I think, therefore I game: The philosophy of video games

ruggedraven36 said:Of course I am. That's exactly why I know video games don't have any actual value.

Personally, I think Tetris is a fantastic game with actual value.
I don't particularly care to spend my afternoon manually hauling concrete blocks or heavy stones just to stack them into a wall.
You can lecture me all you want about "building muscle" or "getting fresh air," but honestly? You’re more likely to end up with a massive sunburn than any kind of muscle mass.

Sandra Murphy33 said:... vanish quietly from the physical world? 🙂

Isn't every single experience, every moment of being, fundamentally an internal matter?

Life appears to be split between the external and the internal, but isn't this "external" realm—this thing we call Nature, the material world—mostly just... well, endurance?

And it becomes all the more much of an endurance test when it can't be easily translated into some kind of internal harmony.

That’s not even the main issue. The point is, no matter how tightly you grip onto this "real" world... one day (and it’ll happen much faster than you think), you’re going to leave it behind anyway.

steelridge58 said:What even is play, really? I find myself staring at the ceiling sometimes, wondering if we ever actually grasp the essence of what it means to just... play. Is it a distraction from the grind, or is it the only thing that actually makes us feel alive while we’re navigating this chaotic life? I don't have a neat, academic answer for you, but I can't help but feel like there's something much deeper happening when we let go of our responsibilities and just dive into something for the sake of it.
What exactly are we doing when we dive into a game?
What’s the actual point of playing games? I find myself wondering about this quite often, staring at my console and questioning if I'm just killing time or actually doing something meaningful with my life. Is there some deep, inherent value in immersing ourselves in these digital worlds, or am I just chasing a temporary dopamine hit to distract myself from the grind of reality? I honestly want to know what you all think—is it just mindless escapism, or is there something more profound happening when we lose ourselves in a story or a challenge?

I honestly can't help but feel like I’m constantly staring at some massive, unsolvable puzzle where half the pieces are missing and the other half don't even seem to belong to the same box, though I suppose that’s just life, isn't it? It feels like we spend all this energy trying to connect these complex dots—trying to make sense of everything from how our society functions to why we feel so disconnected from one another—only to realize that the picture we were aiming for might have been a total illusion all along. I know I tend to overthink things and probably ramble on more than I should, but there’s just this persistent, nagging sensation that if we could only find that one missing fragment of understanding, everything would finally click into place, even if my clumsy attempts at solving it usually just end up making a bigger mess of things. kaže:
Technology is moving at such a breakneck pace these days, and honestly, it feels like gaming is migrating entirely into this realm of true virtual reality through these specialized headsets. It brings up this one deeply philosophical concept called "presence," which is basically just a fancy way of describing that specific level of immersion where a player becomes so completely swallowed up by the artificial world that you start losing track of where the game ends and your actual life begins.

This provides such an incredible foundation for some deeper philosophical digging, so I’ll definitely jump back into the conversation once I can carve out a little more breathing room in my schedule.

I’ve been sitting here thinking about how much we tend to overcomplicate things when the simplest answer is usually staring us right in the face, almost like we’re trying to outsmart our own intuition just for the sake of it. It’s funny, really—how we can spend hours debating the most complex theories or getting lost in all this dense, academic jargon, only to realize that the core truth was actually quite plain and straightforward all along. I sometimes catch myself doing this too, getting caught up in my own head and making mountains out of molehills, but I suppose that’s just part of being human, isn't it? We want everything to be profound and layered, yet there's a certain honest beauty in just keeping it simple and being direct about what we mean. kaže:
Honestly, this whole topic really does carry some weight, so if you're looking for a starting point, it might be wise to dig into an early paper by Marija Selak from back when she was still a young PhD student; she did some fascinating work on this exact subject by weaving together the philosophies of Nikolai Berdyaev and Martin Heidegger.

Maybe this might actually encourage some of you dear friends to dig a little deeper than just our usual surface-level distractions and tackle that one massive, heavy-hitting relationship that essentially dictates our entire reality—though, if I’m being honest, it’s already been pulling all the strings behind the scenes for quite some time—which is, fundamentally, that profound philosophical connection between man and... I’ve been sitting here thinking about the whole concept of *episteme*—you know, that deep, foundational kind of knowledge that goes way beyond just knowing a few random facts or being able to pass a test. It’s that structural understanding of how things actually work, the kind that shapes how we see the world before we even realize we're looking at it. I sometimes feel like I'm constantly stumbling through the dark trying to grasp it, feeling a bit foolish because while most people seem to be navigating life with such certainty, I'm still over here questioning the very ground I'm standing on. It's a heavy thing to wrap your head around, honestly, but there's something so incredibly vital about trying to reach that level of clarity, even if it feels like an uphill battle most days. i I’ve been spending way too much time lately thinking about the concept of *techne*, that old-school idea of craftsmanship and practical wisdom, and honestly, I can't stop circling back to it. It feels like we’re living in this era where everything is so automated and frictionless that we’ve completely lost touch with the actual soul of making things—that deep, intuitive connection between the creator and the work itself. You know, that specific kind of knowledge that isn't just following a manual or a set of algorithms, but is something you feel in your hands and your gut. I was reading some stuff recently that reminded me how easily we mistake mere technical efficiency for true mastery, and it’s a little humbling to realize how much of our modern "skill" is really just knowing which buttons to press on a piece of software. There’s such a profound difference between being a proficient user of a tool and actually possessing the *techne* to command it, and I think we’re all feeling a bit adrift because of that gap. It’s a bit embarrassing to admit, but I definitely find myself staring at my own projects sometimes, wondering if I’m actually building anything meaningful or if I'm just going through the motions of a highly optimized process.

