The Pleasure and Psychology of Video Games
I have spent well over 5,000 hours playing video games. That’s around half a year, and I’ve been alive for almost 21 years. That’s only 1/40th of my life, give or take, which can be represented by this amount:
Video Game Pie Chart External Link
Not too bad, right? Think again. Actually, let’s think together below:
Why 1/40th is not small
Overall, 1/40 is a relatively low number, and you may think some of the ways I’m going to debunk this are something like the following:
- I’ve only been playing video games for the past couple years since I wasn’t playing when I was 2 or something. I’ve actually been playing since I was 9, but still a good point.
- This only reflects counted hours: true, but hopefully the estimate is on the higher side
Well, I believe that 1/40th is small because of compounding cravings of dopamine. Let me explain:
The modern world’s advertising is a compound effect of marketing and psychological tricks and manipulation for our time, attention, and money. Is it wrong? I don’t think so, and if I was in the video game creator’s shoes, I would obviously want to build hype up for my game in order for it to sell well and be worth the investment. For me, when I played 1/40th of my life playing video games, let’s imagine that number is set and stone. Well I actually probably spent much more of my time thinking about those exact games and when I would play them next. I won’t make a biased estimate; however, I assume many times the time I spent playing. As a 9-year-old, this seems acceptable, but as I’ve grown older I’ve slowly start to see the way these videogames have a certain way of entertaining a mind.
Well, I’ve spent a lot of time on videogames, what did I learn?
Although I have spent a lot of my time playing in a virtual world, I did gain a few things in the real world. One of my best friends Sven, whom I did the following podcast about videogames with, has engaged me in thought-provoking conversations in which we can understand that we met in a videogame, but our story doesn’t necessarily have to end there. I want to touch on the highlights of videogames and the great people and lessons I learned along the way. Let’s do that.
Firstly, videogames are much more fun with friends. To laugh and have a good time is normal, and although I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how videogames are fun and useful, I found it in sharing a mutual experience with someone else. Not getting beat by random people, not wasting your time simply to “lose elo”, but to join together or fight against each other in the hopes of improving friendship. Over the past few months this is how I am starting to view gaming. I haven’t played a favorite game Rocket League in 3 months because it wasn’t fun by myself, and it wasn’t fun going against random people in a random server. Now, to do some 1v1 against a friend, I would be all for the banter and good vibes. The difference may be subtle, but it is something I have tried to keep in my mind to help myself become more aware of my situation with videogames. There are other benefits I have received while gaming such as increased creativity, but the other end of this stick is that sometimes we have to use our valuable mental bandwidth to think about how we are going to be more creative when we hop back on. It would be great to take that creativity that comes naturally to think of new ideas in our favorite games and apply that to our real life.
Conclusion
I haven’t quit videogames, not in the slightest, and I don’t plan to quit every game anytime soon. I only plan to more selective and thoughtful with the games that I play. Taking a short reflective break after playing a video game should be standard, along with anything in life. We can bring it back to the things we should do on the regular.
Here’s a quote from me in The Deep Plea podcast episode on video games to give some reiteration, practicality, and food for thought:
“…it’s kind of hard to win this battle [videogames]…where it’s us versus some company trying to grab our attention…there’s a idea in stoicism where even our entertainment should be worthwhile and beneficial to us.”
