Ahh, I forgot about golf. I was thinking more football/soccer/basketball, etc.
I’ve already addressed watching TV/sports.
So we can add golf to the same list as video games. And bingo, apparently… I was actually going to bring up keno/slots/poker/gambling, but I figured it was a given that people view those things negatively.
Please. Have you read some of the “biblio porn” threads around here?
People carrying 5 and 6 books with them where ever they go.
People reading an average of a book a day.
People getting crowded out of their homes by their overstuffed bookshelves.
I don’t know anyone that dedicated to video games.
No. I just did a google search for it and I still not quite sure what it is. Anyways, my ignorance of it is probably not relevant.
This is not even close to being an “addiction.” President Theodore Roosevelt typically read a book (or 2) a day – before lunch time.
IMHO (and I’m also biased) there’s no such thing as “reading too much” – it’s like saying “loving knowledge too much.”
This is a “hoarding” addiction, not a “reading” addiction.
If somebody junks up their house and shelf with every game cartridge made since 1970’s Atari game console, that’s a different issue from video game addiction.
See, here’s the problem with that. Books are not always about knowledge. A lot of them (most of them) are trash. I love trash fiction as much as the next man (probably more), but that doesn’t change the fact that the latest Stephen King gorefest is still pretty trashy and has little to do with a search for “knowledge.”
Yes, I forgot to take into account that my personal reading is 99.9% non-fiction which affects my judgement for the value of reading. The amount of ignorance in the universe is infinite, so no amount of “reading addiction” will ever cut into that pie.
As for fiction, I still think that I’d rather have people be addicted to reading Dr. Seuss, Harry Potter, and Stephen King instead of playing video games. Video games do have benefits and have been shown to increase visual reflexes (eye-hand coordination) but don’t increase cognitive abilities (e.g. frontal lobe).
Compare the google results to “addicted to reading” vs “addicted to video games”. The “addicted to reading” results are mostly people making fun of themselves. The “addicted to vid games” look like an epidemic of mental illness. 
Then you’re playing the wrong games. 
There are no crossword puzzle heroes. It’s easy to distinguish between the grace, beauty, hard training and perseverance of athletics and someone in their bedroom stabbing at buttons.
My son is 16 and to hear him and his friends talk about video games in as great detail as they do is amusing to me. I guess when I was that age though we spent that same intensity on rock music and getting high.
Playing softball. Playing volleyball. Bowling leagues.
Honestly, there is a high correlation between respecting someone who does a hobby and whether or not they make money doing it. Knitters are not respected. Fabric artists who sell their pieces for hundreds…different story. People who play poker on Friday nights with their friends…people who play for million dollar pots…guys who play softball for the bar, guys who play professional baseball. Guy who plays lots of Halo 2…Frag Dolls.
Dedicate your life to something and have it unable to support you - you become the person who might have skated well enough for the Junior Olympics once and now doesn’t pass the Disney on Ice auditions.
There are a lot of people - particularly before you could sit in front of a computer or TV all day - who used books as a socially acceptable way to escape life. The best book I’ve read on this topic is Haven Kimmel’s “A Girl Named Zippy” - where the mother is depressed, and spends all day lying on the couch reading.
This was actually the first sign of depression in my aunt, who has been hospitalized and medicated for 25 years off and on now - she would pick up huge bags of pulp romance from the library and read.
As vices go to escape life, trash lit isn’t going to kill your liver, your library will provide your fix without you needing to resort to stealing, and overall, it isn’t a horrible thing. But anything that you are using to escape living your own life isn’t the healthiest thing.
Because this can’t be stated enough - you’re playing the wrong games. 
That’s really just another way of restating the OP: “Reading and literature are held in high regard in our culture. Gaming isn’t. Why not?”
Gaming, especially video gaming, is a new expression in our culture. Reading has been a sign of status and intellectual cachet for centuries. That’s why more parents try to encourage their children to read. We don’t hear much about ‘reading addiction’ because reading itself considered valuable and (simultaneously) because most people don’t read enough themselves. That said, I don’t really believe there’s any shortage of mothers telling their children to take their noses out of the book and go play outside with their friends. (I certainly hear it often enough.)
Burton, I think you’re right to compare the conversations about gaming to the conversations you had about rock music as a young man (although I think you’re underestimating the hard perseverance and grace in something like the Korean gaming competitions.) I’m betting at some point, you had people telling you that rock music was trash and listening to it would rot your mind and it would forever be inferior to the types of artistry preferred by the previous generations. Well that’s how comments about gaming sound to people who grew up playing video games.
Warren Buffet and Bill Gates both play bridge. Bridge has highly regarded because it requires intelligence and strategy. Smart folks like them do not play simplistic games like “goldfish” or “war” with cards. Now if they transfer their bridge game to a computer and video screen, does that mean they are playing “video games”? Well, I guess you could say that, and by extension, you could also say that it’s a “correct video game”. Or a sim-city virtual reality game with complex decisions is also a “correct video game.” Yes, I get that.
While I think the phrase “wrong video games” has some argument, let’s be honest here and consider the everyday meaning of video games to the people that criticize them: 1st-person shoot-em up games, space invaders, etc. These are not frontal-lobe type of games.
When everyday people say “video games”, they’re not thinking of games that require an IQ of 150. To re-emphasize… I’m not saying such games don’t exists, I’m saying that’s not what we seem to be talking about here.
Well, “new expression” is in the eye of the beholder. 2000 years ago in “Meditations”, Rome emperor Marcus Aurelius thanked his advisors for his ability to accurately read books instead of being distracted by gladiator games, cock fights etc.
Yesterday’s gladiator combats are today’s video games. There is nothing new under the sun.