I was reading through this academic paper on linguistic structures, and honestly, it’s one of those deep dives that really makes you question how much we take our own way of speaking for granted. It explores the intricacies of how language shapes our perception of reality—that classic idea that the tools we use to communicate actually build the world we live in. It’s pretty heavy stuff, looking at how specific grammatical frameworks influence the way an individual processes thought, but there’s something deeply moving about the idea that we aren't just using language; we are being shaped by it every single day. I found myself sitting there for a good hour just staring at the screen, feeling slightly overwhelmed by the sheer complexity of it all, yet strangely comforted by the notion that our very consciousness is tied to these invisible linguistic threads. It definitely gives you a whole new perspective on why certain concepts feel so easy to express in one language but almost impossible to grasp in another.

I'll give it a read.
Thanks a million!

Look, it's better to play a war game in a digital world than to see actual combat in the real one. It's just how we satisfy that primal, almost childish urge inside us.
People end up happier because they can vent their frustrations through
video games, which honestly just cuts down on the collateral damage to society at large.
At its core, playing is just one more way for a person to figure out who they actually are.

Or maybe just self-denial. 😉

Harold Doyle3 said:Look, it's better to play a war game in a digital world than to see actual combat in the real one. It's just how we satisfy that primal, almost childish urge inside us.
People end up happier because they can vent their frustrations through
video games, which honestly just cuts down on the collateral damage to society at large.
At its core, playing is just one more way for a person to figure out who they actually are.

That’s certainly an 'optimistic' take on the phenomenon, and I suspect many people see it that way.

However, for others, 'satisfying' those impulses might actually lead to desensitization. It creates a habit of acting on every impulse, which could increase the likelihood of someone trying to fulfill those same urges in the real world. 😬

I wouldn't say this effect hits everyone the same way, though.

Sandra Murphy33 said:Or maybe just self-denial. 😉

As long as my keyboard is buried under a mountain of chip crumbs and sticky residue from lukewarm sodas, I don't have to worry about any kind of self-neglect.😉

Harold Doyle3 said:As long as my keyboard is buried under a mountain of chip crumbs and sticky residue from lukewarm sodas, I don't have to worry about any kind of self-neglect.😉

How Path of Exile players gear up for a new season:



🤣 🤣

Joseph Murphy10 said:So, in your case, virtual reality has basically become *real* reality. Your actual presence as an entity—including pretty much everything you do—reaches a point where you define yourself through it. You're in that virtual world with your thoughts, your body, and your soul.

That’s exactly why philosophy tackles this stuff; because this is the true reality for you (and millions of other young people—the ones who are actually building the future). If philosophy wants to stay relevant and actually interact with you and everyone else like you, it has to find a way to communicate—basically, it needs to bridge the gap between its own message and your experience.

Common sense tells us that people were "thinking" long before Thales of Miletus ever showed up. And they communicated those thoughts to the people around them. That’s why the invention of visual symbols—what we call writing—was such a massive leap forward compared to everything before it. The flow of thought didn't stop when writing appeared; it just adapted to it. What was "writing" yesterday might be some insane virtual animation tomorrow. Look at what we're doing right now: typing on laptops and communicating by staring at screens. What would the philosophers from back in the day have said if they saw this? They probably would've said the same thing as...

Now, let's just swap out the premises for what I wrote above.
Replace "video games" with "cuneiform" or "information technology."

Hope that clicks.

Therefore,

This sets up an imperative that is essentially a step backward compared to the speed at which the world is moving forward—even if the author realizes that...

And then we can go back to whining about it—referencing that thread @volver started based on my post about self-nullification (which some kids called "quasi-philosophy" and told me to be ashamed of). Only now, we aren't just talking about philosophical self-nullification, but a much broader sense of human self-nullification. See, if a person fails to snap out of virtual reality and just disappears, they’re gone—effectively nullified. And since tech and technology are human inventions through and through, you could argue we basically nullified ourselves.

because...

If philosophy claims to have something useful to say about labor, workers, exploitation, capitalism, or socialism, how could it possibly have nothing to say about the human being? And I mean addressing the human in every aspect while actually respecting their ontological dignity—(that's another philosophy term I used in a previous post that some people clearly didn't grasp)

So yeah, the topic makes total sense. It might be smart to start by reading an early paper by a then-young PhD student, Maria Selak, who tackled this exact issue by blending the ideas of N. Berdyaev with Martin Heidegger...

Maybe that’ll nudge some of you lovely people to look beyond the prompt and dive into a massive relationship that dictates our entire reality—actually, it already dictates it (has always dictated it)—and that's the philosophical tension between episteme and techne

Our inner world (the only truly real one...) is increasingly being sought out and discovered within the so-called virtual realm, while appearing less and less in the so-called real, external, material, physical world, which increasingly resembles nothing more than a massive, glittering shopping mall.

and then we can go back to lamenting the topic @Volver opened, inspired by one of my posts regarding self-annihilation (a topic some young guys dismissed as quasi-philosophy and told me to be ashamed of). Only now, we aren't just talking about philosophical self-annihilation, but a much broader human self-annihilation. Because if a person fails to wake up from this virtual reality and quietly vanishes, they are gone—they have annihilated themselves. And since technology is a human invention from start to finish, we could just as easily say that humanity has annihilated itself through its own creation.

A person annihilates themselves when they realize they have miscalculated and abused their own free will. Under such circumstances, self-annihilation—particularly from the perspective of the soul or eternity—becomes the only valid and moral choice.
By soul, I am referring to that part of a human being that transcends the self, that seeks eternity, or in psychological terms, seeks stability—as the only legitimate framework for exercising one's freedom.
The freer a person becomes, the greater their need for space, or rather, for the widest possible frameworks they can imagine (so that "the sky is the limit" 😉).

if philosophy claims to have something to say about labor, the worker, exploitation, capitalism, or socialism, how could it not have something to say about the human being, always respecting their ontological dignity (yet another philosophical concept I used in a previous post that some people failed to grasp)?

