The Devil's Advocate today takes readers on a roundabout journey that ends up asking gamers to 'repurpose' a single hour of game time in the pursuit of something else. Curious? You should be! Keep reading and then leave your thoughts in the comments.

A pair of unrelated articles spawned today's Devil's Advocate. Unlike most of the columns I've written here, however, I'll be a bit more upfront about the conclusion I've drawn from what I've read. Simply put, the premise of today's Devil's Advocate is this: I would like any readers of the Devil's Advocate who have an interest towards the playing of games to devote an hour less into gaming and repurpose that time into other constructive tasks.

Read more of Victor Barreiro Jr.'s The Devil's Advocate: The Intersection of Work and Play.

Just to update people with my personal plans, not that it really is of public interest, but I am now committing three minutes a day to master and perfect the dance performed by Psy in his music video Gangnam Style. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bZkp7q19f0  Cheers.

Not engauging in play would be a huge deficit to creativity.   That's probably why I have never heard of the Baining, and why other cultures who have very elaborate forms of play tend to be the most powerful and succesful.

In regards to the rest of the article, I'm very sensitive to how I spend my time.  I am a pretty good artist, but I have noticed there is a direct relationship between the amount of time I spend playing games and reading novels to how many drawings, paintings and sculptures I make.  I'm always trying to find some balance but it's hard.  I love the art within games, that's one thing that draws me to gaming.  Also the idea of living within a virtual world designed by other artists, it's very seductive.

Originally posted by Terranah

Not engauging in play would be a huge deficit to creativity.   That's probably why I have never heard of the Baining, and why other cultures who have very elaborate forms of play tend to be the most powerful and succesful.

 

In regards to the rest of the article, I'm very sensitive to how I spend my time.  I am a pretty good artist, but I have noticed there is a direct relationship between the amount of time I spend playing games and reading novels to how many drawings, paintings and sculptures I make.  I'm always trying to find some balance but it's hard.  I love the art within games, that's one thing that draws me to gaming.  Also the idea of living within a virtual world designed by other artists, it's very seductive.

 

 

You make excellent points! The Psychology Today article mentions that the Baining are generally a subsistence based culture, in that what they make, they eat, and are supposed to be more or less self-sufficient. If they engaged in play, or maybe in artistic experimentation in the guise of work, maybe they'd have a better output that'd make them more "Study-worthy" to earlier anthropologists that tried to study them.

I think, for some people, the lure of the game is so strong that they forsake other creative and construcitve endeavors to play games. I myself used to be so wholly ensconced in the gaming scene that I gave up some things or kept putting them off. Reading about Leaf by Niggle and the Baining made me think that there was a way to balance things better, and taking time out of something I love doing to find other things I can grow to love doing seems like a worthwhile endeavor. :)

I would love to adopt your suggestion VBJ and set aside time to create a novel of stellar proportions, but my tendency towards procrastination has thus far prevented this pursuit! Maybe I should tack a summary of your proposition to my corkboard at work?

PS the exercise wouldn't hurt either!

Well on the one hand, some hunter-gather tribes, only worked 4hrs a day and spent the rest of the time singing, dancing and so on (believe it was an Amazonian tribe), while in industrial Britain, children could be put to work at a ridiculously early age and work 12+hrs a day if not longer down a mine or at a mill and so on for nigh on 7 days a week the whole year... plenty did not make it to adulthood.

So modern (Western) society's 8Hrs, 5 day working week is actualy somewhere in the middle of these two extremes. I think that suggests that it's not as easy to make time for these sorts of aspirations towards art, but that there is also actual LEISURE TIME that can be put to good use if we have the will power to do so. :) So it's kinda more serious that people pick good quality games, movies, music and the rest of it to both passively and actively partake in than perhaps many people actually realize, to enhance our lives and self-actualization.

It's one view to take on where for eg games sit in our time-limited lives.

Great article, well written, very interesting.  My mom told me about flow and I have been very interested in it since.  Mihaly writes it often happens and is experienced while driving, say to work.  Easy enough to relate to I think.  I tend to drive fairly automatically to work, that includes avoiding foolish drivers, it gives me time to think, not always of something important or that makes me happy, but sometimes I do and when I do, I'm guessing really, that's flow.  Or another example, sometimes I mindlessly play guitar and sing, not to practice, just to enjoy it, to do it, I get very wrapped up in feeling the music while playing.  After I generally feel much happier, sometimes for days.  I'm also guessing, that is flow.  Same with games sometimes.  Anyways, thought I'd shed a little more light on this best I could through personal experience.  Thx for the article again.

The main reason i play games is because it's nearly impossible to find flow in daily life. We're constantly bombarded with information, trivialities, choices up to a point that we have lost all focus on what we were aiming to do in the first place.

Games are almost always made with the idea of flow and focus in mind, so it's easy to find it there. Honestly, if i could find the same flow anywhere else, i would probably not bother with gaming at all.