Hooking the singing fish of time

One of my favorite things about art is connecting your ear more closely to your mouth, yet over greater time spans. The link may even be a roundabout way of defining art. When you are inexperienced, you see or hear or taste or touch something you like, and you know that you can't make the same. This may upset or excite you; it could encourage you or push you away, spur you on or sap your energy. Your reaction could be any of an endless number of combinations of these facets, and it'll change over time.

But, at the critical core, with practice you slowly, slowly begin to realize something. Whatever you can perceive and appreciate—you eventually begin to feel this is true—you can express the same quality yourself. The fact of your appreciation begins to seem a potential for the same acuity, subtleness, emotional power, whatever it is. This takes quite a long time and piles of hard work, and for much of it you will believe what I've just said is untrue.

A wondrous artist can draw on ancient influences, ones maybe from childhood or a lazy day-trip to a local museum, influences whose sources may rest entirely forgotten, and reproduce the same kind of effect without duplicating the original expression. And what makes the artist truly great is that the artist's "mouth" will still be finding influences a century or five later. Do you see what I mean? Art is a strong connection between ear and mouth over very large distances in space and time.

You can make that connection. You can strengthen it. Many things are mysterious, including the dizzying multitude of potentials in expression and art, but that fact isn't. That fact is as stable as the big rock you lie on for a windy view of a valley.

Know how a hook works

There's still a stigma against both video and board games. It's perfectly socially acceptable and normal to spend countless hours binge-watching shows, and the more hours spent reading, the better. Yet as soon as someone's playing, each minute is seen as squandering life potential. Huh. Tell me how that works.

The alternate reality of a game world is no more one that you can live in instead of this world than the alternate reality of a tv show or book. In all cases, if you are normal, you know it isn't the real reality, and you balance that against the rest.

As someone who studies and tries to make interactive media, a field that includes (but is not limited to) games of all kinds, I'm almost the opposite of the general public here: I'd find it productive to play more games. Rather than worrying about whether I'm wasting my life playing a game, I worry that I'm not playing enough games (a legitimate worry; since I was a teenager I don't play games very much).

What I can say in light of all this is that my own potential to be addicted by games is very low. It's no more than my potential to be addicted by a good book. I'm constantly bothered that I don't get addicted by all these things enough to go back to them and finish them.

There is a segment of the population who have troublesome gaming addictions, but it's 1-3 percent, and you probably know who you are. And I think it can be helped by becoming aware of whatever hooks you, seeing how it works, and distrusting designers who want to hook you as much as possible without providing emotional and intellectual value. For example, though it has plenty of good qualities, World of Warcraft often snags nefariously because the cooperation is so intensive that team members shame each other into attending group battles and quests and dungeon crawls that benefit the entire group. There are professional sports and professional competitive games. There is nothing inherently wrong with taking a game seriously, but anyone whose life is diminished by social demands in a virtual world should massively distrust such social demands as having no real currency. There is no shame in not attending an online raid, whatever anyone tells you or implies to you. Similar realizations—and sticking up for them—can, I think, help other sources of game addiction.

I've spent entire weekends locked in some game or other, barely moving. This was mostly when I was much younger. But you know what? I loved it. I've never felt I was harmfully addicted to a game. It was like getting lost in a book or miniseries or in something I'm writing. It's satisfying. It's meaningful. You remember it the rest of your life. And in balance with other things, like standing up and taking walks so you aren't sedentary for more than say an hour, it needn't bring any harm at all. But I will say: I happen to have an almost extreme distrust of things that don't have endings. If a television series is more than two seasons, I almost certainly won't ever see more than an episode or three to get a sense of what it's like—even if I want to watch all of it!

In a weird way, my form of ADHD might actually protect against game addiction. But according to the numbers in this article, it's rare in the general population regardless. Like plane crashes, we overblow the image until it seems to mean something it doesn't.

And I think we can look to our expectations to remedy our relationship with play. If you see a game as a waste of time, as a low-brow activity, as shameful, necessarily unproductive, then why would you look for an especially good one? And if you are playing just to kill time, why would you judge a game on anything but whether it feels addictive and you want to try another level? If your expectation is that games are for killing time, then that may be the fate of games for you. Personally, I love games, but I never seek to "kill time": I hate the very idea. Is that maybe why I appreciate all the games I get around to playing?

Playing games is a healthy part of life if you approach it in a healthy way. My go-to comparison is drinking. Many people drink, if not most people. Yet the benefits of drinking are less than the benefits of playing games, in my opinion, and the risks are far greater. If anything, drinking should be looked down on, and games celebrated everywhere.