a game designer or a hardcore gamer

[twinkle]

Why do people hate video games? I never really understood this. I always see people hate video games for a variety of reasons but none says anything bad about watching movies. Apparently I am praised if I want to be a movie or film maker but I am frowned upon if I am a game designer or a hardcore gamer. When will video games be accepted as another form of entertainment in the near future?
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meals ideas ~ meal ideas ~ vegetarian recipes

[Ron Swansons Stache]

Why do people hate video games? I never really understood this. I always see people hate video games for a variety of reasons but none says anything bad about watching movies. Apparently I am praised if I want to be a movie or film maker but I am frowned upon if I am a game designer or a hardcore gamer. When will video games be accepted as another form of entertainment in the near future?

There has always been a stigma against video games, for whatever reason. Like, if I go and play TF2 for two hours that's weird and nerdy but if someone else goes and watches Housewives of New York for two hours that's perfectly acceptable. Honestly at this point I doubt anything changes. There are exceptions to the rule, weirdly enough, like Call of Duty or say a sports game like Madden. Those are 'cool' video games to play. It's a very weird culture overall.

[Maringue]

There is the basic underlying assumption (which is wrong) that video games are somehow bad for you. And somehow it's even believed that video games are worse for you than other "screen time".

It's major league bullshit, and I'll give you a few scientific reasons why, cause that's what I do.

TV can be beneficial to your brain if you are trying to learn something. If you combine reading on a subject with a video on the subject, you can really help your brain to lock in the information because it gets picked up by two different regions of the brain. But let's face it, when The Learning Channel is reduced to reruns of "Here comes Honey Boo Boo", you can throw that theory right out the window and assume correctly that TV is rotting your brain. How? I'm glad you asked. Non-informational drivel doesn't like 95% of the shit on TV doesn't make you use your brain at all. And the brain is like a muscle, so those areas that used to synthesize information from multiple sources don't get used as much and stop working as well.

Then compare that to your average game of TF2. To get good at TF2, you need to work a very important part of your brain. Spacial recognition and prediction. The simplest example is when you see an enemy leave your direct field of view behind an obstacle like a big rock or something, your brain starts to keep track how long it should take that person to reappear on the other side, all while you are probably still concentrating on the other enemies still in your field of view. It's an extension of object permanence which every 1 year old learns when you play peak-a-boo.

Now a good TF2 player will really stretch this ability of your brain. On the second point of Goldrush (where the cart marks that right turn after the point), if you see a scout run across your vision, your brain starts rendering the rest of the map that you can't directly see trying to anticipate when that scout is going to pop out of the garage door by the first cap point. And that's the biggest difference between good player and great players. Sure, aim means something, but more important than that is anticipating where enemies are going to show up based on where they were heading and your knowledge of the map. It's why the really good soldiers get off 1-2 rockets at you before you notice you are being shot at, and it's why they kill you.

Doing that task really makes your brain work, in a really good way. And since the thing you are tracking in your head off screen is not a computer program, but an actual person, your brain has to constantly update the model in your head that is predicting when an enemy will appear because, if the enemy is any good, they will change their tactic and you have to adapt.

tl;dr
Making your brain workout the 3D spacial relationship of stuff that's not directly in your vision is like weight lifting for your brain, which is very good for it. If you're good at video games, especially multiplayer ones, you are forced to do this a LOT.