A link between video games and unemployment

https://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2017/03/economist-explains-24

by nabla9 • 9 years ago

177 171 9 years ago

economist.com

nabla92• 9 years ago

The actual paper is really interesting.

Leisure Luxuries and the Labor Supply of Young Men http://economics.sas.upenn.edu/system/files/event_papers/lei...

DamonHD• 9 years ago

The direction of causation (if there is one at all) is rather important as the article states. I have no time for video games at all, no I have no good feel for how likely they would be preferred over work and real financial independence for all but a very few.

jorgemf3• 9 years ago

Of course, because the lower salaries, the high prices of the houses and the global crisis during these years has nothing to do with the unemployment in the young population.

ethbro2• 9 years ago

The article does note this, albeit using "good job" as a proxy for "all the things one might have historically expected to stem from having a good job."

This seems like a forewave of the trends that point towards the basic income argument. Fewer productive jobs being necessary than labor force to fill them results in bifurcation of the labor market: between overpaid specialties (e.g. software dev) and underpaid make-work (e.g. McDonald's and Walmart) there's been a hollowing out "historically normal" jobs that don't take specialized knowledge but are still productive enough to afford a good quality of life.

In the face of this, opting out and escaping into a virtual world seems fairly reasonable. Especially if you're on the losing end of whatever the current hot specializations are.

fooza• 9 years ago

I think this sector is now a embodied in sales/marketing. It's reasonable to expect from some one to become a productive salesperson after a few months. This professional will have many options from online marketing through mall cart sales to selling cloud services to corporations

Analemma_2• 9 years ago

This is the easy response to the article. It is partially true, but the article is more true than you're giving it credit for.

There are other articles about this (e.g. http://www.vulture.com/2017/02/video-games-are-better-than-r...) all confirming that unemployed people who play video games don't have the same increase in unhappiness that other unemployed people have. Which might be good for their short-term well-being, and is something to keep in mind for the post-scarcity UBI future if that ever happens, but in the medium term worrying, both for the individuals and for the economy generally.

There are currently sectors- like construction- which are having trouble finding labor as the economy picks back up. Are these people going to avoid re-entering the labor force even when they can get a job, and are we ready for the consequences of that? And even if they do, they'll be starting out way behind on building household wealth and work experience.

pharrington• 9 years ago

-if the post-scarcity UBI future ever happens-

I live in a country that throws away half of its prepared food. Like we're not even talking about some chopped up animal corpse that sits out for too long and has to be discarded before it goes rancid - in the US we strait-up assemble food in some factory, wrap it plastic, burn fuel shipping said wrapped and assembled food to a store halfway across the country, unwrap the food, put it in another container, and then at the end of the day just toss the remaining contents of the container into the garbage bin because you've got a few more tons of shipped and prepared food already in storage that needs to be sold. This is the post-scarcity future.

emodendroket9• 9 years ago

I don't think "we should strive to make unemployed people more miserable so they're more motivated to work" is a proposition worthy of serious consideration.

watwut2• 9 years ago

Economy is not helped by people being eternally miserable - miserable people are less likely to find another job, more likely to start drugs or commit crime. Depression does not tend to incite people towards meaningfull action. Staring into wall does not build work experience anymore then game. Nor does hanging around cheap alcohol with other unemployed.

I do not know what the issue with construction is, but it is highly unlikely that the same city have thousands unemployed playing games who could otherwise work there - if only they were a bit more miserable.

s_kilk• 9 years ago

It's the logic of Late Capitalism: all problems and failings are those of the individual, never of the system.

quadrangle• 9 years ago

While that may indeed be the propaganda, blaming addicts for their addictions can be victim-blaming. Some of the rhetoric blames the video game companies more than the consumers…

kbutler• 9 years ago

There's a pendulum swing - focusing on the problems of the system, and focusing on the problems of the individual.

