Meanwhile, I've yet to sell a screenplay and he's the head of the video game division at a major agency. I tend to think that gaming with someone (mostly -- depends on the game) is a much better "non-isolating" way to hang out than watching a movie. But that doesn't mean it's an argument that the proliferation of video games is necessarily positive. One problem is that most video games are designed to be addictive in much the same way that snack foods are. Easy to consume, always one more step to take. Very fun, sure, but a lot of fun things are bad for you. Coming up on heroin is fun but I wouldn't recommend it as a lifestyle. Getting immersed in a video game is also fun but I wouldn't recommend that either. --and there's your signature flagamuffin tentative-at-best analogy of the evening. Interesting. Can't immediately think of a counter-argument to this. Maybe: there's still a difference between virtual achievement and actual achievement. That is, what does "gamifying" our lives have to do with "playing video games"?I once argued with a friend of mine that video games were a "fake" achievement, and isolating compared to movies and television. He argued back that video games are immersive and quite possibly our next art form.
There are compelling arguments to be made that "gamifying" our lives actually improves them, rather than detracting from them. So adding entirely meaningless "points" to mundane tasks like "taking out the trash" improves our enjoyment of them and increases our likelihood of doing them, at least in the near term (things get hazy past the halo effect).