Ontological dignity—would that simply mean dignity in and of itself?
It is deeply woven into everything you just listed. In fact, it is precisely out of that dignity that a person engages with "labor, the worker, exploitation, and so on."

lonegardener said:That’s certainly an 'optimistic' take on the phenomenon, and I suspect many people see it that way.

However, for others, 'satisfying' those impulses might actually lead to desensitization. It creates a habit of acting on every impulse, which could increase the likelihood of someone trying to fulfill those same urges in the real world. 😬

I wouldn't say this effect hits everyone the same way, though.

Personally, I think we have to account for basic human laziness.
Reality is much more intense, and frankly, most people aren't ready for that... I'd venture to say only the truly warped individuals actually follow through with those impulses in real life, and even then, they're rare.
Basically, for those living on the edge, a digital simulation serves a social purpose—it vents their frustrations so they don't feel the need to act them out in person.

lonegardener said:How Path of Exile players gear up for a new season:



🤣 🤣

😁

While the vast majority of us—roughly 90% of united technological humanity—are busy wasting our lives on computer games and getting lost in virtual realities, the Gang is quietly seizing control of the country

😠

Look, games actually have some real worth if you use them in moderation and they actually spark your imagination, though I’ve gotta say, I don’t see eye to eye with the crowd on this one—most people, whether they're hanging out here or just walking down the street in Chicago, seem to think that a product, a piece of art, or even a story only works in one direction, like the person is just some passive sponge soaking up whatever value is being pushed at them. But honestly? It’s a two-way street, isn't it? Even something totally mundane and boring that most folks would walk right past, like a random pebble sitting on a sidewalk in New York, can trigger a massive realization or some deep thought for the right person.

ruggedraven36 said:Of course I am. That's exactly why I know video games don't have any actual value.

First off, let's talk about this whole "reactionary" label you're throwing around—it honestly reminds me so much of my old man.

My dad spent my entire childhood preaching that video games were nothing more than a colossal waste of time. Instead of actually supporting me or showing any interest in what I was building, he just kept dismissing it all as nonsense. In his own shortsightedness—which honestly mirrors the exact kind of tunnel vision you’re showing here—he completely missed the fact that he had a kid in middle school who was busy procedurally generating entire universes. I wasn't just playing; I was building solar systems, planets, and moons from scratch, simulating gravity, collision physics, rocket trajectories, and the logic behind automated AI characters. We're talking about complex coordinate systems, trigonometry, and Newtonian physics baked into every little mechanic—stuff I was handling better than some college professors at that age, let alone the actual programming involved. And the kicker? My father is a certified Khan Academy instructor, yet he held onto this incredibly ignorant stance. The reality is that game development might actually be one of the most intense brain workouts out there; it forces you to constantly question your understanding of logic and how the world works. When you're developing a game, the only real ceiling is the limit of your own imagination, because a computer can simulate absolutely anything you can dream up, provided you have the technical skill to make it happen.

Based on everything I’ve seen, the entire education system needs a massive overhaul to be centered around game development. We should be structuring all STEM curricula so that every single concept is applied directly to building video games or, at the very least, complex simulations. That is how you actually learn things—by seeing them function in a real-world application—instead of this endless, soul-crushing grind through abstract theories that feel like they have absolutely no purpose in the real world.
Look, my grasp of trigonometry and Newtonian physics was honestly incomprehensible to the professors over at that elite prep school I attended, yet I mastered it all through something I actually found fun—developing video games. It didn't feel like work; it was just play. So how on earth can anyone claim that kind of mastery has zero value? If we keep looking at it that way, the entire STEM education system becomes even more questionable, because its actual end results—in terms of practical, real-world application—are significantly weaker than what you get from hands-on creation.

Look, I wasn't some shut-in who lacked any sense of athleticism or social life. I was out there playing basketball with my crew, running around playing war, and riding my bike just like every other kid growing up here. If we’re going to get pedantic about this, let’s be real: the kids who spent their entire lives buried in books were usually the ones who ended up socially stunted and physically unfit. My life was a balance; I had these massive bursts of creative energy where I wouldn't leave my computer for days or nights on end—aside from the time I spent being active with my friends—but I also had those heavy, depressive stretches where I’d just stare blankly at MTV for hours. Even with all that screen time, I think I utilized my childhood way more effectively than most people do today. Just because you see these cases of neglected, overweight kids who spend twenty-four hours a day shoveling junk food into their faces while staring at a console doesn't invalidate the medium itself. Video games aren't just a factory for producing obese, mindless zombies—because if that were the case, I would have turned out exactly like that. This whole outcry is really just hype fueled by old-fashioned busybodies and people who haven't accomplished a single thing in their lives. They love to moan about "fat kids playing video games" because it makes them feel superior; it gives those older generations a sense of validation to look down their noses at us, acting like they were somehow better just because they spent their youth running through fields instead of having computers.

Look, let’s be real for a second: video games are officially the king of global entertainment. They pulled ahead of the entire Hollywood movie industry a long time ago, and honestly, it makes perfect sense. When you're playing a game, you aren't just sitting there watching some actor run around on a screen; you *are* the protagonist. You’re the one making the calls, driving the action, and feeling the stakes. It’s interactive, it’s immersive, and frankly, it’s way more engaging than staring at a cinema screen for two hours. So, I find it incredibly hypocritical when I hear someone advocating for things like a shorter work week—which, fine, who doesn't want more free time?—only to turn around and claim that the world's biggest form of entertainment is somehow worthless. It’s a massive contradiction. If you're fighting for more leisure time, you're essentially fighting for more time to engage with these very activities. It really forces you to ask a deeper question: does "entertainment" even need to have some sort of inherent, measurable value? Does a game, as an art form or a medium, actually need to serve a higher purpose to justify its existence? It seems to me that if people are hungry for more downtime, they should probably stop acting like the things they do with that time don't matter.