In truth, there are problems both in the system and with individuals, and failings in each reinforce the other, and effective aspects of each also reinforce each other.

city41• 9 years ago

The article addresses this: "While games improved since the turn of the century, labour-market options for young people got worse." That paragraph goes into more detail how the market has not been good for young people, and thus they turn to games, not the other way around.

jorgemf3• 9 years ago

If you read the paper it doesn't say that in the conclusions.

codingdave• 9 years ago

Right, but the question I'd be interested in hearing more about is why gaming as a response to that unemployment? I'm recently unemployed (by my own choice), and am playing less games. I'm spending my extra time hiking, swimming, kayaking, etc. I actually deleted the games I used to play from my computer. I certainly have the time now to play more... but I'm in my mid-40s, and I did grow up on games, yet it seems far more enjoyable to me to go outside and unplug. So there is definitely a generational difference going on here.

pseudalopex• 9 years ago

Now imagine you're in your 20s and were laid off 6 months ago. You have no savings, no partner, and no in-demand skills. You bought a console and some games last year when you still had a job. $10 will pay for a month of online play, bus fare and a day pass at the pool, or enough gas for two trips to the nearest trailhead. You don't really enjoy playing video games all day, but it keeps your mind off your troubles, which is more than you can say for hiking.

I don't think your situation is typical even for people your own age. I suspect the biggest generational difference is TV vs. video games.

ouid5• 9 years ago

games will go on getting better

I don't think there's any evidence for this, and the call to panic is based on it.

boubiyeah• 9 years ago

yeah that makes no sense. Games will go on getting visually better but Gameplay, fun, replayability has very little to do with it.

bjt• 9 years ago

Not just visually. Increased computing power and richer game frameworks will make for more compelling AIs. There are advances in procedural content generation that are getting past the saminess of endless variations on "kill ten rats." Open modding platforms (e.g. Minecraft) create whole communities around them, and endless supplies of content. I think we're still in the infancy of that trend. The immersivity of VR will make gaming experiences qualitatively more compelling than the screens of the past. There's a lot more going on than just increased polygon counts.

EthanHeilman• 9 years ago

I have spent some time going back and replaying older games that I found amazing when I originally played them. Outside of simple reflex games like Tetris or Mario, game play has not aged well. Play a strategy or RPG video game from the mid 90s and see how fast it takes you to find some exploitable feature that makes the game trivial to beat.

Compare:

1. "Shogun: Total War" to "Warhammer: Total War" or

2. Civ2's city spamming to Civ5 really well designed gameplay.

3. 1993's Stronghold [0] is so easy for modern gamers to win it feels more like an interactive screensaver than a game and it was a great game when it was released.

The only real exception to this rule is RTS games like Starcraft or C&C, but only in multi-player.

tl;dr Gamers and game play are in a Red Queen's race with each other.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stronghold_(1993_video_game)

Analemma_2• 9 years ago

I think a better way to phrase that might have been "games will become more effective Skinner boxes", as developers discover new and more powerful ways to keep people in the reward loop. Because that's the real concern here.

ouid5• 9 years ago

I don't think there's any evidence of that either.

minimaxir• 9 years ago

After recently becoming unemployed, and in my spare time when not looking for jobs, I finally started working on my gaming backlog from sales (e.g. Witcher 3) and experimented with games that have a time commitment I have been avoiding, such as MMOs and League of Legends (which I ended up stopping because the rumors of a toxic playerbase are not inaccurate)

At the least, I got it out of my system and am now back to personal technical projects/blogging.

toomuchtodo• 9 years ago

I think it's important to be mindful that entertainment like video games in moderation is entirely acceptable. We must not squeeze productivity out of every waking hour in the day.

ouid5• 9 years ago

If you replace "productivity" with "utility" you might find more consistency.

pzh• 9 years ago

If nothing else, at least those economists have found the solution to keep people occupied when AI renders half the world unemployed. Now the premise of the Matrix doesn't seem so far fetched after all.

hanoz• 9 years ago

Isn't the premise, unbearably absurd even by the standards of the rest of the movie, that humans are used as a power supply?

__s• 9 years ago

They wanted them to be used for processing, but producers: https://scifi.stackexchange.com/a/116473

desdiv• 9 years ago

NEO: The human body is the most inefficient source of energy you could possibly imagine. The efficiency of a power plant at converting thermal energy into electricity decreases as you run the turbines at lower temperatures. If you had any sort of food humans could eat, it would be more efficient to burn it in a furnace than feed it to humans. And now you're telling me that their food is the bodies of the dead, fed to the living? Haven't you ever heard of the laws of thermodynamics?

