after more than a decade,, im REALLY starting to feel like i dont even belong here anymore.
i mean,, yeah i miss gaming, and the years i was addicted are kinda nostalgia for me. but its been so damn long now that the desire to play them just kinda wanes after a while. Is this normal, or is this just part of my "shit, i'm glad im not a kid anymore' phase?

for the past 5 years i've had about 10 ps2 games (and some ps1, including ff9) sitting on a shelf that i swore i'd get around to playing. some of them i started and put a few hours in (rpgs), but then pretty much abandoned.

i don't know if its partly because i work a zillion hours, or maybe because i see my little (31 this year) brother who is a computer tech then plays MMORPGs nearly all of his free time and i dont want to see myself become that, so its kinda like quiet sibling rivalry where you want to do the exact opposite.

anyone else in this same predicament feel like chiming in? I mean gaming requires complete devotion of your time,, its not like you can multitask and do something else at the same time.,, unlike coming up with bad puns that just formulate unintentionally when you interact with something in real time. did you know the obamas have a secret 3rd child they named after a bottle of salad dressing, shayquel

It's next to 0. I've purchased at the very most one game in year, and the last one was FFXIII and perhaps the next will be FFXV. My PS3 just gathers dust   But I don't think it's rare. Many people have been getting burned out from gaming for various reasons (age, work, another hobby, etc) and I'm far more sick of those elitist people saying "I've done with gaming!" as if it made him/her a more matured and smart being.

In the past 5 years, gaming has became something to "watch" to me. I've often watched live streaming (aka Peer Cast) and enjoyed somebody playing games.

These days it's almost nil...  sometimes it'll be 1-2 hours a week if I'm lucky.  I watch more TV these days than I game...  I would like to game more, but I know they'll always be there, whereas the TV stuff comes and goes, and I find myself wanting to watch movies more than game these days.  Yet I still can enjoy gaming when i pick it up.  I guess it's whatever is more of a priority I guess.

It totally depends on how much free time I have at any given time.  During the school year I do a lot less than during the summer, but I do still get in maybe an hour or so a day on average (sometimes none, sometimes a lot more).  While I definitely play less than I did when I was a kid, I don't feel like I waste a tremendous amount of time with it because I'll pick up a game and play it for a while as relaxation in the evenings while most normal people would turn on the TV.  I don't even have a cable hookup to mine - just consoles.

If you asked a few months ago the answer would be next to nil. However, for the last two months I've been tearing things up, trying to play all these games I've purchased over the last two years from an independent game store in the neighboring town. Most of them are games I've had before (for the most part most of them are holding up to how I previously felt about them) but I’ve checked out new (to me) old ones like Silent Hill. I wouldn't mind checking out some newer games - like the three newest PSP/PS2 Syphon Filters - after ones after I re-catch-up on three old ones and getting a cube to try the Metroid Primes.

http://club.ign.com/b/list/custom?&lid= … fsalvation
The ones with comments are the one's I played through recently.

Still, before that store opened I had really given up on gaming and had my collection down to a few essentials. It may seem kind of sugar-coated, but I think that store and the people that work there saved my interest - and it's real nice not to have to rely solely on eBay when looking for old games.

Not counting Street Fighter time with people and the occasional game when killing some time, practically none. No time and even when I do have time, I really don't feel like it. Stringing together sessions where I both have playing time AND I actually feel like playing is an extreme rarity. Even today, a virtually non-eventful Saturday, zero game time.

I spend way more time playing games than I think I do, though it's still not as much as it used to be. Maybe 10 hours, about 1-2 hours a night on average? Sometimes I end up squeaking in all my gaming time on the weekends...but that's only if I don't end up going out...

Some people argue that a loss of interest in gaming is due to one maturing into an adult - I don't think so. I think it has to do with a lot of games these days being total crap, or otherwise just a complete and total pain to play, or just boring, repetitive, and unfulfilling, and they've gotten tired of that.

But, I've been hitting up a lot of old games on Wii Virtual Console, and, y'know what? I still appreciate those games as much as I did back in the day, possibly even more so, because I have a greater knowledge of what went into those games - between cultural influences that're put into them, and knowing the complexity of all the programming that goes into them.

Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy II (the original U.S. SNES incarnation of FFIV) take me about 20 and 30 hours to complete, respectively - that's all side quests at the end of Chrono Trigger resolved, and all the Summons in FFII/IV acquired, INCLUDING AND ESPECIALLY Bahamut, and the level-building it takes to defeat him AND the final boss.

FFVII and VIII, it took FOREVER to get ANYTHING done in those games; they're AT LEAST 60 hours each to complete! FFVI, don't remember how long it took to get to where I did, but I could never finish the final dungeon...I always felt like I wasn't ready...

I'm on the opposite side of the spectrum.
If you'd asked me a few months ago it would've been about 5 to 6 hours a day.
Nowadays, it's hardly 2.

Not because I don't WANT to play more, it's just that I don't have the time now that I work almost every day of the week. I still keep buying games at the same rate as before, so my backlog is rapidly piling up...

Yeah, I still BUY them, I just ain't playin them. Brutal Legend, Sakura Wars, Team Fortress 2...I totally forgot I picked up copies of Gitarooman, Virtual On Marz and Raiden 3 a few months ago. Maybe one of the reasons my fighting games skills have eroded so bad is I never actually touch my copy of Super SF IV (I just play it at my friend's houses and at tournaments). Sadly, I still go through Gamestop and think, "Gee, I'd like to buy something today...Maybe an RPG or maybe I'll finally try to get into Madden", then I find what I want and put it back when I remember just how little I play the stuff I have.

Worst part is having a DS flash cart full of pirated ROM's and realizing I have all these "free" games at my disposal and I don't feel like playing any of them.

I remember reading people post on the forums a few years ago about not having much time for games or not being interested in them anymore, and I remember being like, goddammit, I am never going to be that person! And now I am that person. Irony is a dish best served microwaved. The only time I play video games these days is if I have a free hour here or there (usually after my girlfriend goes to bed if I don't pass out first) or if it's over the weekend when there's no roller derby event/bout/scrimmages to go to.

EDIT: I should also add that I haven't purchased a video game in well over a year. Maybe two? I have no clue.

I've got a pretty big collection - TG-16, JVC X'Eye, GCN, PS1, NES, SNES, Saturn and DC, plus a DS with a bazillion DS, GBA, NES and Genesis ROMs on. Of all of them, there are two games I regularly find time for - Mario Kart DS with my lunch buddy at work, and Rock Band 2 on the PS3 I just recently purchased. As a guitarist, it's fun to fake some drums now and then. To answer the original question: a few hours a week, which is up from my pre-Rock Band days.

Just wanted to highlight this to say that I totally agree.  I think I've made this argument before here, but I REFUSE to say that play video games is something that you "grow out of" unless the people who make claim that say that reading novels, watching TV, going to the theatre, and ANY OTHER ART FORM are something that you simply stop doing because of advancing age.

I'll admit to thinking the games I grew up with are better than what's being put out now, but at the same time that's just a common generational thing and not really fact... although I like to act like it is. Unless you grew up in that generation you're less likely "to get" why something that came out during it was popular.

Practically 0 hours these days, although it does vary, depending on how much free time I have available to spend.

The times I do play games nowadays usually come in small, intensive bursts. Months will go by without me even touching a game (both from lack of time and lack of interest), then there'll be a week or two where I spend a lot of my free time locked up at home playing games (usually these times occur when there's very little else competing for my attention, like when friends are out of town, etc. The last few years, it's almost always been during the summers, and invariably when I've been single, like now). The last such episode was a few weeks ago, I played through some old NES classics on an emulator, most notably Sweet Home, which I had a hell of a time with (no pun intended).

