Is playing computer games when an adult is not childish?

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Why do people still think video or computer games are primarily children's entertainment? Have you seen the ratings systems that have been on them for quite a few years now? "M" doesn't stand for "Mario", that's for sure! Games like that rank right up there with R-rated movies, and yet toy stores will put them right next to the Disney DVD's. Of course, that doesn't mean a game that's rated "E" for "Everyone" is too childish for adults to enjoy, or that M-rated games are always perfect for adults. In fact most of the really good games are E or T rated.

As long as you're not consumed by it, and maintaining a healthy life, though I do excuse people who are very depressed and want to find a distraction, but if there are better things that can be done with your time it can be childish. Not to say that videogames are off-limits, but they're off-limits when you're not doing anything productive for extended periods of time, though people with mental illness or other afflictions are excused, I just don't want healthy adults to spend extended periods of time there, that stuff eventually hurts them.

Well... I'm in my 60's and just a few years ago I deliberately chose to get into gaming because of it positive effects on cognition and motor skills.

Someone once posted (I think it was on here) the results of a study that suggested, as one ages, gaming does more than reading to stimulate and maintain many of those mental and motor skills that normally decline with age. I can attest that such has been my experience. The ones that work well for me are things like Skyrim, Red Dead, and Assassin's Creed.

My own parents, well into their 80's, deliberately play games such a Flow, Sudoku, and Crosswords to keep their minds active. In fact, for her recent birthday we gave mom her own iPad for her gaming. (Fyi, touchscreens are great for those with arthritis.)

So yeah, I actually encourage those my age to get into gaming.

This is an issue I've given a lot of thought to. Most people work out of necessity. They need money. I don't. Yet sometimes I feel compelled to get a more serious job. But why. Is because people have a genuine need to be productive? Is it because I just want people to be more impressed with me? I keep switching back and forth between the idea that I should make something of myself and the idea that that idea was just a meme implanted into our culture so we would work harder to make other people richer. Maybe wanting to make something of myself is nothing more than puerile approval seeking. Or maybe that last sentence was nothing more than an excuse for my laziness and a justification for my callow fears. I can't even trust my own views anymore because I don't know when they're self serving.

I know 60 year old woman who plays facebook games and sends me invitations all the time...

Ah yes, I know how you feel with that one.

I used to work, and went through about a bazillionty jobs... was pretty bad at most of them. It was pretty awful.

And then things changed. I havent had a job in.... I dont even know anymore. It's been years. I dont need a job now. There's no issue of money... unless I go bonkers with the spending in a particular month, I generally have enough money to do whatever in the heck I want, whenever I want, within the contexts of my main hobbies, which are gaming, and also anime/gaming conventions and cosplay, and all of the travelling and hotels associated with that. Gaming purchases in particular are frequent as heck, because I'm an impulse buyer. Something looks shiny on Steam's store page? Buy it! There aint any reason not to. Price? Who cares! And so on. I live with my father and stepmother in this monstrous, bloated whale of a house. I've got everything I could need and endless free time. Most people would say that's pretty damn good.

But.... there's definitely a sense of a lack of fulfillment at times. The idea that I should do SOMETHING productive. Even if it's volunteering somewhere or something. And this to me makes no logical sense: I've been bloody AWFUL at pretty much every job I've ever had. There were only two exceptions, and those both involved selling games. The other zillionty jobs were just plain bad, or I guess I should say, I was just plain bad at them. I have no patience, I dont focus on one thing at a time well, I cant lift things, my memory is terrible, I'm frequently late for everything, and I can be airheaded and spacey. All of these things say that both getting a job, OR volunteering would be an amazing waste of time, effort, and resources. Logic gives me so many reasons as to why I should not even consider such a thing, yet the idea remains.