MORPHEUS: Where did you hear about the laws of thermodynamics, Neo?

NEO: Anyone who's made it past one science class in high school ought to know about the laws of thermodynamics!

MORPHEUS: Where did you go to high school, Neo?

(Pause.)

NEO: ...in the Matrix.

MORPHEUS: The machines tell elegant lies.

(Pause.)

NEO (in a small voice): Could I please have a real physics textbook?

MORPHEUS: There is no such thing, Neo. The universe doesn't run on math.

[0] https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/1263/is-the-basic-...

Houshalter• 9 years ago

Here's my favorite fan theory from HPMOR:

NEO: I've kept quiet for as long as I could, but I feel a certain need to speak up at this point. The human body is the most inefficient source of energy you could possibly imagine. The efficiency of a power plant at converting thermal energy into electricity decreases as you run the turbines at lower temperatures. If you had any sort of food humans could eat, it would be more efficient to burn it in a furnace than feed it to humans. And now you're telling me that their food is the bodies of the dead, fed to the living? Haven't you ever heard of the laws of thermodynamics?
MORPHEUS: Where did you hear about the laws of thermodynamics, Neo?
NEO: Anyone who's made it past one science class in high school ought to know about the laws of thermodynamics!
MORPHEUS: Where did you go to high school, Neo?
(Pause.)
NEO: ...in the Matrix.
MORPHEUS: The machines tell elegant lies.
(Pause.)
NEO (in a small voice): Could I please have a real physics textbook?
MORPHEUS: There is no such thing, Neo. The universe doesn't run on math.

icebraining• 9 years ago

That's what the people in Zion believes, not necessarily what was really going on: https://www.quora.com/Why-didnt-the-sentient-machines-in-the...

metaphorm3• 9 years ago

my understanding is that the original draft of the script had humans being used as a massively parallel distributed processing network. their own brains were the wetware that run the matrix simulation program. that's more sensible and a much more profound statement as to the philosophical connections between the matrix and the social construction of consciousness, which was a major theme of the film.

but then some shit-for-brains hollywood producers read the script, decided it was too intellectual/nerdy and had it rewritten as "humans are batteries" which is gibberish to anyone with an education, but hollywood loves the lowest common denominator.

ricree2• 9 years ago

Strictly speaking, Morpheus held up a battery at the end of his little talk. Humans make no sense as an energy source, obviously, but fat has a reasonably solid energy density for its volatility.

My personal headcanon is that the machines were laboring under something akin to Asimov's three laws, which required that they preserve humanity. The Matrix, then is a loophole, something which technically satisfies the requirements of their core programming, but in a way that is advantageous to the machines.

But then, once you've got all those people hooked up, you might as well make some use out of them. They aren't the most efficient battery around, but if you've got to keep them anyway, they might as well serve as a load balancer. The people of Zion just came later and mistook an ancillary benefit for the machine's primary purpose.

Apocryphon2• 9 years ago

The premise is that there was a war between humanity and its creations, and the creations won. Subsequently humanity was imprisoned in a virtual world. The specifics on why imprisonment was the chosen punishment is just detail and window dressing.

GuiA• 9 years ago

There is an episode of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" where Charlie, a character who never gets any success in life (a janitor living in a dump of an apartment, gets rejected by his love interest constantly, abused by his friends, etc) gets really engrossed in an online videogame. He becomes really good at it, and exclaims "I'm thriving! I never get to thrive, and I want to be the guy who thrives for once! It's like when I'm doing good in the game, I'm doing good in real life!"

It feels like there's an interesting insight there - if you're near the bottom of ladder in life (in an area with few/no jobs, have a hard time making friends, have no money for activities, etc), positive feedback loops can be few and far between, and it is very hard to get a feel for whether you're actually making progress or not. Work hard in life, and maybe you can reap some rewards years and years later, or maybe not (working at Walmart 20 years won't make you wealthy, or a respected Walmart executive). But work hard in a videogame for a few weeks or months, and you can have very concrete evidence of your progress. It's not hard to see why people would prefer investing hours in the latter then.

