This weekend, I rented Midway Arcade Treasures 2 for Xbox. I wanted to play Gauntlet2, I have fond memories of it in the arcade. I popped it in and played for 5 hours Thursday night. Didn't get any work, reading, programming, art, or anything else done. Just played and played and played. Played for another 6 hours on Friday night. Same deal, got really hungry and didn't eat! And what do I have to show for it? Nothing. Not one damn thing.
So I have made a promise to myself. As soon as I solve THPS4, THUG and THUG2, I am selling all my games and my Xbox. Actually, to prepare for a big vacation, I sold everything but those games yesterday.
Honestly, I don't see how people can get excited about games. More to the point, I can't see why someone would rather have Windows than OSX or Linux just because the games are better. There is so much that you could be doing better with your time. Fuck, I admit that there is so much that I could be doing better with my time. I keep the Tony Hawk stuff around simply because I mastered all the other games, and I have some sick need to complete the series. Fuck everything else.
And you flamewhorez, I know you're going to say something like "well, everything is ultimately empty and useless, why single out games, you hypocrite?" My reply is: games exist wholly in and within themselves. The only purpose of beating a level is to beat a level. When you draw a picture, you get a tangible analog thing you can cherish forever. If you write a new programming tool, you have tangible digital evidence of the time spent, and even if it is useful only to you, it is still useful. Reading a book, or watching a movie, unless you're doing it wrong, should be a learning experience, and your mind can carry away some new understanding of the phenomena being documented. Even going to the bar and getting hammered is done with the purpose of meeting members of the opposite sex, making friends, and having the kind of memories that you can only get while hammered at a bar. But what the fuck could you possibly get from a video game? After hours of Gauntlet, I found that Gauntlet is hard and neverending. After hours of THPS3, I found that skateboarding games are way easier than actually skateboarding, but completely useless to real life.
Well, that's all I have to say about that right now.