Its a weird thing, I don't even own a console anymore, a game, nor even a TV anymore (I hate watching 99.9% of what's on TV so I don't miss having one in the least: call me a weirdo if you want, I don't care), yet still I find that I do play a lot of games on occasion. For the classics I go with emulators, and when I play newer games, its at my brother's or a friend's house (the last time I played a new game was about a month ago, I visited my family and took the opportunity to blast through Resident Evil 5). Yeah, I'm a bit of a moocher that way: I like both having the cake and eating it too, which in this case amounts to not having a TV-set, consoles, and games clutter up much space at home and not having to spend much money on them myself and at the same time being able to play games now and then anyway. Its a great hypocritical pleasure to be able to say with a straight face "Nah dude, I don't spend much time or money on games anymore, just look at my apartment, I don't even have a TV!" and then still get some gaming groove on now and then. But even more than that, I guess its some sort of safety mechanism I have, because deep down, I'm aware that I still have a raging fanatical gamer trapped inside me that would go completely out of control and wreck large parts of my adult life if I just let him. Seriously, the times I lull myself into thinking that its not that bad and loose his reins even slightly, the maniac almost takes over, and before I know it, I wake up in a room full of empty coke and wine bottles and pizza cartons, wondering where the hell all that lovely free time I just had went, how I managed to let it go so far, and what I really gained as a person by letting it do so (other than the snug pleasure of going on gaming forums and bragging about how I can make it through Castlevania 1 without being hit even once!).

There's something strange about our gaming hobby. Despite the fact that there's always been nerdy pastimes for people to get themselves lost in, the potency and addictability of gaming seems to be unmatched outside of the realms of psychoactive substances and fanatical political/religious ideologies. The instant "reward" and interactivity of it works magic to pull us in (this is true the more flashy and interactive things get - I'm staying the hell away from MMORPGs for a reason, and I know better than to let myself be caught up in that gathering trophies and achievements nonsense, too). Its so easy to get hooked on games and stay hooked. And even if you notice that you've trapped yourself in this gravitational black hole of a time-sucker, resolve to free yourself from it, and then swear "I'm never touching the damn things ever again!", it still has an amazing ability to linger. The fact that I'm still here on this forum, keeping an eye on one element of the gaming experience I used to sink so much time into (namely, the music of games) shows that I'm still hooked in some sense... Its like I'm a junkie that has been off the stuff (mostly) for years, but still, I can't resist getting high off the fumes now and then, like my system craves it somehow after having been on it for like, what, 25 years? Its like a disease that has been mostly beaten back, but not quite... Biding it's time, looking for the right moment to seize upon to blaze up anew and take control.

Can anyone identify with the above, or am I just an extreme example? Maybe there's no point in thinking so much about it. Maybe calling it a "drug" or "disease" is just completely wrong: if I have a strong craving for it and like it when I do it, maybe its not something I should be resenting for stealing my time, but rather something I should just embrace fully and revel in without second thought for the consequences? After all, there are alcoholics that get so deep into their drinking habit and have their systems so readjusted to being pissed as being the "normal state" that the best option for them paradoxically enough becomes to just keep on chuggin', because if they stopped they might run the risk of drying up and dying, so why waste all that energy on freeing yourself from the stuff when you might already be too far gone and the best option is just to continue on down the road and focus on it's (*ehem*) better qualities? At the most basic level, I guess its an existential question about what to do with your time, what to fill it with, finding out what is meaningful/rewarding/etc. in your existence.

But never mind all that shit, I'm off to check out this Let's Play of Alone in the Dark 3. What a freaking crazy game this is, a survival horror Western with cowboy dudes turning into werewolves right and left! Good times... or is it?

I recall that, those times when I haven't played games in awhile, I've still done something else for entertainment, usually one movie per night, or a few episodes of anime a night, and ask myself why I haven't been gaming, and that's why. Either that, or it's going out to dinner, and driving aimlessly around town at night, trying to find new restaurants and hang-outs.

It's a matter of how you spend your free time. I never find that it's a complete lack of free time; I still always have some amount of free time, no matter how little; it's a matter of how you budget out your time, and how you spend it. If you find you have no free time, you really need to evaluate how you spend your time, and ask yourself how you could be more efficient, and what you can cut out of your schedule altogether.

For example, going to the grocery store used to cut a lot of my free time, then I figured out how to go their only once a week, maybe only once every TWO weeks; I'd have to thoroughly and carefully plan my grocery list, and check my inventory of what I already have, but in the long run, it saved me a lot of time, rather than going to the grocery store every time I remembered that I forgot something.