Maybe that's where the appeal of the army lies for some. The very clear hierarchy means you know exactly where you fit, and what the path to the next rung of the ladder is - something that is true in very few other organizations.

noonespecial2• 9 years ago

Video games also provide a quality sorely lacking in real life. They try very hard to prevent cheating, because if there's too much cheating, or too much inequality between players, no one will play.

Hmmm...

btdiehr• 9 years ago

Exactly, that's why runescape and world of warcraft have adopted the marxist game mechanic of automatically redistributing all resources and exp between all players at the end of every day.

sogen2• 9 years ago

Designers of videogames as a matter of fact twist your luck so you can win and keep playing:

http://nautil.us/issue/44/luck/how-designers-engineer-luck-i...

klenwell3• 9 years ago

Reminds me of this Wired article from years ago:

The Unreal Estate Boom

https://www.wired.com/2003/01/gaming-2/

Not long ago, a 43-year-old Wonder Bread deliveryman named John Dugger logged on to eBay and, as people sometimes do these days, bought himself a house. Not a shabby one, either. Nine rooms, three stories, rooftop patio, walls of solid stonework – it wasn't quite a castle, but it put to shame the modest redbrick ranch house Dugger came home to every weeknight after a long day stocking the supermarket shelves of Stillwater, Oklahoma. Excellent location, too; nestled at the foot of a quiet coastal hillside, the house was just a hike away from a quaint seaside village and a quick commute from two bustling cosmopolitan cities. It was perfect, in short, except for one detail: The house was imaginary.

jumpkickhit• 9 years ago

There's worse forms of escapism that are far less stimulating.

Alcohol or drugs, for example.

It's nice we live in an age where there's engaging entertainment like video games instead of just more passive entertainment like TV.

selestify• 9 years ago

I don't know if drugs are less stimulating. Simulation of a different kind, to be sure, but probably not less in intensity.

Certain drugs, such as psychedelics, can also provide opportunities for personal reflection and growth.

dominotw2• 9 years ago

Alcohol or drugs, for example.

drugs like marijuana make everything more stimulating. Food tastes better, music sounds better, you can enjoy movies from almost any genre.You can get into great conversations with your partner where you are actually interested in what they are saying. Get over musicians block and let the music flow. so on.

posterboy7• 9 years ago

Utter bollocks. That's the placebo effect that comes with being so doped up that one couldn't tell a good painting from a bad one, eg.

metaphorm3• 9 years ago

as others have pointed out to you: please don't lump all drugs under the same umbrella.

posterboy7• 9 years ago

games are combined with drugs often enough, eat least sugar and coffein and so on

ouid5• 9 years ago

sugar?! you know what plants are made of don't you?

prodmerc2• 9 years ago

Please, games are far more addictive. Stimulating? Depends on what you play. MMO's can be worse than heroin.

FLUX-YOU• 9 years ago

MMO's can be worse than heroin.

Is there a study for this to show us what it measures?

It's pretty difficult to overdose on MMOs or get a super-high dose fentanyl batch. I'm not sure how you get worse than death.

jboggan6• 9 years ago

Video games become the sole source of agency in many people's lives. This isn't just for the unemployed, but also for folks stuck in a job where they feel like they lack control. I couldn't understand at first why my fellow Googlers found so much time to play video games, but after a couple of months I understood. Afternoon Halo matches became the highlight of my day, I felt like I had more choice and responsibility in a 20 minute match than I did the rest of my programming work.

kemiller2002• 9 years ago

A friend of mine felt the same way. He was undergoing a tragedy in his family, and he would play video games after returning from the hospital at night. It's funny, looking at him and talking to him, you'd never think he'd be a huge video game player, but it really was a source of stress relief. He could focus his unspent frustrations and hurt into competing online, and the way he explained it, I think it kept him sane during those times.

It's funny, I can tell how in control of my life by gauging how much I play games. When I start obsessing about playing games (I like playing them, but when I feel I have to play them to escape), I know something needs to change in my life. I'm saying it's that way for everyone, but it really is a great tool for stress relief for some.

J-dawg2• 9 years ago

I haven't been able to find it, but I remember a comment here on HN by a guy who basically said that gaming saved his life by helping him to zone out during a period of severe depression.