I think we need to start by actually defining what a game even is. You call it a computer game because it’s played on a machine, sure, but I’m not interested in getting bogged down in semantics. I’ll leave the heavy lifting to the philosophy buffs who love to drop academic quotes in every thread—you guys go ahead and lecture us on the "essence of play" if that’s what you want. As for me, here is how I see it: a game is essentially an act of transformation, a sort of "constructed reality." It’s a space where people cooperate or compete under conditions that lack immediate, life-altering consequences—though, of course, there are hidden ones, like sharpening your reflexes or developing mental acuity. Even in the wild, animals engage in this kind of behavior to hone their instincts, build muscle memory, and test their limits. They aren't just messing around; they are exploring their own capabilities and learning how to interact with one another through these simulated scenarios. At its core, play is a rehearsal for reality disguised as entertainment. If it didn't serve a purpose, nature wouldn't have bothered evolving such complex behaviors, and they wouldn't persist. Play prepares us for the real world while keeping us engaged; otherwise, why would it exist?

Whether a game is digital or not really shouldn't matter when we're talking about actual value; if the core experience holds weight, then obviously a computer game can be just as meaningful. Take chess, for instance—one of those ancient staples that’s still going strong today. Nowadays, you’re far more likely to see someone playing it on a laptop than hunched over a physical wooden board. In neither scenario are you getting any kind of physical workout, but with a computer, you can hop online and play against someone halfway across the world in Brazil, or let an algorithm match you with opponents based on your specific ranking. So, the real question is: does chess lose its essence just because it's played on a screen? If the game itself has value, how does moving it to a digital medium strip that away? And while we're on the subject, people used to think computers would never be able to touch a human at the board, yet now they're absolutely crushing people in games like Go. These kinds of shifts actually force us to rethink some pretty heavy philosophical ground.

There’s one particular thing that left a massive impression on me, though it’s really a borderline case since it’s technically called a "game," but let's call it what it is: "Conway's Game of Life." I remember seeing it back in the Windows 3.11 days, tucked away alongside Minesweeper and Solitaire. It was dreamed up by a mathematician in the 70s. It blew my mind to see how a simple little universe governed by just four basic rules could spring to life in such miraculous ways. Honestly, given how much it resonated with me, I’d argue this thing should be mandatory reading in elementary school; that's how much intrinsic value I think it carries. Generally speaking, if we want learning to be more effective and engaging, we ought to "gamify" everything—that is the true inherent value of digital gaming.

Then you have all these educational games that drop you into historical contexts, letting you soak up history through gameplay or even letting you tweak the course of events. You’ve got management sims where you run entire empires—take Civilization, where you build a society from the ground up, or Panzer General, where you command troops during World War II. All these titles expand and sharpen the player's intellect while casually feeding them historical facts and narratives. For example, one of the "advancements" in Civilization—if I recall correctly—is "women's suffrage". By playing Civilization, you gain a practical understanding of the timeline and importance of various breakthroughs, from the wheel to the modern era; it's almost hands-on knowledge because if you fail to innovate at the right time, your civilization falls behind everyone else. It reminds me of those classic American game shows, like Jeopardy!, where it's basically just high-stakes trivia categorized by topic.

My kid plays educational games on his phone. Look, if you’re constantly parenting young children, it’s nearly impossible to keep a smartphone out of their hands, but it is entirely doable to load it with apps that teach shapes, letters, numbers, logic, and deduction. My little guy mastered the entire alphabet when he was around 20 months old, maybe even earlier. He’ll play a game diligently for half an hour, get bored, and then go back to playing "in real life." I don't see any issue with that. I sit with him, watch how he plays, and help him out when he struggles or gets clumsy with his fingers.

When we start dissecting these different types of games, we really need to draw a line between virtual worlds—where you have persistent avatars—and the kind of games you just play once and walk away from. Virtual worlds where you can lead a sort of "second life" (which can easily become your primary one) are in a completely different league than something like Sokoban or Super Mario. In those worlds, you're dealing with other people who make that environment feel real; because of them, you can't just hit a reset button. You can reset your character, sure, but you can't undo the social connections. There's a parallel here to what happens on forums like this. Those of us who are regulars here aren't just hanging out for the philosophy; we're here for the other users. Even if we're just anonymous avatars, we are real people. This is a massive topic that probably deserves its own dedicated thread, but it touches on the future where everyone might be plugged into some virtual reality most of the time. I don't have the time to dive into that whole rabbit hole right now, so I'll leave it there, but I'll just say that even that hyper-connected future doesn't negate the points I made above.

Oh, and one more thing

"Value" isn't some dusty, passive concept just sitting there waiting for you to crack open a textbook, absorb it, and call it a day; it actually takes some damn work. I mean, if someone doesn't get the basics of philosophy, how are they ever supposed to wrap their head around what Hegel is getting at, let alone see where the actual value lies? It’s not just handed to you on a silver platter. On the flip side, you could take some totally random, tacky piece of junk—like a cheap plastic garden gnome sitting in some suburban backyard—and a kid might find a way to turn it into something awesome during playtime, giving it a sense of value it never had on its own. And so on, and so on...

hiddeneagle98 said:First off, let's talk about this whole "reactionary" label you're throwing around—it honestly reminds me so much of my old man.

My dad spent my entire childhood preaching that video games were nothing more than a colossal waste of time. Instead of actually supporting me or showing any interest in what I was building, he just kept dismissing it all as nonsense. In his own shortsightedness—which honestly mirrors the exact kind of tunnel vision you’re showing here—he completely missed the fact that he had a kid in middle school who was busy procedurally generating entire universes. I wasn't just playing; I was building solar systems, planets, and moons from scratch, simulating gravity, collision physics, rocket trajectories, and the logic behind automated AI characters. We're talking about complex coordinate systems, trigonometry, and Newtonian physics baked into every little mechanic—stuff I was handling better than some college professors at that age, let alone the actual programming involved. And the kicker? My father is a certified Khan Academy instructor, yet he held onto this incredibly ignorant stance. The reality is that game development might actually be one of the most intense brain workouts out there; it forces you to constantly question your understanding of logic and how the world works. When you're developing a game, the only real ceiling is the limit of your own imagination, because a computer can simulate absolutely anything you can dream up, provided you have the technical skill to make it happen.