For some people, the lure of video-games seems to be that of escapism, and control.

For me, playing a video-game is like being on vacation, much the same way how reading a great piece of fiction is. And when it comes to something action-packed, it's about heroism; it's actually kind of a little self-esteem booster, especially when you're young and impressionable.

For me, a game's soundtrack is a "Memento" of the "Vacation" I just took; it reminds me of the experience that I had. Plus, it's often non-obtrusive; I can listen to music in the background while I'm doing something else, while a game or movie requires my full undivided attention. And sometimes, even just the music itself helps take me on a "Vacation."

This, and exactly this. There a thousand-to-one chance that I'll play Final Fantasy VIII again, but there's a one-to-one chance that I can put that soundtrack on while I'm at work and be instantly brought back to my favorite memories and melodies of the game. I'm at a point where it's almost more satisfying just to listen to the tunes from a game than to play (or re-play) it.

Exactly the same with me.

Yeah, definitely. Time-management is of the essence, and I guess some are better at it than others. I know I suck at it, especially when the passions carry me away with them.

I agree mostly, but want to add a caveat here. Gaming as such is a form of media, entertainment, and art as much as books, music, films, etc. are, but that doesn't necessarily make it equivalent to the other forms. It is perfectly possible to argue that the notion of "outgrowing" games is as absurd as that of "outgrowing" reading books or watching films, but still hold that there's something more "childish" in playing games all your free time than there is in wasting all your time reading novels, for example. All of this is highly subjective and rooted in personal preferences and values, of course, but I think we all differentiate between different forms of media in this way. Speaking for myself, I love playing video games, but at the same time, I recognize that they steal a lot of time and give very little in return after you're done with them (...or should that read "after they are done with you"? *thunderclap in the distance*). They are high in fast-acting carbohydrates and calories, but low in sustainable nourishment, whereas for example books (keep in mind: my personal opinion here again!) are often low in immediate gratification, but ultimately give you a fuller experience. This is one of the reasons I'm a bit weary of games as well as annoyed at my own weakness for them: I know that if I find a great game, I'm gonna have a blast with it for as long as it lasts but that, unless it has a really good story and some philosophical insights to offer that manage to stay with me after I turn it off (see: Silent Hill, Persona), I'm gonna be exactly where I was when I started throwing my time down that well (and, if it happens to be a long RPG, I might even find myself a few pounds heavier after finishing the "quest"). With a really great book on the other hand (say, a tome of Nietzsche or Dostoevsky), the experience is somewhat the opposite: its much harder to sit down and start reading (especially if there are no cool graphics... uh, I mean, pretty pictures in it) and resolve to finish it, but I've found myself returning in my thoughts to things I've read in books much more often than scenes or stages in games, and that to me is worth much more than the immediate gratification or pastime entertainment that most games have as their only merit and draw. So while I definitely agree that it is ridiculous for people to claim that you can "outgrow" games (you can't), I see no contradiction between that fact and at the same time claiming that people who sink all their free time into games are more often than not more childish than people who waste a great amount of time reading novels, because I believe (again: IMO!) that books actually have a greater power to give you something that you can use and apply to "real life" and make you a better human being, while with games, it mostly stays with you then and there. ...If that makes any sense.

Looking back at what I wrote, it can come off as a bit elitist, but that's definitely not my point. As I said, I was just talking about my personal preferences, and it is very possible that there are people for whom games trump movies and books as the ultimate form of "art". But I think that what I was trying to explain is an important part of why I feel games don't give me that much anymore outside of an amusing way to kill time when I simply have nothing better to do: its not that I've "outgrown" them, its more that I've come to recognize that they take more from me than they give, namely that they take away a lot of time I could be spending doing more fulfilling things in my life (while I feel that music or books don't do this - on the contrary, they actually enhance my ability to see the beautiful things in life and they act as incentives to find new experiences).

Hehe, but isn't advancing age in the end the reason why we stop doing just about anything?

it really varies from week to week. Some weeks I might get in 40 hours plus. Many weeks I'll get in 0 to 3 hours. Depends on what's out and what's going on at home.

Sorry man, but you're just a freak, no two ways about it. Kidding.

