Getting rid of my TV, unsubscribing from mailing lists and limiting the time I spend on reddit/facebook/hn/etc to 10 minutes a day was one of the best decisions I've made in a while.
For anyone who struggles with limiting the time -- not necessarily for lack of self control, but simply losing track of the time spent, [this plugin for Chrome](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stayfocusd/laankej...) is a life saver!
I set it for exactly 10 minutes on sites, and once I cross that threshold, it redirects whatever page you're currently browsing to one that simply says "Shouldn't you be working?".
[This xkcd comic](http://xkcd.com/386/) unfortunately describes my personality to a tee. I've spent literally hours in a single day simply arguing with people on reddit over trivial things that don't matter. Having the abrupt redirect to a page that tells me to question how I'm spending my time is just the kick I needed to realize that, yeah, I should be doing something else other than arguing with strangers on the internet.
Gaming, for better or for worse, represents a very low-barrier-to-entry sort of activity, where in fact good design intentionally structures games in a way to provide a gratifying learning curve and risk/reward. Yet I feel at some point in time we need to consider opportunity cost and externalities:
-Assuming that I have finite time and I derive similar amounts of joy playing video games and tabletop games, do I spend time grouping with old college roomies on Halo and shoot aliens, or do I try to coordinate a time with 4 other busy professionals, drive across town, grab some snacks, and roleplay some Call of Cthulhu on a weekly basis? Or maybe I hang out with some buddies at TechShop and we build a robot that uses facial recognition to launch whiskey shots at people?
-If I wanted to enjoy a narrative, do I allocate three hours, send an FB blast for movie buddies, and spend $15 sitting in a dark room with others watching a common story, or do I allocate 20-30 hours over a few days to experience the story of GTA V? Or do I pick up a book and spend a day to let my imagination take me to Westeros or Battle School?
-If I wanted to enjoy some music, do I play some Guitar Hero and press some controller buttons? Or join a structured choir? Or pick up some social dancing (a co-op music game with a social externality, essentially)?
I think gaming is FANTASTIC as an efficient way to get quick jollies, with a low barrier to entry as well as high skill requirement for advanced levels; MOBAs such as League of Legends or shooters such as Call of Duty come to mind for "gaming as a skill". However, I do think other activities such as swimming, cooking, biking, amongst others, provide different externalities. And for some people these things are just better in the long run.
PS -- I've had a long history of gaming since the NES came out and love it. It's just that personally I find it harder to manage and regulate my gaming consumption (attention span and time are the main caps) vs other activities, and I also feel that I've had less to show for as a gamer of twenty years (did the semipro Starcraft thing for a bit but not much more) than as a concert violinist of ten, or salsa dancer for five; so on and so forth.
That being said, the analytical mindset of optimizing resources given victory conditions in games probably was the main reason how I ended up being a data scientist. I feel strongly that a positive way to direct our "fun" towards something productive is powerful for individuals and beautiful for a society... but that's a later step in our happiness, and for a different conversation.
I'm also a big board game geek and will probably blog about that in the future. I have bi-weekly game nights at my place and really into the new(ish) wave of Living Card Games like Netrunner: Android. I really love the social aspect, kicking back for a few hours with beers and buds. And then they leave and I fire up my PS3 :)
Or you know. Spend time with my wife and kids. Usually that.
Some people liken this to "hacking oneself"; I won't abuse the term "hack" quite so much, but I do think of it as a subproblem of "finding a job you love and you won't have to work a day in your life" -- finding a hobby you enjoy that enriches you as a person.
Games are uniquely a tremendous exercise of the mind and body. When compared to a laboratory game designed without violence, Medal of Honor improved the vision of congenitally-handicapped children while the laboratory game did not. The author of the study speculated that the violence in Medal of Honor put kids into more of a neuro-plastic mood, while its emphasis on hand-eye coordination exercised the brain, the eyes and the hands in a way that improved senses.[0]
The game trains your strategic and tactical planning and it helps you socialize through teamwork, but that wasn't tested. Suffice it to say, the same features cannot be said to exist in yoga, television, or cooking.