Based on everything I’ve seen, the entire education system needs a massive overhaul to be centered around game development. We should be structuring all STEM curricula so that every single concept is applied directly to building video games or, at the very least, complex simulations. That is how you actually learn things—by seeing them function in a real-world application—instead of this endless, soul-crushing grind through abstract theories that feel like they have absolutely no purpose in the real world.
Look, my grasp of trigonometry and Newtonian physics was honestly incomprehensible to the professors over at that elite prep school I attended, yet I mastered it all through something I actually found fun—developing video games. It didn't feel like work; it was just play. So how on earth can anyone claim that kind of mastery has zero value? If we keep looking at it that way, the entire STEM education system becomes even more questionable, because its actual end results—in terms of practical, real-world application—are significantly weaker than what you get from hands-on creation.

Look, I wasn't some shut-in who lacked any sense of athleticism or social life. I was out there playing basketball with my crew, running around playing war, and riding my bike just like every other kid growing up here. If we’re going to get pedantic about this, let’s be real: the kids who spent their entire lives buried in books were usually the ones who ended up socially stunted and physically unfit. My life was a balance; I had these massive bursts of creative energy where I wouldn't leave my computer for days or nights on end—aside from the time I spent being active with my friends—but I also had those heavy, depressive stretches where I’d just stare blankly at MTV for hours. Even with all that screen time, I think I utilized my childhood way more effectively than most people do today. Just because you see these cases of neglected, overweight kids who spend twenty-four hours a day shoveling junk food into their faces while staring at a console doesn't invalidate the medium itself. Video games aren't just a factory for producing obese, mindless zombies—because if that were the case, I would have turned out exactly like that. This whole outcry is really just hype fueled by old-fashioned busybodies and people who haven't accomplished a single thing in their lives. They love to moan about "fat kids playing video games" because it makes them feel superior; it gives those older generations a sense of validation to look down their noses at us, acting like they were somehow better just because they spent their youth running through fields instead of having computers.

Look, let’s be real for a second: video games are officially the king of global entertainment. They pulled ahead of the entire Hollywood movie industry a long time ago, and honestly, it makes perfect sense. When you're playing a game, you aren't just sitting there watching some actor run around on a screen; you *are* the protagonist. You’re the one making the calls, driving the action, and feeling the stakes. It’s interactive, it’s immersive, and frankly, it’s way more engaging than staring at a cinema screen for two hours. So, I find it incredibly hypocritical when I hear someone advocating for things like a shorter work week—which, fine, who doesn't want more free time?—only to turn around and claim that the world's biggest form of entertainment is somehow worthless. It’s a massive contradiction. If you're fighting for more leisure time, you're essentially fighting for more time to engage with these very activities. It really forces you to ask a deeper question: does "entertainment" even need to have some sort of inherent, measurable value? Does a game, as an art form or a medium, actually need to serve a higher purpose to justify its existence? It seems to me that if people are hungry for more downtime, they should probably stop acting like the things they do with that time don't matter.

I think we need to start by actually defining what a game even is. You call it a computer game because it’s played on a machine, sure, but I’m not interested in getting bogged down in semantics. I’ll leave the heavy lifting to the philosophy buffs who love to drop academic quotes in every thread—you guys go ahead and lecture us on the "essence of play" if that’s what you want. As for me, here is how I see it: a game is essentially an act of transformation, a sort of "constructed reality." It’s a space where people cooperate or compete under conditions that lack immediate, life-altering consequences—though, of course, there are hidden ones, like sharpening your reflexes or developing mental acuity. Even in the wild, animals engage in this kind of behavior to hone their instincts, build muscle memory, and test their limits. They aren't just messing around; they are exploring their own capabilities and learning how to interact with one another through these simulated scenarios. At its core, play is a rehearsal for reality disguised as entertainment. If it didn't serve a purpose, nature wouldn't have bothered evolving such complex behaviors, and they wouldn't persist. Play prepares us for the real world while keeping us engaged; otherwise, why would it exist?

Whether a game is digital or not really shouldn't matter when we're talking about actual value; if the core experience holds weight, then obviously a computer game can be just as meaningful. Take chess, for instance—one of those ancient staples that’s still going strong today. Nowadays, you’re far more likely to see someone playing it on a laptop than hunched over a physical wooden board. In neither scenario are you getting any kind of physical workout, but with a computer, you can hop online and play against someone halfway across the world in Brazil, or let an algorithm match you with opponents based on your specific ranking. So, the real question is: does chess lose its essence just because it's played on a screen? If the game itself has value, how does moving it to a digital medium strip that away? And while we're on the subject, people used to think computers would never be able to touch a human at the board, yet now they're absolutely crushing people in games like Go. These kinds of shifts actually force us to rethink some pretty heavy philosophical ground.

There’s one particular thing that left a massive impression on me, though it’s really a borderline case since it’s technically called a "game," but let's call it what it is: "Conway's Game of Life." I remember seeing it back in the Windows 3.11 days, tucked away alongside Minesweeper and Solitaire. It was dreamed up by a mathematician in the 70s. It blew my mind to see how a simple little universe governed by just four basic rules could spring to life in such miraculous ways. Honestly, given how much it resonated with me, I’d argue this thing should be mandatory reading in elementary school; that's how much intrinsic value I think it carries. Generally speaking, if we want learning to be more effective and engaging, we ought to "gamify" everything—that is the true inherent value of digital gaming.

