I wonder if my desire to grind and or min/max in video games during my teenage years was a proxy for honing skills. Perhaps it's a developmental stage where you actually enjoy the repetition because you're supposed to be developing a skills and trade-craft. But now that I'm older I have little to no interest in such pursuits.
Surely the point is that this developmental ability to persist is wasted on FPS? You could have learnt a musical instrument or developed some other accomplishment that lasts a lifetime. I.e. the real problem is the opportunity cost
> You could have learnt a musical instrument or developed some other accomplishment that lasts a lifetime.
These "classical" hobbies are vastly over-valued in my opinion. I spent almost a decade learning to play violin, and while the appreciation for music has been valuable, the actual skill of being able to play the violin has been largely useless. I also quit when I was no longer forced to play for school, and probably can't even read the sheet music anymore. It's by no means a life long skill like riding a bike.
Phrased another way, I don't see much that validates being able to play a musical instrument as more valuable than being good at a particular genre of video games. Music has existed for far longer, so it has a certain level of prestige as a long-standing part of our culture. Music can be shared with others, although Twitch seems to imply there are a substantial number of people interested in watching other people play video games.
There are various studies about the tangential benefits of music, there are likewise for video games. I don't know that one comes out clearly ahead.
Video games are more likely to give you real world skills. As more and more of the world moves online, skills that you pick up trying to get games to work or trying to make them run faster can be valuable. Online etiquette is another thing you tend to learn (hopefully, instead of just being toxic).
Learning an instrument is also not without pain. When I played, probably 75% of the time I was playing I wasn't actually doing anything enjoyable, I was working on committing a piece to memory, or practicing a piece, or doing exercises to work on my finger strength or flexibility. I don't feel like learning an instrument is less "grindy".
As a counterdote, I both played video games and played music (band, church groups, self-studying) for significant amounts of time in my youth. I still play music today and my only regret is not spending more time on it earlier, whereas I regret spending so much time on video games. The collaboration and shareability of music is unparalleled; I can connect with people and actually create something that is an expression of myself and my collaborators, and even people who've never picked up an instrument can appreciate pleasant-sounding music. With video games, you really need to know the mechanics of a specific game to appreciate someone else's performance, and very rarely do the results of a video game manifest itself in the real world apart from the consequential skills you may pick up.
The problem of quitting music once it's no longer compulsory is endemic and I think more rooted with pedagogy than music itself as a medium. I staved it off because I was largely self-taught for theory and the instruments I currently play (piano, guitar), whereas people who were forced into lessons or only did it to fill an elective slot in school quit once they were able to. I've gone months-long stints without dedicated practice, but to me it's closer to an unforgettable skill than riding a bike is (because I don't know how to ride a bike).
> the collaboration and shareability of music is unparalleled;
Music has been around since the dawn of mankind. Video games has been around 20-30 years?
I will not be surprised when 100 years from now, video games will be the acceptable hobby while playing instruments would be seem as quaint when one can just tweak some params in some AI models to generate good music.
If anything, this statement is a testament to music's endurance as an expressive medium. As mentioned by others on this discussion, video games are largely consumable media with products that don't extend beyond the screen.
The whole AI-replacing-creativity debate is a large can of worms. Yes, there are already generative music models that can create pleasant-sounding music, but for many practitioners, the process is more important than the product. There's a reason people still perform live in front of audiences when it would be more reasonable and convenient to play lossless recordings at home.
> As mentioned by others on this discussion, video games are largely consumable media with products that don't extend beyond the screen.
And the same has been said about the TV. That it would never be mainstream.
My point is that video games is in its infancy. It has potential to be an art form, especially if VR/AR takes off once we get powerful enough hardware.
> There's a reason people still perform live in front of audiences when it would be more reasonable and convenient to play lossless recordings at home.
And there is a reason why people still enjoy playing video games even if people stigmatize it as a time sink. It's not about efficiency or productivity.
