Balancing a life in gaming and outside.
 

Ya know, I go through some hard times. I read a lot about copyrights and how they could be better improved. I play a few PSP games while reading War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.

Sometimes I wonder about the direction my life is going and how to get there. Then I get a few bombs to drop.

One, talking about the effects of gaming from a personal perspective I can relate to.

Two, the effects of gaming in a broader sense

Both are pretty good to sit down with for 5 minutes and wonder, how is your life being affected? Are you hitting the strides that you can hit? Or are our lives being engulfed in our entertainment? It's funny. How I talk about gaming right now, it's a beast that's come up to destroy us. We make choices in how we progress in our lives. It's those very choices that can affect us far longer than we know.

I don't have any world of warcraft characters at all but I also don't want anything to do with the gaming community where do I fall on the wasted opportunity scale.

My problem is not much gaming but gaming news. I think I've got the hang of it though.

You post in a freaking sprite-webcomic forum. Figure that one out yourself.

No opportunity to waste.

I only know English because of RPGs and Priston Tale. I guess I'm on a bad part of the oppotunity scale, but I'm in a great university and failing as many classes as basically everyone else. I guess gaming helped making me overweight, but I was never good at sports and I exercised a LOT a few years ago, trying to get in shape and it didn't happen. Maybe I lost romantic opportunities. I do not, however, accept the point of view that it is a "beast that's come up to destroy us". I suppose I can't parallel them to books in sheer amount of learning experience, but dang, you always get something. In the first link, I find it interesting that he mentions some books which are fiction, which serve to tell a story...As many games do.

I guess my view of the world would be pretty different had I not played games that led me to their respective gaming communities, as I ended up making friends in a MMO I used to play that, while I don't talk with them anymore* they have affected me a lot. More than a great deal of people I know in real life.

*= Some people don't seem to have time out of uni.

Were I not to play games, I would be a bookworm. The net effect would have been the same.

Meh.

Shot at the starting gate.

Edit:
What if I am a sprite webcomic.

As i move towards work and study i find that i have less time for Rune Frontier, Final Fantasy and Harvest Moon... but i have enough time to enjoy Tiger Woods, WCW VS Smackdown, Tatsunoko vs Capcom and some Boom Blox on the side

It's all about balance you know?

But really, i just had to find a inner balance. I love games that makes me think, games that make me give a damn and actually process information to get to the goal... so, in some level, it's mental exercise.

being literal and ruining jokes for fun
 

I don't get it. Pounding on a keyboard for a few minutes a day is somehow socially crippling?