Do you find gaming meaningful?

[ZedClampet]

Notes:

• US adults from age 18-29 spend more time gaming than they do nearly any other single activity
• Solo gaming is rated the 2nd least meaningful activity, right ahead of watching TV/videos and right behind social media
• Activities that include other people are generally rated as being more meaningful. This holds true for gaming with others.
• While solo gaming is rated fairly low in terms of meaningfulness, it is still near the middle of the 0 to 6 scale.
• Activities with children are considered the most meaningful. It should be noted that we have no idea how many people surveyed had children, and the time spent with children would probably be dramatically higher if only people with children were surveyed.
• I find it interesting that so much more time is put into single-player games than into multiplayer games.

 

[ZedClampet]

I think the major question is how meaningful is entertainment? Humans need entertainment to remain happy.

However, spending too much time in entertainment might make it feel less meaningful. I know that I, for one, do not nearly ascribe as much meaning to my game time as I used to before retirement, and sometimes I flat out feel like it's a waste of time.

 

[Alm]

When I was in my teens, games were improving in technology at an exciting rate. The gaming experience was new all of the time. Nowadays games seem to be either derivative of older games or barebones experiences which are designed to monetise skins. That and I’m harder to surprise with experience and age.

 

[Zloth]

We need to get you into some different games, @Alm! Though, if you're as old as me, back in our teens there were no games to be derivative of other than D&D, chess, and mahjong (and they always did mahjong completely wrong).

So, I look at this and wonder: what does meaning mean?? Helping others? That seems to fit best, though I'm not sure how socializing fits in with that. Playing a video game alone definitely isn't helping others.

Homework shows up, but not late-highschool/college coursework? Commuting shows up, but nobody spends time at work? Maybe the report is just covering "free time"?

 

[Colif]

So online courses aren't meaningful? They only would be if you with more people in room? I wish I had known

why is it only meaningful to walk with people? All these people power alone walking are wasting their time?

No one reads alone anymore? they must mean books? As everyone reads all the time while using a monitor...
and if they do mean books, why is reading alone not meaningful? Why is not even on list?

Meaningful just means: Serious, important, useful

meaningful

1. intended to show meaning, often secretly: 2. useful, serious, or important…

dictionary.cambridge.org

But it seems the definition they used might not be that one.

I feel gaming can be useful as it can teach you skills you can use elsewhere. You don't have to be with others to learn things... regardless of what they think of homework alone. Are they stuck in the wrong idea that people have prefered learning techniques?

 

[Pifanjr]

Gaming makes me happy and is therefore incredibly meaningful to me.

 

[Frindis]

I'm happy I can do tons of stuff other people find less meaningful, like gaming solo. I also enjoy playing with other people, but nothing beats going on a solo adventure in a huge open world. I can't have people talking in the mic or around me if I want to experience something my way. I also believe some games or genres for that sake work much better played alone.

 

[mjs warlord]

As i have said in other postings i have been a gamers since 1982 and have no plans to stop.

Does it matter if you go fishing and spend all day looking at water with nothing to show for it when you go home.
Go on a golf course hit a ball a long way then go and see if you can find it.
Spend all day outside in all weathers hoping for the perfect photo.
Sit in the armchair all day watching tv or listening to music.
Spend a fortune on stamps and stick them in a book that nobody else will see.

The answer to all of these questions is no it does not matter as long as your happy with what your doing.

I only have only got around 80 pc games in 22 years and compared to some on here thats not a lot , i tend to hammer a game until its completed or in the case of games that dont have an ending i hammer them until a get bored , sometimes i reload old games to see if i can remember how to do them.

I started gaming ( on a spectrum ) at a time when others around me thought that gaming was only for kids , things moved on a bit when consoles like nintendo wee came out because a lot of them had multiple controllers so the whole family could join in. Although their are still games around for youngsters i think that gaming has moved on rapidly and is now aimed at adult gamers ....... probably the same adults who made fun of me when i used a spectrum.

 

[ZedClampet]

I would probably find it more meaningful if I weren't in a gaming rut. I'm mostly doing other things lately.

 

[January's Ghost]

Nothing has any inherent meaning. Meaning is derived when we interact with something and enforce meaning on it. Whether we assign meaning of our own or accept the meaning that someone else told us we should have.

 

[ZedClampet]

Nothing has any inherent meaning. Meaning is derived when we interact with something and enforce meaning on it. Whether we assign meaning of our own or accept the meaning that someone else told us we should have.

Existential Nihilism is not the answer to the question. -10


The question assumes Nihilism, otherwise it would simply state the meaningfulness of gaming as a number, which I estimate to be 42.

 

[BeardyHat]

So online courses aren't meaningful? They only would be if you with more people in room? I wish I had known

why is it only meaningful to walk with people? All these people power alone walking are wasting their time?

No one reads alone anymore? they must mean books? As everyone reads all the time while using a monitor...
and if they do mean books, why is reading alone not meaningful? Why is not even on list?

Meaningful just means: Serious, important, useful

meaningful

1. intended to show meaning, often secretly: 2. useful, serious, or important…

dictionary.cambridge.org

But it seems the definition they used might not be that one.

I feel gaming can be useful as it can teach you skills you can use elsewhere. You don't have to be with others to learn things... regardless of what they think of homework alone. Are they stuck in the wrong idea that people have prefered learning techniques?