Why not extrapolate this argument to non-video games then? Why have card or board games not usurped music as a dominant hobby in the millennia that they've been around?
I won't debate that video games don't have merit as artistic media; some of my favorites from my adolescence have had positive effects on my world view and self in the same way works in television and film have, and I cut my teeth on advanced piano arrangements from video game music (specifically Kyle Landry's). I think that the problem lies in video games being a demanding medium that often rewards mindless grinding and non-transferrable skills. In McLuhan's terms, it's a hot (demanding) medium that only has the benefits of a cool (passively consumed) medium [1].
To say that music will somehow cede to video games eventually, when music has been around for literal eons, is flippant.
I grew up with the standard piano lessons as a kid, dabbled with guitar, but never really got competent at anything. Assumed I was not musical. Until picking up a banjo about 7 years ago.
Some music is about performance, but that requires a level of dedication I don't have. Bluegrass is music designed for a bunch of people to get together and have fun. Some friends of mine picked up guitar, upright bass, mandolin, washboard... and suddenly we were meeting a couple times a week just to play and have fun. It was never a grind.
Child, startup, moving away from my bandmates, and covid got in the way so I'm out of practice, but I'm really looking forward to getting back to it when life returns to "normal".
I guess what I'm saying is - maybe you were playing the wrong music? There are lots of music genres that seem to focus more on fun than grind. Classical violin probably isn't one of them. Old-time fiddle on the other hand...
> Video games are more likely to give you real world skills. As more and more of the world moves online, skills that you pick up trying to get games to work or trying to make them run faster can be valuable. Online etiquette is another thing you tend to learn (hopefully, instead of just being toxic).
This is begging the question more than a statement of real fact. What about magical combat against imaginary enemies, opening treasure chests, and completing collectibles is valuable in the real world? At least learning to play a musical instrument is actually doable in the real world.
One might argue that video games can teach someone to solve puzzles or to strategize towards an end when given a set of strengths and weaknesses, but if you really wanted usable critical thinking out of puzzles, you'd be better off grinding away at LeetCode and HackerRank. Strategizing towards any end requires the specificity of the context, too, and the world in video games is often very far from real.
And besides, if you really believe in video games--are you willing to raise a child to spend his youth and energy on video games instead of learning new skills?
Surely the point is that this developmental ability to persist is wasted on FPS?
Who is to say? FPS games can teach you about your physical ability, practice and teamwork as much as playing football or playing in a band. The physical skills are different, sure, but the planning, teamwork and execution are all very similar (and similar to developing an app with a team). Any of these things could also, well, not teach you much of anything. But is that a function of the game or the player?
The article suggests maybe it's a function of genuinely liking what you're doing vs simply wanting to do it (maybe because of an addiction).
I.e. the real problem is the opportunity cost
The problem with viewing through the lens of the opportunity cost is that it requires some hindsight to be completely evaluated. I played competitive football for 8 years. I wanted to, but I never went pro. You can work hard, put in the effort and still have nothing good to show for it. Today, I feel like I could have better spent that time, because it ate up a lot of it.
Honestly, there is very little else as satisfying as a couple of Juan Deags in a crunch round of a CS match. I've spent time learning other, more respectable RL hobbies, but there's that deep sense of satisfaction they fail to capture.
> Surely the point is that this developmental ability to persist is wasted on FPS?
It's anecdotal, of course, but I always notice vast diffference in spatial conceptualization between people who have played first-person videogames set in complex 3d environments and those who have not. Me and my gamer friends could easily draw you an aproximate map of a location after being there once, correctly oriented by cardinal directions.
As someone who both plays videogames and tries to improve with a piano, think there's a key difference: piano exercises me mentally, I know when I get to a point where my head isn't going to get anything out of more practice for a while, and I want to do something else. I go to bed in a similar state like after going to the gym, that is, eager to sleep and rest.
With videogames, the experience usually is very different. I'll blink, and suddenly it's time to go to bed and my whole free time for the day is gone. I don't want to go to bed because my mind is telling me that there's still more day left, no way it's all done already; so I usually go to bed really late.
