A Brief Note on Video Games

I’ve released six blog posts in the last three weeks. For those of us who struggle with math, that is exactly two per week: one book club and one update on life in China. This schedule is perfectly tenable, and you should not expect it to change; however, this last week I ran into a bit of writer’s block while working on my China update, and I stressed myself out as my blog post grew more and more overdue. I’ve chosen to push that post and the following book post down a week, and this week discuss something completely different: video games.

Video games have been a part of my life for longer than I even realized. When I was a kid, I played video games endlessly on websites like Newgrounds and Kongregate. At the time, I wasn’t even aware that I spent so much time on video games. After all, a video game is something on a CD that you put into a computer tower or a console. The funny distractions living on my monitor? Well, I don’t exactly know what they are, but they’re certainly not video games. Now, of course, I understand the similarities and not just the distinction. I can even kinda remember (and maintain nostalgia for) the very first games I’ve played, and many others, famous and obscure, are embedded within my mind. In fact, if you count browser games, then I have almost certainly played more than one thousand video games in my life, which surely puts me in the top percentile. That still wasn’t enough. I developed an interest in video games that I never played — I would watch people play games (which is now called a “Let’s Play”) and I would watch people talk about games and I would develop opinions and attitudes towards games that I had never actually experienced. I finally started playing “real” games in high school, when I started downloading them from online storefronts like Steam. I finally became a gamer.

I used to visit Andkon Arcade often. One thing that interests me about flash games is that, because so many of them are extremely unusual and/or obscure, playing them has an exploratory quality.

I still don’t know if this is good or bad. On the one hand, it’s hard for me to understand why video games are less “legitimate” as a pastime than, say, television. I would argue that, because they involve some sort of active involvement on my part, they might even be healthier than television. On the other hand, “better than television” is a pretty low bar, and there certainly are better and more productive uses of one’s mind than playing video games. On the other hand still, I do maintain that I learned a lot from these games, and I certainly would not be the person I am today if it were not for video games. Frankly, though, the question of whether I should or should not have played video games does not interest me. It happened — it’s over — let’s talk about something else. What I’ve been thinking about recently, especially in the light of a highly anticipated game’s release, is what exactly it means to be a “gamer.”

Now, as I said, I am certainly in the top percentage of total number of video games played. But does that alone make me a gamer? Does the mere fact I like games make me a gamer? Can I lose gamer status if I stop playing games? How do we know if anyone is a gamer? I think we can all agree that not everyone who has ever played a video game is a gamer, so what is the minimum amount of time that someone must spend gaming to qualify as a gamer?

I ask these questions because I conceptualize myself as a gamer, and I list gaming among my many hobbies, but I don’t dedicate nearly as much time to it now as I did in the past. This is a problem I have with a lot of my interests. I haven’t made a new short film in two years. I don’t cook or lift weights nearly as often as I should. I haven’t touched my violin in months. Can I call myself, then, a filmmaker, or a cook, or a weightlifter, or a violinist? How much do I have to actually do these things to identify with them, without being a poser? So too with video games. Thus far in 2025, I’ve beaten only nine video games, and all but maybe one were fewer than ten hours long. I just don’t spend much time on games. Can I call myself a gamer?

There’s another wrinkle here as well. I’m incentivized to call myself, say, a violinist, because others find that hobby impressive. They might think higher of me if they know I play violin, so it behooves me to claim I do even if I don’t dedicate sufficient time to practicing violin. Gaming isn’t like this. Nobody will think I am a better person because I play video games. I have no external motivation to say I am a gamer — and yet I do. Why?

Let’s look at this another way. Why do I claim to have so many hobbies when I don’t actually engage with them? It’s because hobbies are functions of time. I only have 24 hours in my day, and I have many needs to fulfill in that time period. I have to sleep, and I have to go to work, and I have to do chores. The remaining time — my elective time — is further divided into working on this blog, filmmaking, personal development, relationships, and having fun. This is before even taking into account travel or meal times! I’m not the first person to think about this. In 1810, social reformer Robert Owen wrote the slogan “Eight hours' labour, Eight hours' recreation, Eight hours' rest,” which is now standard in dividing the working day. Mortimer Adler (take a shot) further divided the “recreation” time into play, rest, and leisure, where leisure is active and productive, play is active but not productive, and rest is neither active nor productive.

Now you might expect me at this point to say “there just aren’t enough hours in the day!” However, I don’t feel this way. Yes, I spread myself a little thin — I probably wish to spend a greater percentage of my time active and/or productive than the average person. However, I earnestly believe that I have enough time in my day to dedicate to all of my hobbies and interests. The problem isn’t that I don’t have time, it’s that I don’t have time to waste. Let’s be careful with the term “wasted time” here, as I don’t consider time wasted merely because I spend it on something enjoyable, or even something nonproductive. For example, I don’t consider playing video games a waste of time. In fact, I hold the opposite position. I waste time when I spend it on an activity that does nothing for me. I waste time when I do something solely for the purpose of filling time, when I do it not because it is pleasant or useful but merely because it is easy. I hope my readers understand the difference between watching a movie because watching movies is pleasant, and watching youtube slop because it helps fill the time. When we fill time rather than use it, we bring ourselves that much closer to death (when I first learned about Freud’s “death drive,” I thought he was referring to this, although in fact he meant something much different).

I have wasted an enormous quantity of time throughout my life. All of the social media scrolling, youtube watching, browser game playing time that I spent on nothing. I would never set fire to money — and yet, I am perfectly comfortable destroying my own time, which is so much more valuable. I suspect most readers will relate to the fact that I mostly do this when I procrastinate. Labor can be painful, and I choose the quick dopamine rush of wasting time to avoid the labor. But I’m not really avoiding the labor. I’m only borrowing time from my future — time I can’t get back. And you can follow from this how I typically spend my time: I spend most of my day on pointless nonactivites, then I rush to address my urgent responsibilities in the remaining time, and I have none for anything elective, like going to the gym or practicing violin or reading or filmmaking or, say, playing video games.

I call myself a gamer in an aspirational sense. What I mean is “I enjoy playing video games, and I do play video games — when I have time.” I never do have time because I spend so much time on nonsense. But I don’t have to. Every moment of my life is a choice, and in the past I often made the wrong ones. I don’t want to do that anymore. If China is a new start for me, then one of the things I absolutely must do is learn how to spend time well. And, sure, that means working harder, pushing myself, exerting my will. It also means enjoying myself sometimes. It  means actually playing some of the hundreds of games I’ve collected. Last night I finally beat the latest chapter of Deltarune, and I started playing Silksong, a game I’ve been anticipating for years. To you, reader, probably much older than me, this might not seem like a victory. But for me, it is a huge step forward.

Silksong is magnificent, by the way. Perhaps I will write a review when I finish it.