ARE GAMES A WASTE OF TIME?

I'm fond of League of Legends, a 5-versus-5, player-versus-player video game wherein the objective is to destroy the enemies base.

A popular League of Legends personality that goes by his in-game name of Tyler1 recently raged on a video about the state of the game and that his too addicted to the game to even care about cheating, griefing and trolling going on.

I too am in a similar state wherein I'm too addicted to quit. My main thing though is that video games (or games in general) is my form of release. The real world can suck quite honestly, but in a game, you can pretend to be who you ACTUALLY want to be in an instant. No one will judge you because everyone is also pretending.


Another thing I'm fond of about games is the competitiveness and the chance to win fairly. Unlike in the real world where it is a norm to cheat the system in order to get ahead (at least here in the Philippines). As a fan of board games, you get to compete with other players and it's fair game since everyone is bounded by rules. You are still allowed to think about the box but within the borders of the rule book. Which in real life is kinda the same thing, I think. But at least in games, it's harmless fun.

What I'm trying to get at is that I am always ridiculed if I admit I still play games as a 36 year old, married man. Here in the Philippines, the older generation sees games as a waste of time. I admit that that it is true IF there are things to be done and I'm sitting here just playing.

My take on it is that I'm not the type of person to just slave my whole day towards work; that's what I hated the most being in a BPO the last 11 years: there was no time for fun unless you intentionally created it via going on leave OR pretending to be sick to get a day-off.

I'm a staunch believer in work-life balance and by balance I mean work and then play and not work and then side jobs. For some, maybe the side job IS their hobby like if you are into the stock market. But for me, I don't mind slaving at work for 12 hours or more as long as when I'm done with that, I get to do something that I'm interested in: be it going on Reddit, playing video games or watching my favorite TV show.

Photo credit to onlineuniversities.com

The sad thing is that: most people see me as lazy when I do this. Personally, I think people shouldn't be judged just because they have a different way on how they spend their free time. There have been different studies pertaining to the benefit of video games and I believe that but my experience may be anecdotal since I'm biased towards it.

To end, I hope that someday I can be a part of a generation that can prove that playing games is not a waste of time and can be a productive hobby wherein you can learn something of of it similar to exercising or reading a book.

I would love to be around when the day comes that games are something that people would recommend to do on your free time.