I can identify. I used to play so much that I was apathetic toward anything or anyone else. The game world was better than the real world (or so I thought), so why not spend most of my time there? And in a sense, that fantasy world was brighter and easier to get lost in back then, much like Disney World was as a kid. Disney is still very enjoyable, but now when you go there your brain isn't disconnected and devoted solely to the rides and imagery. Now you notice things like all the trash people throw down, you watch the workers (who are probably underpaid) pick it up with neutral expressions, you wonder what the employee areas look like behind the walls, what the woman inside the Minnie costume looks like, how often parts have to be replaced on high-stress rides, etc. The best way to go back to feeling like a kid again is to be around them, I've found. Well, the happy ones, at least.

I still love to game, but it's harder to get back into that high I experienced as a teen. When it does hit, it tends to have its way with me for a good chunk of time, and I'm content to let it. I can put a game down much easier now, but when I get on a roll with a particularly addictive one, it'll call to me throughout the day. It's a bit like the opposite sex (or whomever you're attracted to). When I'm away from women for awhile--which my lame, reclusive lifestyle results in--I start to think I'm pretty confident in my bachelorhood. I'm a lone wolf, I can ride solo into the sunset any day of the week without a care. I've been alone this long, why change? Then when I'm around girls again I see what I've been missing. But human relationships trump games, IMO. Also, the outdoors. When I'm out on a mountain trail I don't care much about video games or TV shows, or civilization in general.

But enough about my lameness. I've heard recently about the negative effects of too much gaming. Apparently it conditions your brain to expect instant gratification with minimal effort. I don't recall the parts of the brain involved, or the names of the chemicals they secrete, but usually when you work toward a goal in life you have to put forth a conscious and dedicated effort to achieve it. Your ambition is then rewarded with the pleasure of having worked for, and reached, that goal. In gaming, you receive this spike of pleasure quickly and easily, and your brain becomes mildly addicted to this "fix." The result is that ambition has been severely dulled in many of the young people today. Or so they say. Video games are only a part of the media assault on this generation anyway. So, everything in moderation. Except watermelon. There's nothing wrong with eating tons of juicy, sweet, thirst-quenching watermelon.

Yeah, the whole maturation argument I totally disagree with, unless you want to count cramps in my left hand that I didn't really worry about 10 years ago when playing on an arcade stick. The reality is, school and/or a PT job still leave plenty of time for quality gaming as compared to a 40+ hour job with a large commute that just sucks the life out of you. On the flipside, it adds to the value of music if you can listen at work and it definitely makes the commute better. So that is why I prefer to grow my music habits and not my game habits.

Plus for me, the reality is I just haven't been in love with much of the gaming scene for the past decade anyway. It's been hard to stomach some of the downturns/changes of some of my favorite franchises and very few new ones have really grabbed me. When the gems come along, they are really worth it and I'm down with the whole retro-revival thing (I'd be readying myself for a search-and-kill mission if they had made Marvel vs Capcom 3 into a 3D fighting game! Similarly, I groaned very loudly when I saw Street Fighter x Tekken, since Tekken is a poor choice to transition into a 2D fighting environment), but man...mid-2000's or so were just a downright dark time for gaming for me. Even nowadays, I have almost zero reason to consider a PS3 and while I love the 360 games I own, I don't own that many of them.

Makes total sense. I will say that, while certain games (Silent Hill, especially, along with others like ICO and Beyond Good & Evil) stay with me mentally and make me actually think about their context and subtext, most of the times when I reflect on a game it's more of "Oh, that was fun!", or, "I just wasted five hours of my life grinding low-level random enemies so I could get enough License Points to equip a goddamn hammer." But, let's face it, Super Mario Galaxy isn't going to keep anyone up at night thinking about how the game's story can be viewed as a reflection of a post-modern, Platonian Don Quixote with tinges of Bradbury-influenced sci-fi and Orwellian doomed futurism. It's about a fat plumber in space that's collecting stars to rescue some dumb chick. That's it.