The closest thing to work that I do is game testing for indie developers. Unpaid, that. This actually consumes a large amount of time, and can be very frustrating, dealing with a definitely unfinished product very early in development, finding unending bugs and balance issues, over and over and over, writing up each one of them. There's alot more to it than just that, but that's the gist of it. It's at least SOMETHING, but despite the amount of stuff that needs to be done and the fact that I tend to have a strong effect on the finished product, thus making it that much easier to sell (I seriously find/report *alot* of balance issues & bugs, and suggestions/ideas I come up with frequently make it into the final game, even when they're large suggestions) it doesnt quite really count, by my view. There's still gaming involved, I still sit in this damn chair in front of this stupid machine, and there's no set schedule, I just do it whenever I bloody well feel like it. So it's not quite the same.

Overall, I dont know what to make of it much of the time. It's a pretty frustrating thing, and it definitely can bring up this idea of "childishness" when it comes to gaming and whatnot, because it often feels like it's the only thing I ever do, even when it isnt.

I forgot what else I was going to say... probably enough random rambling from me anyway though.

The aweful thing in my case is not that something like that happened to me but that's going to happen to me. Even though I know it's a bad idea I feel compelled to do it (as my father says "how do you know you hate working when you've never tried it"). As a concession to avoid driving myself completely insane I've decided to restrict myself to unskilled labour and not something that requires a degree. I know if I went to uni I'd either hate it or enjoy it but hate the resultant job (e.g. just because I enjoy doing a bachelor of economics that wouldn't garment I'd enjoy being an accountant). I hate working but I feel I should still try some anyway. What I hate more than work is long term commitment. That would be if I have to gamble years working at uni so I'd get the chance to work at some other place. I have plenty of patience when it's a sure thing but for me the longer it takes to carry out a plan the greater it's risk of failure. It would be bad if I failed the degree or passed but not found employment but what would be really awful would be if I succeeded in the career but hated it. They'd never give me my pension back if they saw me doing a professional job. So to save my sanity I'll restrict myself to working class for a few years until I burnout and prove to myself that that my slackness was justified all along. Even though I'm doing this more for an ego boost than to gain money the fact that it's unskilled labour is almost enough to cancel out the ego boost and render this exercise self defeating even if it succeeds (that's yet another reason I'm crazy, I turn success into failure, when I was in community college I passed all my exams for the first semester and then quit. Most people would wait 'till the failed before quitting). I can't even trust myself anymore because I can no longer tell when I'm trying to trick myself. If I think I'm trying to trick myself it might be a double bluff.





Yeah, like when I'm working on my projects I wonder if the same energy could be directed into work or study without being any more taxing but the difference is if I'm working on a hobby there's no commitment involved.



Work or not? Logic gives me so many reasons for both. When I reach a conclusion I can't sure if it's free from bias and I'll probably change my mind later anyway but now that I've decided to get a job I just have to make absolutely sure that I'm OK with it being unskilled and not professional. I have to make absolutely sure my reasons are sensible instead of just justifications for my laziness and fear of long term commitment.



So do you find that even when you're doing something you can normally do easily you just zone out for a few minutes when you get distracted by your own thoughts to the point of losing all sensory perception because that's what happens to me and I think it could be a barrier to employment.




My grandfather says video games are bad because they're unproductive. I tried to tell him that if someone worked from 9 to 5 the evening should be his own but he thinks it's best if every waking moment is spend doing something productive. The only reason he hadn't called video games childish is because he thinks his rule working all the times applies equally to all ages, including young children and retirees (for him being retired hasn't reduced his workload, he just signed up for about four volunteer jobs).

So I don't think gaming should be considered childish since for those with jobs it shouldn't matter what they do with their time after they get home from work (I guess this ties in with what Klowglas was saying). The only tenuous reason I can think of to call gaming childish is that a lot of games seem to be designed around psychological triggers of addiction such as leveling up. Maybe those with successful careers can apply such thinking and think of their job as something to achieve in instead of something to be endured until 5 O clock (at least that's the only reason I can come up with for why anyone would ever work more than 8 hours a day)

Suffice to say I'm not very good at making decisions and all this frustration is driving me sane! The funny thing is most of the people I meet don't ask what my job is or care if they already know but regardless I'll still know what it is so feel guilty anyway and I notice when I'm on a date the dated are much more concerned with how impressive my job is than people normally are so that's another reason to increase my employment status beyond it's current level (current level: supported worker).
/rant

I'm now 36 and have been gaming ever since my parent bought me a rubber keyed spectrum 48k.

