There's a school of thought[1] that suggests that video games are a contributing factor in the steady fall of crime in the West. Crime is overwhelmingly perpetrated by young men, who also happen to be the main consumers of video games.<p>[1]: <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/04/19/as-video-game-sales-climb-year-over-year-violent-crime-continues-to-fall/" rel="nofollow">http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/04/19/as-video-gam...</a>
Computer games, and the stock market, initially look pointless.<p>Games are, as the article puts it, frivolous toys, and the second-by-second stock market is a zero sum game casino. (Buying stocks is emphatically <i>not</i> investing in a company, except tangentially. It is principally a speculation on the price of an asset, and no money actually goes to the company when you buy stock through a broker).<p>In fact, they both do have some economic outputs, although their value is quite hard to measure:<p>Games are entertainment. They provide escapism and fun when we are bored or sad. This improves our wellbeing.<p>The stock market's output is difficult to see, but it is there: they compute the value of stock. Why we need to know the value of stock to such fine resolution in time, I do not know. But we're spending all those quants' brains finding it.
Composing music while people are dying<p>Writing novels while people are dying<p>Making movies while people are dying<p>Growing plants while people are dying<p>Going on road trips to Mexico while people are dying<p>Making tea and donuts while people are dying<p>...<p>What?
Nothing new. During WW2 (and probably other wars) gambling houses, racetracks, pubs, hotels and many other similarly frivolous services had lots of traffic and customers. People simply needed to escape from reality every now and then and enjoy themselves.<p>Sure, we can do more to help the world. But if we're unable to live ourselves we can't do sh*t.
On the other hand, thanks in part to gaming, the proliferation of gpu's has helped out in reducing the cost and putting r&d money into making them better, so now we have inexpensive ways to use them for machine learning models.
If the people with the highest impact on the environment (people from developed countries that are more likely to play video games) get distracted from eating, going out using motorized vehicles, procreating, etc... it is not necessarily bad.<p>Our lifestyle is not sustainable and we haven't figured out a solution yet. Maybe electronic entertainment helps mitigating the sustainability problem.
It sounds like a lot of the top level comments are missing the point,and think this article is simply about how video games are not useful. I didn't get that at all (the first few paragraphs are confusing imo, though), and the paragraph below seems to highlight his relationship with games.<p>> Working in games has given me so much, and I know that’s true of many others as well. I can’t wait to help finish and release Tokyo 42 with the brilliant duo at SMAC Games: it’s such a vibrant thing that I can see it causing a big stir. I’m looking forward to getting stuck into Frozen Synapse 2 and assisting Ian in fulfilling his vision for it, then moving on to a new creative collaboration we’ve started to discuss. Games allow me to use all of my slightly weird collection of half-abilities at once: I don’t think anything else would do that. They’re a way that I can work on things which really exist, which don’t just evaporate into the air.
This article is all over the place. I'll ignore the games are "frivolous" angle as they obviously are and that's not a bad thing - you can say that about any sort of entertainment.<p>With my gamer hat on I want to comment on the eye-catching section with all the negative reviews of modern non-games.<p>The author is being passive aggressive about it but I think it's safe to assume he's upset that people who buy games expect to receive games for the money they pay. This is good advice for any product: deliver on what the product promises. If you sell a car with comfortable seats but no engine maybe what you should've made was a novelty sofa instead. The fault is with your product not with the "stupid consumer" who doesn't appreciate the super comfy seats. I'm sorry I'm making this obvious point but somehow the author managed to miss it.
Most of our entertainment in the western world world could also be classified as frivolous ... how are video games any different than movies, books or even art? Those who spend an excessive amount of time doing any of those things may have a problem but human creativity shouldn't need arbitrary constraints. I would argue that the military-industrial complex is far more detrimental to society both in wasted engineering talent and in directly contributing to suffering.
People have been dying since people existed and keep doing so. (See The Onion for details <a href="http://www.theonion.com/article/world-death-rate-holding-steady-at-100-percent-1670" rel="nofollow">http://www.theonion.com/article/world-death-rate-holding-ste...</a>)<p>The best hope to fix it is to move to computer simulation so games developers may be our saviours.
Games can, and mostly do, have shamanic value the same as any art (music, film, literature, etc). Even the "dumb" ones. They help people connect and bond and relieve stress. They tell meaningful stories and connect with archetypes guiding people through tough times. They help people find moments of focus (zen?) and release...and much more.
The relentless and smug moralising in this article makes me feel nauseous. This kind of simplistic worldview is highly toxic. Art inspires. Without any doubt, computer games have inspired a large number of people to get into programming or even mathematics, and this in turn could lead to significant technological progress that may not have happened otherwise. Etc.
There <i>are</i> games that do good, like Fold-It[0] and Mozak.<p>That is, they are manual research aids packaged as games; playing them fills a genuine need.<p>[0] <a href="http://fold.it/portal/" rel="nofollow">http://fold.it/portal/</a>
I'm gonna quote my favorite TV show:<p>> Ah, no, no, no. But, Dennis, look. "Plutonium smuggled into Syria."<p>> That's gonna change my life drastically.<p>> That's gonna change everyone's lives!<p>> No one can go to Syria anymore for vacation!<p>---<p>Life's too short and my monkeysphere is too small to worry about people have way around the world.
can we pleas downvote this garbage. people didn't need videogames not to care about others. if not video games greatly contributed , as a form of art, to help people live better lives