Then you have all these educational games that drop you into historical contexts, letting you soak up history through gameplay or even letting you tweak the course of events. You’ve got management sims where you run entire empires—take Civilization, where you build a society from the ground up, or Panzer General, where you command troops during World War II. All these titles expand and sharpen the player's intellect while casually feeding them historical facts and narratives. For example, one of the "advancements" in Civilization—if I recall correctly—is "women's suffrage". By playing Civilization, you gain a practical understanding of the timeline and importance of various breakthroughs, from the wheel to the modern era; it's almost hands-on knowledge because if you fail to innovate at the right time, your civilization falls behind everyone else. It reminds me of those classic American game shows, like Jeopardy!, where it's basically just high-stakes trivia categorized by topic.

My kid plays educational games on his phone. Look, if you’re constantly parenting young children, it’s nearly impossible to keep a smartphone out of their hands, but it is entirely doable to load it with apps that teach shapes, letters, numbers, logic, and deduction. My little guy mastered the entire alphabet when he was around 20 months old, maybe even earlier. He’ll play a game diligently for half an hour, get bored, and then go back to playing "in real life." I don't see any issue with that. I sit with him, watch how he plays, and help him out when he struggles or gets clumsy with his fingers.

When we start dissecting these different types of games, we really need to draw a line between virtual worlds—where you have persistent avatars—and the kind of games you just play once and walk away from. Virtual worlds where you can lead a sort of "second life" (which can easily become your primary one) are in a completely different league than something like Sokoban or Super Mario. In those worlds, you're dealing with other people who make that environment feel real; because of them, you can't just hit a reset button. You can reset your character, sure, but you can't undo the social connections. There's a parallel here to what happens on forums like this. Those of us who are regulars here aren't just hanging out for the philosophy; we're here for the other users. Even if we're just anonymous avatars, we are real people. This is a massive topic that probably deserves its own dedicated thread, but it touches on the future where everyone might be plugged into some virtual reality most of the time. I don't have the time to dive into that whole rabbit hole right now, so I'll leave it there, but I'll just say that even that hyper-connected future doesn't negate the points I made above.

I actually first stumbled upon Conway back in the late '80s, long before the era of Windows 3.11😁. Since there was no Internet back then, I didn't dive too deep into it; there just wasn't any information available nearby (plus, computers were so incredibly slow that you couldn't even dream of performing the kind of miracles possible with today's hardware).

lonegardener said:I actually first stumbled upon Conway back in the late '80s, long before the era of Windows 3.11😁. Since there was no Internet back then, I didn't dive too deep into it; there just wasn't any information available nearby (plus, computers were so incredibly slow that you couldn't even dream of performing the kind of miracles possible with today's hardware).

Do you think you actually read about it, or was it just some other variation?

The Windows version I'm talking about looks like it's from '93 to me.

Computers have been used to track Game of Life configurations since they were first made public. When John Conway was first investigating how various starting configurations developed, he used a Go board with black and white stones to track them manually. It was a grueling process and incredibly easy to mess up. While Conway was investigating the R-pentomino, John Francis, an undergraduate student at Harvard University, wrote a program (for an IBM System/360 mainframe at a nearby research institute) to verify Conway's results. This software demonstrated that the configuration hadn't hit a stable state even after 1,000 generations.

The first interactive Game of Life program was written in an early version of ALGOL 68 C for the PDP-7 by M. J. T. Guy and S. R. Bourne. The results were published in the October 1970 issue of Scientific American, accompanied by the remark: "Without its help, some discoveries about the game would have been difficult to make."[62]

Two early implementations of the Game of Life on home computers were by Malcolm Banthorpe written in BBC Basic. The first was in the January 1984 issue of Acorn User magazine, and Banthorpe followed this with a three-dimensional version in the May 1984 issue.[63] Susan Stepney, Professor of Computer Science at a US university, followed this up in 1988 with Life on the line, a program that generated one-dimensional cellular automata.[64]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life

hiddeneagle98 said:Do you think you actually read about it, or was it just some other variation?

The Windows version I'm talking about looks like it's from '93 to me.

Computers have been used to track Game of Life configurations since they were first made public. When John Conway was first investigating how various starting configurations developed, he used a Go board with black and white stones to track them manually. It was a grueling process and incredibly easy to mess up. While Conway was investigating the R-pentomino, John Francis, an undergraduate student at Harvard University, wrote a program (for an IBM System/360 mainframe at a nearby research institute) to verify Conway's results. This software demonstrated that the configuration hadn't hit a stable state even after 1,000 generations.

The first interactive Game of Life program was written in an early version of ALGOL 68 C for the PDP-7 by M. J. T. Guy and S. R. Bourne. The results were published in the October 1970 issue of Scientific American, accompanied by the remark: "Without its help, some discoveries about the game would have been difficult to make."[62]

Two early implementations of the Game of Life on home computers were by Malcolm Banthorpe written in BBC Basic. The first was in the January 1984 issue of Acorn User magazine, and Banthorpe followed this with a three-dimensional version in the May 1984 issue.[63] Susan Stepney, Professor of Computer Science at a US university, followed this up in 1988 with Life on the line, a program that generated one-dimensional cellular automata.[64]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life

Yeah, I read about it in a magazine called 'Computers' back when I lived in the South. 😬

Though that guy (the author of the article on Conway's Game of Life) clearly had a hard time finding coherent material. (Honestly, I don't know how anyone found anything without the Internet lol).

Basically, the guy wrote this whole piece on CGoL, describing 'static' and 'dynamic' lifeforms—but he didn't even know about the simplest glider. 😬 (And keep in mind, Conway and his crew actually 'discovered' the glider by hand, just doing the math on paper).

