[kejadlen]

I don't think it's any more of a poor choice than spending time trying to be awesome at sports or music, or any other hobby. The real question is: does it make you happy?

Not everything in life needs to fulfill one of the questions you ask of a hobby - there are lots of things that people devote time and money to that won't make them money, get them laid, etc., and I don't think they're any more a waste of time than being a competitive gamer.

[jiggy2011]

I'm not against playing games for short term happiness or pleasure. It just seems like a poor long term hobby , especially to focus so much on one game.

I don't think CS is the worst offender here though, It's worse when WOW gets patched and people complain about the patch making their character worse because they invested so much time in that character which can be so arbitrarily rendered worthless.

I think being good at sports or music is much more likely to get you laid and more likely to be a hobby that people will respect and you will be able to carry on throughout your life. There is also way more chance of making money and of course there are fitness benefits to sport.

I'm not ridiculing people who enjoy video games I just sort of look back and think "wow, why did I take that so seriously" and I know my other CS playing friends now think the same.

[electromagnetic]

I don't find gaming a poor long term hobby, I see people who spend hours upon hours building model planes, only to crash it in a park.

If I never get published, my hobby of writing fiction is just as big a waste, if not more. At least playing CS or WoW gives me the chance of meeting someone to be friends with. With writing I'm generally disconnected and isolated, rather than connected and isolated.

Hobby's are entered into in full knowledge that you're wasting time. I don't see the point in replaying games (I worked as a movie/game reviewer, so I got into a healthy habit of seeing it as disposable entertainment), save for a few special ones like Grim Fandango.

> I think being good at sports or music is much more likely to get you laid and more likely to be a hobby that people will respect and you will be able to carry on throughout your life.

I don't think being good at sports is going to get you laid, I think being in excellent physical condition will get you laid. I think being good at sports means you're likely to have less free time to get laid, especially when you start avoiding drinking alcohol to perform better for saturday and sunday morning games.

Similarly I think being able to play guitar well might get you laid, I don't think spending your Saturdays in someones garage is going to help.

Sorry but you can't claim one hobby is superior to another, when by a hobby is a non-productive activity.

I'm sure many professional athletes have said "wow, why did I take that so seriously" when they're burnt out at 30, or took a bad tackle or fall and can never get back to performance level. I mean fuck, watch a series of Intervention and you'll see like 5 Olympic or Olympic qualifying athletes.

[Too]

I know a girl who broke up with her bf just because he was training hockey too much. 5-6 times training per week and 1 match = No time for gf.

And when not training they are talking about hockey, watching hockey-games on tv or playing nhl on xbox.

[Shorel]

I've heard that tale a thousand of times.

Successful men usually have wifes who support them in their hobbies/jobs/whatever, and vice-versa.

This is for me the meaning of 'Behind every great man there's a great woman'.

Our personal choice for a significant other should take this into account.

[kejadlen]

I don't know about you, but I don't choose my hobbies based on how likely they are to get me laid. And if people don't respect my hobbies, that's their problem, not mine. It's also a good indication of what kind of person they are.

Although as an aside, you do forget one significant downside to playing sports - injuries. This is especially the case if you play at all competitively. Also, are sports really a valid "long-term hobby"? You can probably only play most sports for so long... (barring golf/tennis/etc).

[jiggy2011]

No, although as a teenager if you had suggested a hobby which I hated but promised that it would result in ladies throwing themselves at me I probably would have considered it :)

My point was more that being masterful at a sport (e.g playing professional or semi-pro football) or being a successful musician playing large gigs to cheering fans will get you more social status than being a counterstrike champion (although maybe korea is a counter example here).

I'm not suggesting that you should choose your hobbies based on this though! I try to choose hobbies based on a deeper sense of fulfillment which may be creative , exhilarating or just make me physically fitter. Whilst I still enjoy playing video games I never got any of these feelings of "real" achievement from it in the same way I would from writing a good program or running a marathon for example, so they are now in the "fun" category for me now rather than a serious hobby.

Of course there is a social aspect to many hobbies too and this is probably one of the things I enjoyed most about gaming (especially since it is easy to play with people all over the world and learn about different cultures).

I just feel if I had the chance to go back again I might have been more fulfilled learning to really shred on a guitar since this is a skill which would be more likely to stay relevant over time. When I play modern video games I can really only call on a very limited amount of my counterstrike skillz.

It's like looking at the starcraft players in korea complaining about starcraft2 making their well honed skills less useful simply because of a software update. The same thing happens with programming a little but I can still apply most of my Visual Basic and PHP techniques now to writing python or something.

[kejadlen]

Can't argue with that one (choosing hobbies as a teenager), although I have to admit that I became much more satisfied with my hobbies once I stopped caring about them from the point of view of other people.

Personally, I think putting time into music and sports are about as useful/useless as putting time into video games. For the most part, adults aren't going to be able to sink much time into their hobbies (certainly not enough to become world class) - most of my friends who did sink time into learning to shred on a guitar (and the like) don't really use those skills now. I spend most of my personal time playing sports, but other than the side effect of being rather fit, I don't think they are intrinsically any more fulfilling than spending a similar amount of time becoming just as good at competitive gaming.

Re: SC -> SC2 - not really a great analogy, considering how well professional SC players have adapted to SC2. They might complain about it, but there's actually a pretty high correlation between being good at SC and transferring that skill to SC2. (Not to mention that the few SC players that have switched to SC2 so far haven't been top-tier. I can't imagine how well the top-tier SC players would do at SC2 in comparison.) I don't think it's much different from pro athletes dealing with rules changes; NFL players might vociferously complain about it, but in the end, they're the best at what they do for a reason.