldnt trade those moments for any porch grilling

So I might regret living in an age where all my victories and a lot of my inner desires had to be lived out in a virtual world, but I won't regret living them out at all.

Rather poetic turn of phrase, i like that Even if i wouldnt quite go that far, its still possible to win some victories in the real world, though again it depends on individual tastes (so in my case to give one example i want to start a family at some point...and that is still very possible!)