Tomorrow’s entertainment diversion will be 3D holographic virtual reality immersions. And there will be a future SDMB thread wondering, “why do people disrespect my ability to play Space Invaders in the x y and z axis?” They will be biased that the novelty of 3D immersion is so mindblowingly cool, new, and different that it justifies any criticism of addiction.
You are playing the wrong games.
Beyond that, there are plenty of first person shooters that require thinking skills and knowledge of tactics to complete the missions. Further beyond that, since Microsoft started their Xbox division, Bill Gates has become a notorious video gamer.
Further further beyond that, if you think “first person shooters” are what people think of when they think of video games, you’re talking to the wrong people. Enough people play video games nowadays that video games mean “whatever types of games my spouse/children/friends/co-workers are playing.”
Please look at the context of the OP again. Bill Gates does not “dedicate his life” to video games and society (in general) does not view him as a “loser.” It’s irrelevant the type of games he plays on the XBox.
Bingo. The number of people that “dedicate” themselves to games at the expense of everything else is a vanishingly small number. Those that have little experience with video games and the people that play them view anyone that plays games as a “loser” and as someone who is addicted.
How many “dedicated” athletes do you know? How many would you know if pro athletes didn’t command salaries of $5, $10 and $20 million?
To clarify, I never said that video game players are loser addicts. I’m not debating that so there’s no need to defend it. The point I was coming in on was equating the value of reading books to video games.
What comes first… chicken…egg…or…egg… chicken?! ITR Champion wonders why videogamers don’t get respect. Some other posters hint that maybe if videogamers could command $10 million paychecks, then that respect will be granted.
When society pays you $10 million, you will have the respect. It’s that simple. Once prime-time TV has hour long shows of people playing video games and charges advertisers $2 million for 30 sec spots…and once millions of people pay&download video-captures of others’ video games onto their iPod to watch them, then you’ve got the respect.
Musicians before Mozart’s time were just considered “house servants” of their masters. Mozart’s freelancing elevated it to rock star status which paved the way for folks like Elvis Presley and Britney Spears to become superstars.
Doctors before 18th century were thought of as meat butchers or quacks. They didn’t gain their prestige until the last 150 years.
I guess musicians & doctors of 250 years ago could’ve complained that nobody gave them any respect. Buy they eventually redefined their work and subsequently, their importance to society.
So hardcore videogamers today are viewed as “losers” by some (most?) folks … what do you have to do to elevate your status to today’s rock stars, doctors, and NFL football players?
That’s … that’s beautiful.
When being a professional gamer commands a big paycheck. Even the absolute best professional gamers have to struggle to make a middle class salary, and then gaming becomes more like work than play.
Eggzactly.
And btw, I believe your astute observation has answered the OP’s question.
I disagree - wait, let me put it more topically. The OP asks, ‘why don’t computer games get any respect?’ Later on, Alessan suggested that playing computer games cannot be seen as art.
My response to both of them is that the complexity and depth of computer games is unfamiliar grounds for most people. Lacking experience with the subject, many people are too quick to dismiss the whole category of computer games as mindless and pointless.
The OP didn’t limit his questions to FPS shooters and I don’t think you can assume that’s what most people talk about when they hear video games. And I know this isn’t quite what you’re saying, Ruminator, but just to be clear - ‘gaming’ isn’t just limited to teenage boys or their particular interests.
All vanities aside, gladiatorial games in which the spectator sits and watches are more akin to modern sporting events than modern computer games or what I meant by the phrase ‘gaming’. I should have been more precise.
There was a thread here recently about whether games would become more addictive as 3d and holographic experiences became more believable. As I said then, I don’t think so, since early games like the original Civilization and Wizardry were both brutally difficult and legendarily addictive despite their simplistic looks. Graphic upgrades aren’t really the next big thing.
We already have proto-virtual worlds in Second Life and Playstation Home (among others). These build on earlier text based MUDs and MOOs. Holographics won’t be a real new artistic expression, imo, since the attempts to create Virtual Realites are currently on going. I expect the next big leap in creativity to come from Artificial Intelligence and Robotics studies.
But yes, whatever it is, I’m sure there will be plenty of scoffing from the old fogies about how the new Hot Stuff is inferior and stupid and destroying the youth of today and probably the work of the devil. The fogies were wrong about rock & roll - they’ll be wrong about the next big thing too.
I’m quoting this here because I agree with it. And to expand on your final thought, Justin_Bailey, lots of people self-identify as ‘golfers’ or ‘runner’ or ‘cooks’ without actually being professionals in the field. No matter how much time or money they might put into it, they don’t get called ‘addicts’ and other disparaging names. As I’ve said, I think most of the judgementalism is a reflection of the previous generations’ unfamiliarity with video games. A self correcting problem, if you will.
But specifically, I think the phrase ‘addict’ gets thrown around far too often when discussing video games. It’s simply not useful to take a specific medical term and toss it at anyone who plays games regularly (for any amount of time, including the vague ‘dedicating their life to it’). I hate being called an ‘addict’ even more than I hate being called a ‘loser’.
Ruminator: Sigh. I type too damn slow.
I agree that big salaries will help earn computer games some respect. But as I see it, in another fifty years computer games will be as ubiquitous and unremarkable as tv and books are today. More people will respect gaming as gaming becomes a feature in more people’s lives.
I think top international chess clearly demands great intelligence.
Before becoming world-class became so intensive that you had to study it full-time from pre-teen onwards, almost all the English team were graduates of Oxford or Cambridge University.
Kasparov is a contributing Editor to the Wall Street Journal.
Almost all leading players speak several languages and use sophisticated computer software.
Tournament games last for seven hours, demanding full concentration throughout that time.
Top international chess players benefit from a stable and supportive family relationship.
So that’s why you don’t hear complaints about the time they spend on it.