Don’t. Play. Games.

Fun is the reason why all games are bad for you, and there isn’t a game invented that is not supposed to be fun.

Every game, every time.

Fun is the same reason why birth control is bad. It makes sense. You can trust me, but I’d rather tell you in this short digression:

All of our parts have functions. The purpose of our sexual function is procreation. The purpose of the butthole is for poop to come out. The purpose of the toes is balance, probably. The purpose of the appendix is....we are still trying to figure it out. Why do men have nipples? I don’t remember, but someone found a function—or a reason—-for every part of our bodies, even if it is just cosmetic.

Preferences are not the same as functions. Yes, we can throw up from our mouths if we are nauseous, but our fingers were not created to go into our mouths to force ourselves to throw up if we want to lose weight. Ok.

Sex is the greatest sensation in the universe. But! Such an immense and satisfying sensation cannot come for free. In a world that is not fallen sex also spiritually links two people, and procreation is the result of this spiritual and physical connection. Love is born of this connection, and love nurtures this new life. It is not always easy to love, and it is not always fun to love. Life was never supposed to be purely easy or fun.

(Games make life easy and fun.)

But allow me to finish my digression: birth control removes the procreation aspect of sex. Lovemaking becomes fucking. Babies are conceived by accident, without love, and aborted. Sex needs its function or it risks losing meaning, making humans soulless robots. Sex becomes emotionally rote and spiritually meaningless when it is only done for pleasure. For a man it becomes about conquest. It becomes a game.

Remember, games are only designed to be fun. They are not without challenge, and sometimes they become tedious, or frustrating. But even when they are boring, they are still ‘fun’.

Robert Iler famously played AJ Soprano on The Sopranos. He has barely acted since.
Why?

Maybe he played the role of a lifetime, and producers never hired him because they knew he couldn’t match it. Maybe he lost interest in acting, and could only play the spoiled teenage son of a mafia boss.

Or maybe, he made enough money from acting that he could afford to sit around all day and gamble. Maybe he decided that if he had the choice, he would rather sit around all day, playing poker, than doing anything else.

Why?

Games are competitive and winning feels good because humans are naturally competitive creatures. There doesn’t even need to be money involved. Winning at anything strokes the ego. Winning at a job could take years, and there is stress involved all the way to the top, and beyond.

But a game is straightforward. It ends, and there is a winner, and a loser. And if you lose, you can always play again. And you can always possibly win. You never know...until you play.

Gaming has no purpose, other than entertainment and pleasure. Humans are thinking creatures; games are challenging and require thought. This challenge makes games fun to play. Fun can be addictive. When money becomes involved in fun, it becomes financially sustainable, which turns the pleasure of occasional gaming (and fun) into a life of obsessive leisure.

Pleasure is fine in small doses, but it is also addictive in small doses. Minutes can turn to hours playing games...chasing that win, that thrill, that feeling….

Games are a quick fix of pleasure from a stressful life, and that is not necessarily bad in itself. It is when all other good is neglected to chase that fun of winning. This makes it bad. Like birth control, this is what games were designed for: fun.

It is sad but common for games to replace sex. And it is also sad when sex becomes a game. That is a topic for another post.