I guess it's a form of mindfulness, in a way.

mickronome• 9 years ago

Same here, my amount of (somewhat compulsive) gaming is directly related to generic emotional and psychological well-being. Less well being -> more gaming, with gaming clearly being the effect and not the primary cause.

startupempl0ye• 9 years ago

Don't worry. Your job will be automated away pretty soon, and you'll be able to enjoy your Halo whole day.

jboggan6• 9 years ago

I'm the one who is trying to automate programmers away . . .

gdulli• 9 years ago

That's a good way to articulate why I couldn't work at a large company. And I never thought about them being related before, but maybe part of why I don't play games so much anymore.

orthoganol2• 9 years ago

You're also at an organization that selects for personalities susceptible to that. So many people want to work at companies like Google because they care more about the recognition for working at a company like Google than the actual work they do or impact they make. And that's a recipe for its own type of acedia.

jboggan6• 9 years ago

Great word.

It's interesting how my desire to game has almost entirely disappeared since I left there and started a new company. I'm sitting here building deep learning rigs with fat GPUs, I could just add another partition running Windows and have a killer system for Overwatch . . . but nah, I'm having too much fun with Tensorflow to care.

nickpsecurity• 9 years ago

Happened to me too much with FPS's. I am proud that I managed to stay off games like WoW that are basically the same stuff all the time. I fight smart players with different kits and play strategies. Keeps me thinking quick on my feet with improved hand-eye coordination and reflexes vs what I have with a brain injury.

That said, it still was too much time invested into stuff that isn't improving my life. Even the stuff improving thinking fast is training the intuition for wrong situations. I'd be better off doing part-time or contract work involving similar skills. Probably...

kough• 9 years ago

My friends and I blow off school pressure by playing smash. It is, no joke, the biggest addiction in my life. But it's exactly what you say – a way to regain some control in a world that otherwise is lacking in it.

klenwell3• 9 years ago

Insightful observation. Makes sense.

As a variation on this idea... I have a job now where I do have control over some stuff that matters to me (and it definitely helps!) But I still like to take a video game break once or twice a day.

My game of choice is a Risk-clone on my phone. It's nice because it moderately cognitively challengeing, offers some variety with different maps, and the AI is quite mediocre -- which means I usually win. Games generally take 5-10 minutes and winning I notice gives me a little lift (even though I know my opponents are at an inherent disadvantage). So I've concluded overall it's a plus for my mental health.

Of course, every once in a while I do lose, which makes me a little grumpy. In that case, I'll usually just play another game straight away and win.

suby• 9 years ago

Out of curiosity, could you give the name or a link to the game?

RugnirViking2• 9 years ago

I'm interested in this style of > the AI is quite mediocre -- which means I usually win

I find the same with a certain chess program on my phone where I find running the lowest AI quite nice for 5 minutes and I have a couple thousand games versus it. I know I could do something more challenging, but there's something to be said for simple puzzles to be solved almost in a ritual way for comfort and stability

Camillo• 9 years ago

What were you working on at Google?

edem2• 9 years ago

At my workplace I have a rather good control over the stuff I do (I'm an architect at an IT company) but I still play games online. I mainly do it because it is a kind of therapy for me because the game I play rewards careful strategic thinking, cool headed decision making, patience and punishes recklessness and hotheadedness. When I manage to remain cool and win a game I always feel a sense of achievement. I'm not representative though because I play games for 27 years and I never had this kind of a problem.

bhewes2• 9 years ago

Leisure time comes from wealth. So a bunch of young men are wealthy enough to not work and play video games instead. All these articles miss the point someone is paying to keep these men playing games.

pc86• 9 years ago

Who is?

hbosch• 9 years ago

That's a very broad generalization. Videos games, computers/consoles, and internet access are essentially commoditized to the point where an Xbox, some games, and a TV (+ maybe internet) can be found cheaper than an iPhone.

You could easily drive part time for Uber and get your emotional fulfillment from video games without being supported by wealthy parents.

bhewes2• 9 years ago

Perfect point Uber is paying them and they play video games. (I love games, and the US is a wealthy country across the board so it does not surprise me that men are enjoying more leisure time at a younger age.) I am pro more video games.

jakozaur• 9 years ago

On positive side, until recently economic crisis caused crime rate to go up. However, after 2007-2008 crisis the overall crime rate has not increased.

https://phys.org/news/2015-09-link-economy-crime-broken.html

There are a lot of hypothesis to explain that, but I believe computer games played some role in that.

nabla92• 9 years ago

There also seems to be inverse relation between consuming porn and rapes.

