Yeah, I think that’s part of it. That’s why people play Peggle and things like that.
And I think there’s a propensity for play hardwired into humans. But I think the significance of play is underhyped. At it’s essence, play is the pursuit of information through feedback. Infants will throw spoons to the ground over and over, fascinated not just by gravity by also by the way their parent repeatedly returns it to their high chair. After that it gets a little more complicated with kids forming games out of chasing. And then there’s gender bifurcation–children using play to understand their roles as boys or girls (with nothing in between).
But sports and games are interesting because they take that natural predilection for learning and divert it into a maze of abstract axioms: rules, basically. Games are the crack to the cocaine of less regimented play. They’re yet another manifestation of mankind’s tendency to identify a basic need with a direct function and over-refine it until the function is lost and only the gratification remains.
When people do this we usually get one of two results: junk or art.
Slot machines and Candy Land are the junk, sophisticated board games and video games can be the art. Everything else in between is probably just bad art or lofty junk.
Anyway Vikram, the way I see it, nearly everything that humans do is “irrational,” in the sense that our desire to eat and maintain ourselves doesn’t come from a place of logic. Obviously eating make sense–it can be logically justified by our bodies’ needs–but what we eat seldom does. We’re not logically deciding to eat, we’re eating because we have cravings, though we might rationalize those cravings later.
The same thing applies to video games. Video games trick your brain into thinking that you’re receiving unique, new information about the world and then reward you with endorphin spikes (the sound of a coin in Mario or an A ranking) when you do a good job. It’s no wonder that you come back again and again! Games are an easy reward. So yeah, they’re a waste of time if you enjoy them at this shallow level. But if you think about the games you’ve played and draw connections with reality then you’ve elevated games to art through your interpretation. Suddenly, you’re not wasting your time, because you’ve actually generated new ideas and made new connections–connections that you can apply toward bettering your life or the lives of others.
Anyway, I guess I’m just saying that contrary to what you’re professor might think video games are only a waste of time if you make them a waste of time.
(Removed name) makes them a waste of time, because rather than trying to extrapolate something novel from the games he plays, he rationalizes the experience with insipid articles laced with power fantasies and sublimated anger at the state of his own life.
Don’t read the screeds of a madman in an attempt to understand your own madness.