Several of my colleagues at work still game, who are pretty much in the same age range.

I do go through phases of unhealthily long gaming sessions, especially when I get stuck into a rpg and want to get it finished, but most of the time it's a hour or so a day.

I think it's unfair to say that it's childish, as many people who have said that to me are addicted to their soaps and will happily spend several hours a night watching pointless television, which is a behaviour that I cannot understand.

I don't really think it is childish to play computer or video games as an adult...I have a friend whos close to around 50 and he still plays computer games and video games not exactly a childish person and still plays such games. I sometimes like computer and video games to, but don't play them that terribly often as it gets boring to me after too long but can be fun sometimes.

No, no, it's not crazy to think that way. I've had so many damn jobs, and that's the way I've *always* thought of it. "Unskilled labor" is called unskilled for a reason. I seriously cannot over emphasize how utterly mindless and braindead these jobs are. Almost no thinking is ever required. There's zero challenge, no interesting element whatsoever. I've never seen an unskilled-labor type job that is an exception to that rule, at least not by my standards. This type of job never offered me any fulfillment, because it never gave the feeling of DOING anything. All it ever did was just make me miserable. It might be different for you, but still, that's been my experience of it.







Eh, it depends on what I'm doing. If I'm gaming or something, I dont zone out. With the sorts of games I'm into, there's typically a high challenge level and a great many things happening at once, which actually holds my attention. There's complexity and difficulty. No boring moments, since I avoid story-based games like the plague.

It's the same with other things I enjoy doing. But when it comes to things that dont require much thought or something of that nature, then oh yes, I zone out. It was the case when working, and it was even more the case back during school. Everything was boring, boring, boring, and I would be lying if I said I ever gave a damn about any of it.... so I would space out. And when I space out, I space out HARD. I do things like trying to make a sandwich but forgetting the bread (yes, this is as idiotic as it sounds). Stuff like that. Needless to say, employers do not like it when their employees space out. They like it even less if they do it as bad as I do.

Interesting. I hadn't even taken boredom into consideration because I thought I would be equally board in any type of job. At my current so called job it's a mere four hours at a time yet they still seem to drag by slowly which makes me wonder how I'd deal with an eight hour shift. Anyway I just figured that skilled labour would also be boring. For a while I thought it would be a good idea to be an accountent but would that be less boring than unskilled work? I abandoned that line of thinking when I realized that while maybe I could complete a bachelor of economics without being driven sane once I got the job itself they might expect me to work 16 hour days for a third of the year during tax season.

Since I thought all jobs were equally boring my concerns about unskilled labour were about being working class and getting a lesser ego boost (and being less dateble due to diminished social status). However, perhaps some small perks of being working class is that many unskilled jobs are 40 hours a week instead of 100 hours a week and if they do want me to work outside of my normal hours I might get overtime. I've heard people boasting that they get a salary not a wage but I don't see the point of being paid in a salary. When the wage earner works overtime he gets paid for the extra hours and possibly at a multiplied rate. When the salaryman is expected to work outside of his normal hours not only does he not get paid time and a half but he won't get paid at all for the extra hours, not even at his normal rate. So I don't get why salaries are supposed to be inherantly better than wages, aside from the fact they tend to come with more prestigious jobs.


The only point at which I considered boredom was when considering whether or not to work at all. If I'm very lucky I might get a job where it's appropriate to listen to audio books while working. If I still have to occasionally take instructions I can wear my non sound blocking headphones and it won't be like my current job where they either don't understand the difference between sound blocking and non sound blocking headphones or they do understand the difference but they don't want me to set a "bad example". Another one that annoys me is when they say I can't wear headphones is because some of them think I won't hear the incredibly load fire alarm and burn to death.


^this^

Yeah, if you have trouble with a 4 hour shift, you're probably like me.

4-hour shifts are about as low as it gets, but holy hell, they always would drag on.... and on.... and on..... and on.... as slow as could possibly be. I hated them. All I ever got from those was anger and depression.