However, on the upside, twenty-some-odd years of video games have given me hand-eye coordination like you would not believe. I shit you not. This one time, a couple of weeks ago, I caught a fly with my bare hands while eating pancakes at a restaurant. It was like a deleted scene from Wanted; time slowed, my mind quieted, Angelina Jolie looked on and gave me a little smile and I just grabbed that little bastard like it was nothing. It's also good for driving, although I'll admit that when the roads are damp and I'm going around a bend to pull on to a highway I'll speed up so my car skids and drifts a little and I yell "RIIIIIIIIDGE RAAACER!!!" as I pull out of the turn.

(EDIT: I still find this swear filter immensely emasculating and frustrating. I'm not sixteen, goddammit.)

I agree.  Not like there are any minors here anyway.  Even if there were, I've been on XBL enough in the past week to know that they're very familiar with such language.

Also, to answer the question, I average anywhere from 5 to 80 hours a week depending on what game(s) I'm playing and what I have going on.  For example.. if I'm not playing anything in particular, 5 hours in a week at most.  When I was playing FFXIII however, 80 hours in a week.  Sick, isn't it?

I'll also say that playing Persona 4, and finally finishing it, having witnessed all of the characters' life struggles, and how they overcame them, helped make me feel self-actualized as a person...yeah, I know, I'm such a bleeding heart...

This hypothesis sounds scarily plausible to me and hits uncomfortably close to home.  I wonder to what extent this effect may have influenced my development.  Can you direct me to where you heard about this?

I don't know about that; I suppose I can see that, but when I have to grind away endlessly for hours before I'm able to defeat the next boss, well, I wonder if the Japanese actually designed video-games to teach children to work hard.

That, and while anime is often seen as slacker culture, there's always the one character who's the hardass, and riding everyone else to study/work harder.

You want to talk about instant gratification, look at American pop music; the melody, beat, and message of the songs are always usually very straight forward, and there's often nothing else to it than what meets the eye (ears). You don't have to strain yourself to figure out a song. In many instances, the music's so IN-YOUR-FACE!! you just want it to go away, because they beat you over the head with whatever the song's premise is, and often it's the same few words repeated over and over again. That, and the message of such music is often that of self-entitlement. Heh, "Entitlement." Ain't that the word of the decade?

Most publicly prevalent artists...ahem ... "artists" these days, I could stand to LYNCH the lot of them...

Sorry, I don't have a specific resource for you. I heard mention of it in a podcast I listened to several weeks back but I wouldn't be able to find it now. I tried Googling the subject and all I come up with is the usual games-and-violence studies, and some mention of 35-year-old gamers who are depressed, introverted, and who hold women to a hypersexualized ideal. The best I was able to find at the moment is this article:

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/1742

It's not very helpful, and still deals mostly with the violence/emotion issue. Some of the viewer comments below it are interesting. There seem to be a lot of new studies from neuroscience coming out recently, but the more "newsworthy" ones will always show up first. People would rather debate about games causing violence than games adding to a lethargic state of mind.

One thing I know from my own experience. If I spend all Saturday playing games, watching movies, and surfing aimlessly on the internet, by the end of the day I usually feel a bit nuts; I feel like I want to run around outside and wrestle something, but I also feel too lazy and unmotivated to actually get up and bother. Sometimes this will carry over to the next morning as well. If I get sufficient exercise and engage with people (especially early in the morning), it's a whole different story. Now, there are exceptions. Both exercise and gaming release endorphines--which are awesome--and sometimes watching a funny or heroic movie will give you a boost in energy and personality, so to speak. But exercise has significant lasting effects that improve your body physically and mentally.

I'm going to go off on a tangent here. Let's take a heroic movie, for instance. Guys, have you ever come out of a movie like LoTR: The Two Towers and been all hopped up on male bravado? You feel like you want to do manly things, but it's really just living vicariously through a heroic image, which you are not (until proven). Or how about romantic flicks. They wrap up nicely at the end, with the couple getting together and perhaps saying "I do," and then the credits roll. Perfect love has been achieved. You're left with the stimulation of romantic feelings, and expect that from real life. Only it's a lot of work, and less scripted. Or so I'm told.