However I think the strongest connection seems to be in the amount of lead in the blood and crime. The crime rates seem to fall everywhere in the world (with predictable delay) after that country restricts lead in gasoline. We know that lead is causes developmental problems in children (like problems with impulse control).

kpil3• 9 years ago

The causation is clear. If you have free time, you spend it.

There might be an indirect causation which is homework vs games, but I suspect that students with less encouragement from their parents to do their homework spend the time on games.

So forbid homework and make the schools take responsibility for actually learning their students something.

dimitar• 9 years ago

Video games are cheap compared to other entertainment. I can buy a good enough PC for $400 and I can clock almost an infinite amount of game-time on it with friends all over the world. Most other activities - playing pool, eating out, bars, most sports, vacationing - cost a lot more per hour of possible entertainment.

So if you don't have the money and you have the time you should choose activities that provide the most entertainment for the least $

Previously unemployed people would watch a lot of TV for affordable entertainment, an they probably still do it a lot. However video games can be more cognitively engaging and more social, so they might be actually an improvement.

emodendroket9• 9 years ago

I think it's hard to beat books for economical. But certainly games are in reach.

rubicon33• 9 years ago

I really wish books could hold my attention like video games. I would read a lot more.

wutbrodo• 9 years ago

Well, sure or writing music or poetry or drawing or playing soccer with friends or....

It's an incomplete picture if you ignore the fact that videogames are infinitely more mentally accessible. There's plenty of very cheap, very fulfilling things to do with your time but they don't provide the instant, accessible dopamine hit that movies or videogames do, which put them out of reach for a lot of people.

I don't really watch TV or movies, and I play videogames pretty sparingly. I'm definitely glad I did it, and I find my hobbies now a lot more stimulating and rewarding, but I'd be lying if I pretended it wasn't a somewhat difficult habit to get into.

ddebernardy• 9 years ago

Are they really? I've never spent more than a few days on a book, but I've certainly spent well over 300 hours on some video games. I love reading, but to me books seem quite expensive as an entertainment medium in comparison with computer games.

JKCalhoun• 9 years ago

Video games are cheap compared to other entertainment.

Maybe with the exception of the public library.

zo1• 9 years ago

Most people do not find value or entertainment in knowledge or reading. So they don't want to go to the library because it's not really a source of entertainment for them. Gaming on the other hand, probably engages them a whole lot better.

cuckcuckspruce• 9 years ago

The public library where I live loans video games, so why not both? :-)

slg2• 9 years ago

Not only are they cheap, but the nominal price of video games hasn't budged much in something like 30 years. AAA titles have always hit the market in the $50-$60 dollar range since the days of the NES (and maybe earlier, but that is before my time). It isn't surprising that video game companies have introduced additional revenue streams with DLC or microtransactions in order to counter inflation in both real dollars and in production budgets.

notyourwork2• 9 years ago

I am not sure I agree with this statement. I remember new PS1 games retailing for $39.99, I remember PS2 games retailing for $49.99. It wasn't until the ps3 generation were games $59.99.

My friends and I always joked about how each generation games went up $10.

watwut2• 9 years ago

You must have more expensive habits then me. Most of sports people do does not cost much money except if you go fashionable with cloth. Basketball, soccer and such require basically ball and place (which is available for free here). Same with running. Hanging with friends is basically free, so is reading (library) and watching tv.

You can go fancy with entertainment, but people who don't have much money tend not to. In that context, $400 is not such a little investment. (Through phone games can be played for free.)

rubber_duck• 9 years ago

Basketball, soccer and such require basically ball and place (which is available for free here).

They also require you to be good at it to enjoy it, have slow and painful learning (depending on shape), and require you to be in a group interested in it. Unless you got in to it early on in your life it's not easy to pick up - unlike video games

pbhjpbhj2• 9 years ago

Shoes? Basketball you want ankle support; football you want a stiff sole with good grip, usually studs ('cleats' I think in en-us).

Studded boots ain't cheap.

