I have a bit of a weird thing with playing video games, in that when I’m playing them, I often feel like I can — nay, should — be doing something more productive with my time.
That may not seem unusual on the surface of it, Ok, so you’re someone who likes getting stuff done and want to use your time wisely, but the weird part is that I don’t feel that nearly as much, if at all, with other pastimes. I can watch a movie with little or any consideration for what I could be writing. I can watch TV or sit and read without thinking I should be working on a skill or making/finishing/doing something useful with my time. No other pastime stirs up that Be Busy notion as much, if at all.
Yet I sit down and play games on the Switch or on my phone, and sure enough, the feeling probably hits that I maybe kinda shouldn’t be doing that when I could be making something or getting better at something instead.
It hits me hard enough that this unique feeling often curbs me from playing video games as much as I otherwise would. But I usually just watch something or read something instead, things that make me feel less… guilty? If that’s what this is?
Further, thanks to recent, completely independent conversations I’ve had with people where video game consoles come up, I’ve been hankering to get another PlayStation — I’ve had two generations in the past but nothing since the PS2 — because I do love me some video gaming, and the PlayStation platform in particular. Yet one wonders why I would spend *muttermutter* dollars to get a new gaming console that I then feel… bad?… about using.
But man, I’d like one.
Any thoughts on what may be happening? Why this particular pastime stands out in my brain as a bridge too far?
Update:
I asked a heavy game-playing friend at work about his thoughts on this, and he had an interesting take: He pointed out that society has, since basically the onset of video games as an industry, derided them as too violent and, broadly speaking, negative. He wonders if all of that for decades may have had enough of an effect on my sub-conscience that it affects my own feelings about playing them, hence the wanting to play the games but a mysterious something saying that I shouldn’t be.
I wouldn’t have thought that hearing that video games are bad over and over throughout my life would’ve had much impact — any more than, say, how aggressive music is bad for the mood or behaviour or emotions of the listener (which, by the way, is the exact opposite of what science currently says about it), which I’ve never particularly believed, either — but perhaps there’s something to it.
Maybe, as he suggested, it’s that I’ve come to believe that in TV there’s a story, so the writer/English degree part of me jibes with that. In movies, there’s a story. In tabletop role playing games, there’s a story. Even in other tabletop games, there’s arguably something of a story to them, or at least background and lore that what you’re playing can seem a part of. So maybe my brain takes those as acceptable. Whereas the video games I tend to play, mostly one-on-one or group-on-group battles, punctuated by chances to upgrade your character(s) to be bigger and better, don’t have the same aspect of story content. In which case he’d be only too happy to bring me into his preferred games that take place within entire worlds, where you explore and grow and get better as you experience the world around you.
In any case, one particular take that I wanted to share.