As someone who’s barely touched a single game this year so far (a few brief hours to play through Mirror’s Edge and about two afternoons of World of Goo and Osmosis is the sum total, less than 8 hours probably) due to spending all my time socialising and getting to know my new special lady friend, I can stand up, hand on heart, and say that this video was a load of bollocks.
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Games, schmames; ALL forms of entertainment and hobbies are the same, anyone that is lucky enough not to have to spend all their working hours working to survive spends the ones they have left on something they enjoy.
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The mind-expanding or ‘worthwhile’ alternatives to such pastimes are not, for the most part, in any way intrinsically better. Reading War and Peace was listed as one example to do instead in the video, but although you may learn more history or be prompted to think a little deeper than from the average (but not EVERY) game, there’s nothing intrinsically ‘better’ about spending your time reading an acclaimed book as any other hobby. To refer to an example from the video, ‘I’ve read War and Peace’ is no more useful to put on a CV (resume) than an XBox achievement.
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If you didn’t spend the time you spent gaming on games, I’d bet dollars to doughnuts you’d spend the time on something equally ‘worthless’ instead. The guy in the video lamenting all the chances and achievements he’s missed out on while gaming wouldn’t be any more likely to have achieved any of them if games weren’t around, he’d have just been lamenting whatever other hobby he’d entertained himself with instead. People are lazy. If you have time to yourself and there are fun things to do, who’s going to say ‘I must make sure I spend every minute on something I’ll look back on in years to come as being worthwhile, even if I’m bored shitless doing it now!’
Bottom line folks, no matter how many languages you learn, how much art you ‘create’, what level of literary snobbery you achieve, you’ve got so many years and then you snuff it. Enjoy your time while it lasts however you prefer, and try not to regret a single minute of it. If that means getting out and sampling the world, raising a family, expanding your mind, or just getting really good at CS: S, really doesn’t matter shit all in the grand scheme of the universe: your life amounts to nothing important to anyone but you and a few other worthless humans either way.