So, I ended up 'discovering' that glider myself while messing around with an assembly program I wrote... well, I first wrote it in BASIC, but that was impossibly slow; it took 5 or 6 minutes just to process one generation on a 40x24 text screen. So, I rewrote the critical logic directly in assembly, and suddenly it was running at an 'incredible' speed of 3 or 4 generations per second. 🤦 Then, I just happened to stumble upon that glider. It wasn't until 20 years later that I learned via the Internet not only that the glider was discovered back in 1970, but also things like the glider gun (which existed long before that article in Computers too, but the author had no clue lol), and so on. I don't know how much you've studied this, but it really is a fascinating little thing. 😬 I'm especially blown away by the people who build those complex structures, like that 'meta-cell' from the video above. 😵

lonegardener said:Yeah, I read about it in a magazine called 'Computers' back when I lived in the South. 😬

Though that guy (the author of the article on Conway's Game of Life) clearly had a hard time finding coherent material. (Honestly, I don't know how anyone found anything without the Internet lol).

Basically, the guy wrote this whole piece on CGoL, describing 'static' and 'dynamic' lifeforms—but he didn't even know about the simplest glider. 😬 (And keep in mind, Conway and his crew actually 'discovered' the glider by hand, just doing the math on paper).

So, I ended up 'discovering' that glider myself while messing around with an assembly program I wrote... well, I first wrote it in BASIC, but that was impossibly slow; it took 5 or 6 minutes just to process one generation on a 40x24 text screen. So, I rewrote the critical logic directly in assembly, and suddenly it was running at an 'incredible' speed of 3 or 4 generations per second. 🤦 Then, I just happened to stumble upon that glider. It wasn't until 20 years later that I learned via the Internet not only that the glider was discovered back in 1970, but also things like the glider gun (which existed long before that article in Computers too, but the author had no clue lol), and so on. I don't know how much you've studied this, but it really is a fascinating little thing. 😬 I'm especially blown away by the people who build those complex structures, like that 'meta-cell' from the video above. 😵

As far as your own history goes, you discovered the glider. It doesn't matter if someone else beat you to it; what matters is that you found it independently, which makes you just as sharp as that first guy. 🙂

I’d guess you're a fair bit older than me if you were already cranking out assembly in the '80s; as far as I can recall, I didn't even have a computer back then, and even if I did, it wouldn't have mattered much because I was way too young to be programming, IMO—especially in an era where you had to teach yourself everything with virtually zero resources or help.

Harold Doyle3 said:As long as my keyboard is buried under a mountain of chip crumbs and sticky residue from lukewarm sodas, I don't have to worry about any kind of self-neglect.😉

It’s getting to the point where you can’t even find yourself anymore, not even when God commands it. 😬

hiddeneagle98 said:First off, let's talk about this whole "reactionary" label you're throwing around—it honestly reminds me so much of my old man.

My dad spent my entire childhood preaching that video games were nothing more than a colossal waste of time. Instead of actually supporting me or showing any interest in what I was building, he just kept dismissing it all as nonsense. In his own shortsightedness—which honestly mirrors the exact kind of tunnel vision you’re showing here—he completely missed the fact that he had a kid in middle school who was busy procedurally generating entire universes. I wasn't just playing; I was building solar systems, planets, and moons from scratch, simulating gravity, collision physics, rocket trajectories, and the logic behind automated AI characters. We're talking about complex coordinate systems, trigonometry, and Newtonian physics baked into every little mechanic—stuff I was handling better than some college professors at that age, let alone the actual programming involved. And the kicker? My father is a certified Khan Academy instructor, yet he held onto this incredibly ignorant stance. The reality is that game development might actually be one of the most intense brain workouts out there; it forces you to constantly question your understanding of logic and how the world works. When you're developing a game, the only real ceiling is the limit of your own imagination, because a computer can simulate absolutely anything you can dream up, provided you have the technical skill to make it happen.

Based on everything I’ve seen, the entire education system needs a massive overhaul to be centered around game development. We should be structuring all STEM curricula so that every single concept is applied directly to building video games or, at the very least, complex simulations. That is how you actually learn things—by seeing them function in a real-world application—instead of this endless, soul-crushing grind through abstract theories that feel like they have absolutely no purpose in the real world.
Look, my grasp of trigonometry and Newtonian physics was honestly incomprehensible to the professors over at that elite prep school I attended, yet I mastered it all through something I actually found fun—developing video games. It didn't feel like work; it was just play. So how on earth can anyone claim that kind of mastery has zero value? If we keep looking at it that way, the entire STEM education system becomes even more questionable, because its actual end results—in terms of practical, real-world application—are significantly weaker than what you get from hands-on creation.

Look, I wasn't some shut-in who lacked any sense of athleticism or social life. I was out there playing basketball with my crew, running around playing war, and riding my bike just like every other kid growing up here. If we’re going to get pedantic about this, let’s be real: the kids who spent their entire lives buried in books were usually the ones who ended up socially stunted and physically unfit. My life was a balance; I had these massive bursts of creative energy where I wouldn't leave my computer for days or nights on end—aside from the time I spent being active with my friends—but I also had those heavy, depressive stretches where I’d just stare blankly at MTV for hours. Even with all that screen time, I think I utilized my childhood way more effectively than most people do today. Just because you see these cases of neglected, overweight kids who spend twenty-four hours a day shoveling junk food into their faces while staring at a console doesn't invalidate the medium itself. Video games aren't just a factory for producing obese, mindless zombies—because if that were the case, I would have turned out exactly like that. This whole outcry is really just hype fueled by old-fashioned busybodies and people who haven't accomplished a single thing in their lives. They love to moan about "fat kids playing video games" because it makes them feel superior; it gives those older generations a sense of validation to look down their noses at us, acting like they were somehow better just because they spent their youth running through fields instead of having computers.