To conclude: I loved playing Oblivion but it left me feeling less charmed with the real world. I live in a boring state in the US, and I decided I'd have to travel to New Zealand or the castle-topped hills of Germany if I wanted a comparable experience in real life. Then I started checking out some of the "boring" nature trails in my area, and found them to be pretty enjoyable. A far cry from the Cinque Terre or the Alps, but better than I expected. Double your pleasure, double your fun. And I even do some off trail exploring from time to time. (Oblivion does have the advantage of no spider webs to the face though.)

Doesn't sound too far-fetched, in my opinion. The trend in just about everything in Western society today is to make things as easy, frictionless, and comfortable as possible, and gaming fits very well into a passive-hedonistic lifestyle. As the late, great George Carlin said: "People today are way too prosperous for their own f*cking good. Everyone's got a cellphone that can make pancakes and rub their balls". With properties like instant gratification and powerful escapism being so intrinsic to the medium, there's little wonder that the brain quickly starts liking the "taste" of the gaming experience and craves more. And, considering how sucky, disappointing, and far from the principle of instant gratification "real life" can often be, who can blame a guy for preferring to flee into a world where you up your Social Contacts by answering easy three-option questions so you can fuse more powerful personae? Just sayin'...

Yeah, people feel more threatened if they think something leads to violent behaviour than if they think it leads to a lethargic state of mind. After all, a violent person can become a direct threat, while on the other hand they really don't care if someone in the next apartment rots away in front of a console (or whatever) in the privacy of their own home. And also - perhaps more importantly - violence is always easier to deal with, diffuse, counteract directly, while lethargy and apathy takes a lot more effort to overcome (both on the part of the affected person and those dealing with him/her). Thus, "violent behaviour because of playing too many videogames" is more newsworthy in the media not only because its "flashier" and more exciting, but also because its much easier for journalists, politicians, and "experts" of all kinds to slap easy solutions and cures on top of that sort of "problem".

I recognize this, as should anyone who's explored any kind of media (books, music, films, games, etc.) at length. These different mediums present us with powerful pictures and ideas that entice our minds, and some people are more affected by/susceptible to this process. I'm guessing just about everyone visiting this site and reading this, for example, falls into this category to a larger extent than do most people in the "general population". There's nothing new or strange about all this, but what I think separates our time/age from all that have been before is the intensity and extent of this process - it affects more people than ever before, and the "pictures" that virtual worlds like video games produce and provide are prettier, more enticing, more addicting, and more readily available than ever before.

Having stated all this, I'm not even sure if I think this is good or bad. I guess its possible to construct a slippery slope-argument on the basis of this along the lines of "OMG! Everyone's playing video games all the time and becoming violent and/or lethargic! We're doomed as a species, The Matrix is here!" I think, though, that it can overall be a good development as long as the pretty pictures can be balanced with the rest of what life has to offer: as has been mentioned several times already in this thread, moderation is the key. I guess that if there's any ground for concern, it lies in the fact that so many gamers today have such a hard time with the "moderation"-bit (here I can't really point fingers, I'm as bad at it as anyone).

Yeah, I'm not sure if I think it's "good" or "bad" either. It kind of depends on who the person is to begin with. The world shapes who you are, but you choose much of what your influence is. The most crucial developmental years are, of course, the very early ones, so parents should focus more on that. (For instance, Baby Einstein videos are said to be counterproductive and contributing to ADHD.) Even so, I've seen some children given the best of nurture, and they still seem predisposed to be brats.

I play games an average of maybe an hour a day now, but it's not unusual for me to pull a four hour session every now and then. My downfall is that I like to play before bed, so sometimes I stay up too late.

Dragon Quest series. Wii Sports. A Boy and His Blob. New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Contra. The Bit.Trip series. No More Heroes 2. These and others have made sure that my weekly playtime has actually risen from what it was some 5 years ago. Something like 15 hours on average, probably, and that's counting the slow weeks too. Sure, I don't play all the time, but when I do, I really enjoy it. So much that when the battery runs out when I'm playing DQIX on my DSi, I'm willing to swap back to the old DS Phat just to keep playing. Sure, not all games are like this - FF13 was a complete non-event - but great games are not dead yet. They are still out there.