[kromem]

I can't disagree more with many comments on here in response to if it's pissing away time playing video games.

I mean, I guess I don't really play CoD vs more narrative games, so I can't speak to that specifically, but I greatly credit my time in virtual worlds with a lot of my intellectual flexibility.

In my experience there's a palpable benefit to exploring impossible worlds and carrying out a personal story shaped by my actions within them. Making hard decisions that I would never be faced with in reality informs me about myself, and encountering stimuli well beyond what reality has on tap conditions me to look beyond the box in what reality does throw at me.

I can't really say that any other medium or activity offers the same mental exercise as an engrossing game.

To each their own, and people are welcome to decide that they found a greater purpose in a national park vs a spaceship exploring unknown worlds. But people are also welcome to find greater purpose in the other.

As someone who does (though I find variety the spice of life and also do enjoy national parks - just not as much), it's interesting the ways in which people pass judgment on each other, and themselves.

I'd value a gamer spending decades in video games over a monk spending decades mediating and in a vow of silence, and yet I suspect given the general fetishizing of traditionalism and demonizing of modernism many would disagree and see one as pursuit of a higher truth and the other as a pursuit of nihilism.

It's useful to check in with oneself as to if our choices are actually giving us value or are an escape from things that would give us greater value. But if they really do give you value, then value them. And if they do not, don't make the mistake of thinking that equation would hold true for others as well.

[watwut]

> Making hard decisions that I would never be faced with in reality informs me about myself,

This irks me wrong, because it does not distinguishes between reality and fantasy. None of the in-game decisions is hard the way real life decisions are hard. Just like, murder on TV is not the same thing as real life one. Real life combat situations frequently changes people, makes them bitter and forever angry or give them PTSD. People regret their real life decisions till the end of their lives - that is why those decisions are said to be "hard". Video games dont do the same thing.

You are not facing equivalent of real-life decisions. None of the decisions you made in game had any real consequences to the outside world and you know it.

[kromem]

There's a difference between realizing one's self-image vs one's self-actuality.

Most people when asked would say they wouldn't obey authority over their own conscience. And yet if actually put into Milgram's experiment most would likely result in different outcomes than they'd think.

The idea has certainly been put forward that there's a merit to the self-knowledge gained in real tragedy. A Hemingway-esque self-discovery in the trenches.

Arguably we could extend that to conclude that given the relative timeline of humanity, that anyone who doesn't end up slowly devoured by a pride of lions in the savannah or sees several of their children die to the elements hasn't really discovered their 'real' human self.

IMO that's a BS argument.

What games engage isn't the self-discovery of who we are, but the self-discovery of who we would like to be.

And frankly I think that pursuit in fictional worlds is both more worthwhile and of import than the lessons available to be 'learned' in a foxhole.

I can honestly say that some of the hard decisions in games had me reevaluating my personal philosophies much more than my experiences making harrowing medical decisions for family or life altering changes.

Reality is seldom ideologically binary enough as to prompt extrapolated self-reflection on the principles of decisions as opposed to the relatively much greater focus on the complexities of their fallout.

Triviality is a tool for archetypical self-reflection, and it is precisely the low stakes setting that allows for such rich self-discovery.