Look, let’s be real for a second: video games are officially the king of global entertainment. They pulled ahead of the entire Hollywood movie industry a long time ago, and honestly, it makes perfect sense. When you're playing a game, you aren't just sitting there watching some actor run around on a screen; you *are* the protagonist. You’re the one making the calls, driving the action, and feeling the stakes. It’s interactive, it’s immersive, and frankly, it’s way more engaging than staring at a cinema screen for two hours. So, I find it incredibly hypocritical when I hear someone advocating for things like a shorter work week—which, fine, who doesn't want more free time?—only to turn around and claim that the world's biggest form of entertainment is somehow worthless. It’s a massive contradiction. If you're fighting for more leisure time, you're essentially fighting for more time to engage with these very activities. It really forces you to ask a deeper question: does "entertainment" even need to have some sort of inherent, measurable value? Does a game, as an art form or a medium, actually need to serve a higher purpose to justify its existence? It seems to me that if people are hungry for more downtime, they should probably stop acting like the things they do with that time don't matter.

I think we need to start by actually defining what a game even is. You call it a computer game because it’s played on a machine, sure, but I’m not interested in getting bogged down in semantics. I’ll leave the heavy lifting to the philosophy buffs who love to drop academic quotes in every thread—you guys go ahead and lecture us on the "essence of play" if that’s what you want. As for me, here is how I see it: a game is essentially an act of transformation, a sort of "constructed reality." It’s a space where people cooperate or compete under conditions that lack immediate, life-altering consequences—though, of course, there are hidden ones, like sharpening your reflexes or developing mental acuity. Even in the wild, animals engage in this kind of behavior to hone their instincts, build muscle memory, and test their limits. They aren't just messing around; they are exploring their own capabilities and learning how to interact with one another through these simulated scenarios. At its core, play is a rehearsal for reality disguised as entertainment. If it didn't serve a purpose, nature wouldn't have bothered evolving such complex behaviors, and they wouldn't persist. Play prepares us for the real world while keeping us engaged; otherwise, why would it exist?

Whether a game is digital or not really shouldn't matter when we're talking about actual value; if the core experience holds weight, then obviously a computer game can be just as meaningful. Take chess, for instance—one of those ancient staples that’s still going strong today. Nowadays, you’re far more likely to see someone playing it on a laptop than hunched over a physical wooden board. In neither scenario are you getting any kind of physical workout, but with a computer, you can hop online and play against someone halfway across the world in Brazil, or let an algorithm match you with opponents based on your specific ranking. So, the real question is: does chess lose its essence just because it's played on a screen? If the game itself has value, how does moving it to a digital medium strip that away? And while we're on the subject, people used to think computers would never be able to touch a human at the board, yet now they're absolutely crushing people in games like Go. These kinds of shifts actually force us to rethink some pretty heavy philosophical ground.

There’s one particular thing that left a massive impression on me, though it’s really a borderline case since it’s technically called a "game," but let's call it what it is: "Conway's Game of Life." I remember seeing it back in the Windows 3.11 days, tucked away alongside Minesweeper and Solitaire. It was dreamed up by a mathematician in the 70s. It blew my mind to see how a simple little universe governed by just four basic rules could spring to life in such miraculous ways. Honestly, given how much it resonated with me, I’d argue this thing should be mandatory reading in elementary school; that's how much intrinsic value I think it carries. Generally speaking, if we want learning to be more effective and engaging, we ought to "gamify" everything—that is the true inherent value of digital gaming.

Then you have all these educational games that drop you into historical contexts, letting you soak up history through gameplay or even letting you tweak the course of events. You’ve got management sims where you run entire empires—take Civilization, where you build a society from the ground up, or Panzer General, where you command troops during World War II. All these titles expand and sharpen the player's intellect while casually feeding them historical facts and narratives. For example, one of the "advancements" in Civilization—if I recall correctly—is "women's suffrage". By playing Civilization, you gain a practical understanding of the timeline and importance of various breakthroughs, from the wheel to the modern era; it's almost hands-on knowledge because if you fail to innovate at the right time, your civilization falls behind everyone else. It reminds me of those classic American game shows, like Jeopardy!, where it's basically just high-stakes trivia categorized by topic.

My kid plays educational games on his phone. Look, if you’re constantly parenting young children, it’s nearly impossible to keep a smartphone out of their hands, but it is entirely doable to load it with apps that teach shapes, letters, numbers, logic, and deduction. My little guy mastered the entire alphabet when he was around 20 months old, maybe even earlier. He’ll play a game diligently for half an hour, get bored, and then go back to playing "in real life." I don't see any issue with that. I sit with him, watch how he plays, and help him out when he struggles or gets clumsy with his fingers.

When we start dissecting these different types of games, we really need to draw a line between virtual worlds—where you have persistent avatars—and the kind of games you just play once and walk away from. Virtual worlds where you can lead a sort of "second life" (which can easily become your primary one) are in a completely different league than something like Sokoban or Super Mario. In those worlds, you're dealing with other people who make that environment feel real; because of them, you can't just hit a reset button. You can reset your character, sure, but you can't undo the social connections. There's a parallel here to what happens on forums like this. Those of us who are regulars here aren't just hanging out for the philosophy; we're here for the other users. Even if we're just anonymous avatars, we are real people. This is a massive topic that probably deserves its own dedicated thread, but it touches on the future where everyone might be plugged into some virtual reality most of the time. I don't have the time to dive into that whole rabbit hole right now, so I'll leave it there, but I'll just say that even that hyper-connected future doesn't negate the points I made above.

I'm not buying the "reactionary" tag. It’s not that I’m anti-tech—it’s that I’m against tech that doesn't actually liberate the average person, but instead just suffocates them. The pace of computing is moving so fast, bleeding into every single corner of our lives, that trying to keep up feels more like an exhausting survival race than actual progress. We aren't being freed from the grind; we're just running faster to stay in place. Video games? They're just a side effect—shiny bait used to make all this tech look appealing, which makes it way harder for people to see how irrational the whole thing really is.