If we're going to examine the meaning of Meaning, we should instead look to Philosophy, as it's something modern philosophy has investigated for quite some time.

Theories of Meaning (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

That said, even though my Bachelor's is in Philosophy, I can't give any meaningful input. My brain is like a black hole and I'll be damned if I can remember even what I had for dinner yesterday and I'm not about to refresh my memory with this page after being kept up last night by kids and cats, then having a mere 20 minutes before I gotta get the kids ready for school.

Excuses, I guess...

 

[DXCHASE]

Yea, its meaningful to me, even if i hit ruts of not feeling it.

Its somethin i like to talk about too, not just the gaming part but the industry part too because its more than just the game part that interests me.

My love for gaming has helped me understand how to use electronics, new and old since i was a kid, i mean my parents still have a plasma tv, so they were very little help growing up. Gaming has helped me understand PCs a whole lot better too, its made my hobby of gaming cheaper which is huge as i get older. Much cheaper hobby for me than being a car guy.

I can go on forever about how and why it is tbh.

As for the statistics pointed out...Solo gaming is waaay more meaningful to me than MP games, but i can totally see why the demographic of 18-29 is the opposite, esp. today and knowing my son.

When we play together, it doesnt matter whether were all playing, or 1 or 2 are watching me do something, its all meaningful then.

I'm happy I can do tons of stuff other people find less meaningful, like gaming solo. I also enjoy playing with other people, but nothing beats going on a solo adventure in a huge open world. I can't have people talking in the mic or around me if I want to experience something my way. I also believe some games or genres for that sake work much better played alone.

100% agree. I can deal with mic talk, sometimes ill have my son in discord while were playing different games and hell be talkin while im doing somethin, but thats a very specific environment.

I would probably find it more meaningful if I weren't in a gaming rut. I'm mostly doing other things lately.

I hit this a lot too. I still find it meaningful but between work/life events and being sick, it hampers the urge to play a lot.

 

[isleepinabed]

By the information on the graph this was a survey where the respondent would classify each activity as more or less meaningful in a Likert scale, and also how that activity had changed in frequency between 2010 and 2023.

To me, this seems like a very long period of analysis for the population age bracket. There is also no indication of sample size and if it is representative of the very
heterogeneous american population.

As a discussion topic (and I guess this is probably all it is) I don't personally find gaming meaningful. It's a pastime. It can be enjoyable but not really have any great meaning. And I only play single-player games, too.

 

[ZedClampet]

By the information on the graph this was a survey where the respondent would classify each activity as more or less meaningful in a Likert scale, and also how that activity had changed in frequency between 2010 and 2023.

To me, this seems like a very long period of analysis for the population age bracket. There is also no indication of sample size and if it is representative of the very
heterogeneous american population.

As a discussion topic (and I guess this is probably all it is) I don't personally find gaming meaningful. It's a pastime. It can be enjoyable but not really have any great meaning. And I only play single-player games, too.

People go through huge life changes over the 13 years heading to your mid-to-late twenties, and 18 and 29-year-olds are not very similar. However, I think the general sentiment of the survey is probably accurate enough to get a general idea of what is going on for people under 30, but only a general idea. One thing I wish they had broken up is traditional television versus streaming services versus YouTube and Twitch. I'm just curious how critically ill traditional television is.

 

[neogunhero]

I would probably find it more meaningful if I weren't in a gaming rut. I'm mostly doing other things lately.

I’m on the same boat as you, but I also agree with others that as long as it makes you personally happy, that is fulfilling to you which therefore is meaningful. But as I’m also in a rut same as you, I am finding more meaningfulness in other activities as well. I have started a garden, and though we haven’t planted anything yet, building the planters and getting the soil in there was very fulfilling to me and I’m excited to continue on.

Any activity you do alone that makes you happy, satisfies something in you, or otherwise makes you feel fulfilled to some degree is meaningful. Doomscrolling my Steam library for an hour straight and not landing on something to play is not.

 

[Johnway]

I believe gaming can be meaningful for entertainment, social bonding, story telling, destressing and as a vector for learning.

The problems (like everything) is when you become a heavy user and at worse so excessive they become addicted impacting health, socializing and real life commitments. Having gaming or a single game define you as a person is tragic.

EDIT: a way to find out is probably asking some of these questions, if you didn't play game x all day, what would you play instead? if you couldn't play videogames (never existed, your console broke etc etc) what would you do instead? besides playing videogames what else do you do for fun? outside of video games what else do you do both for work etc?

Not going to lie, i do believe that i could have built empires with the amount of time i spend playing games. But this is my hobby and hobbies are time consuming and expensive. I don't let it take over my life (i don't book days off, i can moderate my time playing and can stop playing etc etc) and it helps me relax.

The bigger problem is when we play games and not having fun. If its a habit, you're not having fun (it upsets you in fact), that's when it becomes meaningless. I'm starting to find myself doing this at times like POE where i grind and commit more time even though i know i'm not going to hit my targets. Playing multiplayer games like COD just grinding away in the same maps, doing the same rotations, ideas and strategies in an endless cycle feels boring for me. Not leaving happy worries me even more as i've seen the real ugly side of multiplayer and cut it out entirely.