Days feel far longer when I'm not playing, in a good way. Gaming is like presing the fast forward button on your life.
I get this too. It's less pronounced if I commit to only playing 3 matches or so (doesn't always work) and check the time in between. But it still feels like autopilot.
Your ability to play the piano is more likely to be of use in social situations throughout your life as opposed to your Counter-Strike skills.
That isn’t to say that getting good at CS is inherently worse. But that as you age and your priorities shift I think piano is something you are more likely to value.
That has been true in the past. But, in the past, there were no computer-based games, nor a computer gaming culture.
Consider the analogy with big game hunting. The image I imagine of a British club includes the heads of a bunch of formerly live animals hanging on various walls. Within that subculture, hunting adventures and stories were very much social currency.
As gamers age, gaming clubs could form as a third place to hang out, and gaming stories would also be of great social value. May not be to your particular taste, but it is just a matter of taste.
Additionally, as knowledge of sporting teams and their performance during current season break down conversational barriers between people living in different parts of the US, knowledge of gaming, and the ability to play with others at any age, could do the same.
There isn’t as strong a general piano culture among a random set of people. Maybe music, but depends on the group. It brought Boomers together, but that essential core value of current music as a glue for a demographic isn’t there as much.
What music does do is directly feed the soul, and computer games aren’t at that level. Yet. Whether they ever can be is an open question. They aren’t an art form. Yet.
Less flippantly, one of them requires consistent improvement or you'll quit - there's no zombie-state when learning piano where you'll be content with sitting at the same level for over a thousand hours. This zombie-like steady-state scenario is very easy with video games; relatively minor skill improvements over literally thousands of hours for the majority of people. No feedback to quit and try something else, unlike the piano where if you have no elegance after a few years you'll be very disillusioned. This disillusionment is a good thing, a necessary part of the learning process which indicates you either need to change your approach or find something else entirely. Video games, in my experience, break this feedback loop: they demand no fundamental progression.
> One of them might get you laid, the other won't ?
as a guitar player, I'm very sorry to inform you that this is not the case. you get a small bump in attractiveness once you master the chords to wonderwall, but after that you don't really make any progress unless your band becomes popular.
as a cs player, I can't say I agree with the rest of your comment either. counterstrike is a very harsh and unforgiving game. plateauing at the same skill level feels very bad. you will get rekt by twelve year olds and they will mock you mercilessly. I would also contest that musical instruments create any inherent drive for improvement. plenty of people just learn the basic barre chords and a couple major/minor scale shapes and go on to happily jam with friends for thousands of hours.
I suppose I should clarify, since you're right about reaching a certain level and being content with it (which is fine, naturally.)
What I mean is that 2000 hours of my life can simply vanish into a video game black hole, absent any other life events. Why? It's possible to play Counterstrike (or whatever) for 14 hours in the day. For a week. Or two. or 52. I've never in my life met a person who can enter that kind of state for 14 hours when playing an instrument, where the ease by which it consumes your life is just so breathtaking. The only two activities I've found which have this addictive ease are generic web browsing (e.g. reddit) and assorted video games - and my life has definitely been degraded as a result.
I mean, clearly FPS is a waste. Civilization and SFII is where it's at. SMB is ok too.
That said, learning a musical instrument does not last a lifetime if you don't keep playing it. The point of learning skills early in life is not necessarily that the skill is useful, it's that you've learned how to learn skills. Which hopefully will be used throughout your life.
If what you learn are songs you'll forget them without practice. But if you learn music theory, composition, improvisation, you'll never forget.
at least that's how I explain my own experience. I routinely go for years without playing most of the instruments I know. Give me a week and I'll be better at any one of them than I've ever been.
Grinding skills in games turned into running through shot simulations to get the best DPS in world of Warcraft, which turned into me learning to write code. The same obsession is there, just instead of being “the best on the server” I get a paycheck.