Games are also universal. Girls and boys, young and old, physically fit and physically infirm, poor and rich: pretty much everyone can enjoy a game.[1] It is a form of entertainment that is capable of demanding zero to full emotional, financial and intellectual engagement.
Compare to sports, where we can barely figure out how to have men compete fairly against women. Or playing music, where an instrument represents a minimum investment that immediately makes it inaccessible to many kids. As the most successful games favor a viral, free, multiplayer and social design, games have evolved in a Darwinian way to be as accessible and entertaining as possible.
I don't think it's bad to exercise or to be outside. I just don't think it's substitutable, and I think it's trivializing just how different Civilization is from canoeing. Without a doubt we ought to do both, but you can't learn diplomacy from an oar.
[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/28/science/how-video-games-co...
Really well put. My wife and I play FPS's as a way to chill out at night. Despite being violent, fast paced and the lobbies are typically full of boys, my wife loves it. As a result we purchased a 1ms response monitor, Scuf controller and new Billion (Broadcom chipset) fiber-ready modem so that we could play more competitively (financial-intellectual-engagement).
Anecdotally, we've both noticed our reflexes to real-world things such as driving, traversing busy sidewalks, making quick decisions, catching objects etc has improved. I guess when the difference between dead or alive is seeing something, forming a strategy of engagement, and pressing a combination of buttons while manoeuvering - all in the space of a second - helps you process unforeseen events a little quicker.
By extension Ultimate is also well suited for a wide range of athleticism. For throwers (aka handlers) it is more of a skill sport, involving repeated practice of the throwing motion but not necessarily speed or strength, while receivers (cutters) typically rely on pure athleticism.
It also exercises the mind for me, as do all sports. I spend a lot of time thinking, on the field and off, how to improve my play, conserve energy, what my opponent's tendencies are, etc. If you're not using your mind playing sports, you're not doing it right.
1. http://www.polygon.com/2013/1/30/3932876/research-playing-fi...
2. https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=site:rochester.edu+act...
3. http://www.researchgate.net/publication/228091955_Video_Game...
Playing video games is good for you in moderation (it is what led me into a career in software), but I always try to stress to parents how easy it is for kids to get lost in the feeling of achievement. My brother is always talking about how he has "the most gold of anyone on the server" as though he is set for life but even now when my parents and I constantly try to remind him that his life isn't that great he is so far gone that there is no hope. Why be successful in real life when it is so easy to be "successful" in a fantasy world?
In the late 1990's I wrote for websites strategies and even won several tournaments and won hundreds in cash and some perks. I even attended the first World Cybergames as a MVP.
In that time 1993 - 2003, I went to college, went to 7 semesters got a 3.95685 gpa (I could scream still why I got a B+ in my last class). I also started a non-profit organization gave almost 100,000 pounds of food to poor children in Florida. Started a record studio in 2000 and helped start two bands' careers that ended with them touring the world and landing on MTV. I ended up thousands poorer but it was a good experience and learned I am not the personality type to sit behind a mixing board and computer.
My Rules)
1) If someone asks me to do something in real life that I am doing on the computer, real life wins and I do it. So anyone says let's play basketball I play basketball.
2) I worked out 6 days a week for 20 minutes to 1.5 hours.
3) I volunteered about 5-10 hours a week.
4) I read about 2-3 books a month (Altered between fiction and non-fiction)
5) I did not watch tv or movies (instead of doing passive entertainment I always want to do active entertainment)
All of these went out the door when I got married in 2003. My wife HATES video games :) So now I play very sparingly. I started playing board games and those = video games to her. So I love my wife, kids and life so I choose not to annoy her with playing video games. I feel like I am less accomplished without games. I felt that they propelled me to always be an active person mentally. I missed them but I am guessing I will not be a active video game player in the future. Video games benefited my life.
That being said, I do agree that moderation is probably key to balance in life.