And I've done 8-hour shifts. They were hell to me, they really were. And that's something that needs consideration: If you take anything other than a simple part-time job (which is almost ALWAYS unskilled labor), you *will* be put into frequent 8-hour shifts. Hell, even some part-time jobs will force them on you at times.

On top of that, I constantly found that most employers simply are not willing to deal with my many quirks, that are part of the whole autism thing. They just didnt give a damn, they thought it was all "excuses", despite careful explanations. Even if it's something that you know full well could give you *alot* of trouble and possibly cause you to make a scene, they dont care. They expect you to do it. Dont do it, and you're out. It was very, very rare that I found one that was at least willing to TRY and understand. And even then, if you're dealing with customers, it's *guaranteed* that the customers wont understand in 99% of cases.

This is one reason why I ended up doing the testing stuff. The developers I deal with have gotten used to me, and tend to have no problem at all with my general strangeness. I'm always friendly and polite to everyone involved, and I tend to have a strong effect on the games in question, often causing entire new game mechanics, which are my idea entirely, to be added in. I help them make their final product better, and they are appreciative of this, which is something I rarely ever got out of actual jobs. Partly it works BECAUSE it's done over the Net... I dont have to deal with customers, I dont have to wear stupid uniforms, I dont have to travel down crowded roads I hate, I dont have to deal with strict schedules.... and so on.

It actually might be something for you to consider as well. I dont mean specifically game-testing... but possibly you could find something productive that you could do via the Net, with your own computer, in your own room. I think it's worth at least looking into.

I've never worked 8 hour shifts except in work experience. They seemed unending. I remember my last day of work experience was the day when GTA: San Andreas was released. After it ended I could go to the shop to pick up my preorder but first I had to wait ten million years. As you say 8 hours is Hell and yet some workers are expected to come in at 9:00AM and leave at midnight. One time I dated a nursing student who said in her placement she once did a 24 shift. I thought she was mad (I don't mind staying awake for days at a time, so long as I'm not working during that time). I read in some British newspaper that Brits were considered lazy because when they got home from the office at 6:00PM (assuming it takes them an hour to commute home) they were too tired to go to the gym. Only one of those evil A-type people would say someone is lazy for not going to the gym when they know they're already exhausted (and remember most bosses are A-types and most A-types think all other people are A-types)). In the comments one guy said that if you get home at 6:00PM, you haven't had a hard day at work. So some people think it's not a "real job" unless it goes from 9:00AM to midnight? I read on some other website about a waitress who was stressed because she was expected to work from 5:30AM to midnight with no breaks. Maybe stressed is an understatement. 5.5 hours of sleep per night isn't enough but I don't know how long her commute time was or what other activities ate into her remaining time such as cooking, eating, bathing and filling out tax returns (I also don't know if she was expected to go for 18.5 hours per day without eating). Since waitresses are paid by the hour I don't know why the diner couldn't just hire to waitresses. The wage would be the same but maybe the diner wanted to get out of paying benefits to two employees (and no wonder we have more unemployment if the employed work longer hours there'll be less work left over for job seekers). If there's a city with two million people and a million jobs, some politition will call the remaining million lazy. I've also heard politicians chastise job seekers for "refusing to work" when they're looking for work.



Yeah, I'm not sure how I'll deal with that. In my current supported wage "job" they don't mind my quirks. I haven't had any experience with other employers but if their ability to emphisise is as bad as some of my relatives who don't realize that for some people having to work 8 hours or more can be like hell... It's funny they say us aspies don't have theory of mind or abiltiy to predict how other people are thinking yet I haven't observed much theory of mind among NTs. They seem to think everyone thinks like they do or if anyone thinks differently it means they must be wrong.

When I work full time I feel like hell. When I study full time I feel like hell. It's exhausting but the thing is, I wonder if NTs don't feel exhausted from full time work or study or if they feel just as bored and exhuasted as I do and it's hell for them too but they just keep going because they're mentally tougher than me.





Maybe. Although I play games I'm not sure if I understand them well enough to consider things like balancing the difficulty. If I could have my way I'd be a tester for things like gamepads, smartphones and other hardware and would try to have some influence over their design. I have this obsession with ergonomics and think we're living in the ergonomic dark ages. It seems as though most present day industrial designers are incapable of kinesthetic thinking.



