If you’ve ever been in the self-improvement sphere, you’ve probably heard the spiel of cutting out “bad things” from your life. Some things people unanimously agree are bad (e.g., pornography, excessive social media usage, junk food), but the issue of video games is more divided and controversial.

In this article, I will be discussing my own thoughts on video games. Spoiler alert: I think the pro-gaming and anti-gaming crowds are both wrong.

My own situation

Even though I technically play video games, I would not consider myself a gamer, and the main reason for this is that I don’t play video games very often. There are many reasons for this, but the main reason is that I’d rather spend my time doing other things.

I used to play video games all the time when I was a teenager. I primarily played first-person shooters like Quake, CS:GO, Overwatch, and to some extent Team Fortress 2, but I didn’t play at a competitive level. I also liked open-world/sandbox style games that had a lot of modding potential (e.g., Minecraft, garry’s mod, BeamNG Drive).

I also had a phase of playing osu! (a rhythm game). Initially, I tried playing so I could improve my aim, but I found the game itself very fun and wanted to get better at the harder beatmaps. I never became a 5 or 4 digit player, but for a 14/15 year old kid who would casually play it after school, I was pretty decent at it.

The time-wasting fallacy

Influencers such as Hamza have historically told people that you shouldn’t play video games because they’re a waste of time.

I do agree that video games are unproductive, but most hobbies are unproductive because a hobby is something you do for the sake of enjoyment or unwinding.

Most people who play a sport probably won’t become professional athletes, but I would never argue that sport is a waste of time. So this is where I disagree with the anti-gaming crowd.

The gamer cope

A lot of gamers will hear this argument that gaming is a waste of time. This could be from random influencers, or it could be from their own family.

On one hand, I get that it can be annoying to be lectured by someone who doesn’t know anything about video games. Trying to explain to your parents that you cannot pause an online game or that watching Love Island isn’t any better than playing Runescape is certainly fun.

At the same time, instead of simply acknowledging that it’s okay to enjoy a hobby, even if it’s not productive and you could technically be doing something better, many gamers get very defensive and will come up with a bunch of unnecessary justifications:

• “gaming improves hand-eye coordination”

Maybe, but that’s not why you’re playing, it’s simply a side effect of it and I’d argue there are much better activities for improving hand-eye coordination (e.g., tennis, archery, clay pigeon shooting).

• “gaming is healthy”

Just because something can be enjoyed as part of a healthy lifestyle, doesn’t mean the thing itself is healthy. Being sedentary for long periods at a time in front of a TV or computer monitor certainly isn’t healthy, especially if you’re snacking on ultra-processed crap and losing out on sleep.

• “streamers make loads of money”

Then why aren’t you a streamer? It’s true that people can make money playing video games, but it requires a lot of time and effort, it’s a lot more volatile, and at that point it may not even be fun anymore.

Gaming addiction is real

Whether people want to admit it or not, gaming can be an addiction, one that often incorporates other addictions (most notably gambling). It’s one thing to waste money on skins (since they’re just cosmetic), it’s another thing to gamble on something that impacts the actual gameplay (e.g., many anime-style gacha games).

Many say video games are about fun, so the question should be “are you having fun?”… the answer should be yes, but that’s not always the case.

Some competitive games are notorious for having toxic communities. Certain players within those games are short-tempered, complain about how much the game sucks, often they break their own equipment in fits of rage… it’s not fun for them, it’s not fun for the other players, so why do they keep playing? It’s because they’re addicted.