Lots of modern games, puzzle platformers etc. just make me feel stressful.
(I also find watching retrogaming videos and longplay videos on youtube is almost as good of an unwinder)
There are a few games, even relatively new ones, that don't have much 'fluff'. They're often considered very difficult, but because they're so lean and well-designed, they don't generally feel unfair.
These games remind me of what I used to play growing up, and they often offer much more satisfaction in a shorter time-span.
A good, new-ish example of this is Ninja Gaiden for the Xbox, which at times feels overwhelmingly difficult, and yet after playing for a while you notice improvement. It rarely feels truly unfair, and I find it more enjoyable than 'fluffier' games.
Other examples would be games like Ikaruga, F-Zero.
Now I'm going to have to get my old gaming machine back out. Damn you sir. Damn you.
:)
Gaming certainly helps my reflects and keeps my mind sharp.
I have not played anything but short streaks of casual games since the infancy of my first, maybe with the exception of 2011/12 winter break, when I snatched a $0 deal on Broken Sword reissued for iPad and played for several days in a row, which was very recreational indeed.
My top 3 games:
Red Dead Redemption
Deus Ex (the very first one)
Bioshock
I also think this is why I find myself enjoying good TV so much more now that I'm full-timing my startup. I can just sit, relax, and totally focus on something else for an hour a night.
I also watch tv with my wife regularly. I'm a fan of many, many good shows.
My top games are: Bioshock Infinite, Bioshock 1, and The Last Of Us.
My new post-work ritual is going for a nice run or lift and then ruining all of that physical activity with a beer/cocktail. On the upside, I'm getting more fit than I've ever been; on the downside, there are significantly less explosions along the Puget Sound than there are in Pandaria or Ivalice.
Anecdotally, I've recently started playing TF2 again after work instead of exclusively working on a side-project, and I'll be damned if I haven't slept better in months and have had more creativity and stamina to put toward my projects after work. For me, the takeaway from Jack's post was to just make sure you're giving your brain enough time to recharge. and think about other things.
It's odd that people in general want to stop watching television and enjoy life more, but get involved with video games, which is just as mind numbing as television.
I also find it very odd that in a website such as Hacker News, where hackers praise themselves as smart and productive people get carried away by playing games, which hardly generates anything.
Such as the studies that showed that by playing chess, you get better at chess, playing video games will make you better at one thing, playing video games. There are some side gains, but they are negligible. One would benefit a lot more from other activities.
The Wire? Awesome and very educational. Planescape Torment (or other RPG's)? Better, in some ways, than a great book.
Also, chess is a game too, so really just a subset of 'games'. I don't really see what you're trying to point out with that comparison.
Tangentially related, the author's product looks awesome too. I'm probably going to need to make some websites for my parents businesses soon and I'd like something that I can maintain happily with emacs but that they can post to and modify from their browser; this thing looks like it might just be the ticket.
Video games worked as a tool to help me disconnect from a brain that was lying to me, telling me that I should be working. That I should be billing. That I should be devoting even more time into my work. When in fact, the opposite was true. Less of me, more of everything else, and everything began to work out.
And relating to your tangent, let me know if you have questions about Statamic just shout {at} jackmcdade.com. That sounds like a perfect use case for it :)
Hi, Jack.
Videogames are an integral part of my life. They are my main hobby. I play them, I design them and I develop them. They are my main medium and form of art.
I like them for exploring new worlds. To have a safe place to interact with stuff, poke them and see what they do. To experience larger than life stories. And sometimes some tiny really intimate ones.
It's escapism, I know. But I usually escape to places where it would be impossible for me to go, or to be people I will never be.
To end this, I'll leave you with my favourite gaming add, the one that really sums up what I feel about this beautiful, expansive and still young medium: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Bqq38WZctA
How do I limit my game-time to 1 hour daily? Easy, I set the Family Timer on my Xbox. I know the password, so I can extend it, but at least it's a conscious decision. I'd highly recommend this approach to anyone who wants to try out gaming but is afraid of it sucking away too much time.