Do something at home? Maybe. Though I feel slightly more motivated to do stuff when I'm not at home and I wouldn't want to be too isolated because I usually enjoy being around other people once I've had a few days to get used to them. At least at home it doesn't have to be continuous. If I'm doing something I hate I could stop/start every half an hour (how I used to do some of my homework) but if I think of a good idea I don't have to lose my train of thought just because 5 O' clock rolls around.

Yeah, some of those jobs can get a little nutty with the hours. Stuff like nursing and medical professions in general sound like an absolute nightmare. Not just 24 hours, but I've heard stories of 48, or even 72 all at once. I cant even imagine that. I'm pretty sure my mind would shatter well before the end of a shift like THAT. That sorta thing happens in the gaming industry as well. Things like 120+ hour work weeks, to the point where a couple of developers/publishers (EA being one of them if I recall correctly, I could be wrong) had lawsuits filed against them because of what they were doing to their poor employees. It's just amazing, really. I dont know how people can make it through something like that.





Some of them really dont seem to. My father is kinda like that. He can handle all of the stuff he needs to do, and it never puts him in a bad mood or anything. Oh, he'll get exhausted if he has to travel too often within a short time, which happens every now and then, but to be fair pretty much anyone would get exhausted to do THAT much travelling, be it by plane or car. But aside from that, he's always totally fine with it. And then after he's done with that every day, he'll come downstairs and then start doing housework, of the sort that often doesnt really NEED to be done. He'll come in here repeatedly and clean up my room, despite me constantly telling him that he seriously doesnt need to, which always gets a "But I want to make sure it's clean for you", which is immediately followed by my brain rebooting due to crashing from trying to process that. Or the head developer at the main indie group that I do testing for.... I commented recently on their astonishing rate of bug-fixing, which is really unusually high, saying that I thought it was very impressive, and I wondered how in the heck he could handle doing so much at once. His response was something like "Well, it's fun for me, so it's not a problem!", which leads to more brain crashing via "divide by zero" errors when attempting to figure THAT out. When I do coding of any sort, bug-fixing is the most aggravating part. Things get launched across the room. But he ENJOYS it. I wish *I* could enjoy it. He's said the same thing about the fact that he'll occaisionally do like, 12-15 hours of coding in one day, which just baffles me further.

I just dont understand it. I can grasp the idea that some people can be passionate about their job, and enjoy some aspects of it, but.... even with what I'm doing, the testing, even THAT can get me really damn frustrated at times. It has seriously aggravating moments at times. In an overall sense I enjoy it well enough, but even with that comes serious irritations which can put me in a bad mood. So yeah, I really dont know how some people can do that.

Another thing that confuses me about the real world is that even for people who just work 9-5, I wonder how they can do things like go to the post office, go to the DMV, go to the bank (not the ATM), etc. I mean, sure the supermarket is open 'till 9:00PM but there are many places that are only open 9-5 on weekdays and if those are your working hours...



Also the quality of the game may suffer. I guess that's not as a bad a problem as their employees being driven insane but still...



Well at least you don't have to deal with parents nagging you to clean your room yourself. I'm too old for that sort of thing but I got into an argument with my house mate so now I'm back home again.

Maybe I just don't have much energy. Sure video games are more fun than anything else in my life and yet I only play them for about two hours a day because I don't have enough energy to play them more. My friends joke that I'm so lazy, I'm too lazy to even play video games.

Yeah, I dont get that either. They'd do all of that.... and have time for nothing else afterwards. I'd go crazy from doing that so often.




You might consider looking into that a bit. It could be that you're not getting enough of something out of your diet, or that something you're doing is draining you, or all sorts of things. Possibly a doctor could at least give some tips on what you could do, it might be worth looking into, if your energy is THAT low.

But it also helps to get up and force yourself to move a bit. Go for a walk, even if it seems like a monstrous pain in the butt. Something like that. What I've learned the hard way is that the less you do, the less energy you will have over time.