I've spent about £5 on a video game and played for a few hundred hours. Discounting the computer, the only other cost is probably mouse & keyboard wear and tear ... and life.

miej• 9 years ago

This. I specifically used MMOs during periods of my life when money was short. You'd be surprised how expensive food is in comparison to a 25$ monthly subscription fee, and how fulfilling having actions cause their intended results is.

xiaoma• 9 years ago

That's interesting... growing up, I always saw video games as expensive—both needing to buy the game and needing to update the system or computer every few years—but sports as the budget choice. There are so many sports you can play with just having access to a park and a $10 ball or frisbee.

sogen2• 9 years ago

Yes and I'd add the ones available on your phone: 99cents, or even free.

sksareen1• 9 years ago

^Clearly written by a non-gamer.

chasing• 9 years ago

This is a weird article.

"Young people earn less, face higher unemployment rates than ever, and have been hit hard by financial recessions. Are video games to blame?"

ajeet_dhaliwal• 9 years ago

I used to joke that unemployed players with nothing else to do ruin online play with hyper competitiveness when someone like me wants to play once a week or month. May not be far fetched after all.

Aside being a former gamer (no time anymore) and having worked in the games industry for 6 years, that stock photo is a prime example of the ridiculous way game playing is portrayed on TV and film and by publications that don't know much about games. No one ever plays games with their controller held that way and their arms reaching out.

aidenn0• 9 years ago

Anyone new to video games does things like that photo (push the controller forward when punch/kick/shoot/go fast, turn the controller to the side you want your character to go, &c.)

ensiferum• 9 years ago

It's time to start questioning the underlying idea if jobs. We're close to a society that could make work optional or at least people could spend much less time doing it.

teekert• 9 years ago

Why is this piece all about jobs? Where's the family aspect? The hours playing games that could have been spent socializing, courting, going to a bar, having sex? Those things are even more important than working hard at a career. Sorry but this does sound very American to me. You have a very work focused culture, it's where esteem is earned it seems. I think that is also a bit troubling.

In the end it is very simply though wherever you are from, you can either spend your time consuming or you can spend it creating.

bootloop• 9 years ago

Depends on who you ask. Some people tend to work harder on their careers than their social life. Might benefit them more even if it looks different to you. In my opinion there is not much difference (in regards to being social) between me going to the bar with my friends or joining a voice server to play games with my friends.

prodmerc2• 9 years ago

More like a link between easy entertainment and unemployment. Before games, TV and movies did the same thing.

voidhorse• 9 years ago

Video games are sometimes hammered a bit too hard. They certainly have their negative impacts, but the media harps on the downsides so much they often obscure benefits. They're one of the few forms of entertainment that actually force you to think--it's very easy to consume movies, television, and even leisurely books without thinking hard or at all, 'passive consumption'. Video games, by their nature, force you to at least use your noggin a little. Sure it probably becomes passive consumption too once you've played a particular game enough and have habituated skills, but at least it's engaging your mind on some level at the start. They can also fuel a healthy (though of course, potentially unhealthy) sense of competition, which other entertainment, aside from physical sports, can't.

I've become more aware of these little benefits as I've stopped playing games in lieu of other priorities. That being said, I don't think I'll go back to playing video games to any intense or serious degree any time soon--they really are quite addictive. I guess because they tap into those natural human drives for accomplishment, control, and competition, unlike other forms of entertainment. It's a fun hobby, and probably third best as far as general benefits go, behind creative hobbies and sports. That being said, it is way too easy to get sucked in, and to, as this article seems to suggest, let games become a substitute for more meaningful structures in your life.

edem2• 9 years ago

I also play games because it keeps my mind active even when I have fun. That's the reason why I don't like watching series beacuse it is passive. I've also noticed that I have more fun nowadays writing games than playing them.

MichaelMoser123• 9 years ago

the article says that a lack of good jobs in the real word is contributing to this.

Now gamers have their own online communities; I guess that the network of online friends could help to build a real world network to solve real world problems. This would be of great value to the players.

I wonder if future games will have a built in social networking functionality...

RugnirViking2• 9 years ago

Many modern games (especially MMOs) already do, not to mention platforms like steam or xbox live that facilitate both buying games and talking to friends

A link between video games and unemployment

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