The Utility of Gaming for Fun Part 1: Fun

THE POLEMIC AGAINST FUN: Fun most often perpetuates misery.

Fun, pleasure, the activity that fulfills your desire, has a bell curve effect on your happiness. It isn't a perfect curve, but it resembles it. From a state of happiness, fun will lift your happiness level and, once it is over, drop your happiness off the floor it started. How ironic a life of hedonistic utilitarianism is. It's ironic enough that the great pessimist philosopher Arthur Schopenhaur wrote of the things that bring us happiness as mere exciting transitions that, when over, leave us unhappy and wanting them again, making life a futile cycle of desire-pleasing.

That's the classic, secular argument against desire-pleasing, against pleasure, against having fun. But it's not enough to explain why it perpetuates misery.

A modern argument comes from the importance of good time management- both the "unlike money, you can never get time back" argument and the "place pleasure takes in the Time Management Matrix" argument.

The Time Management Matrix has to be partially explained first. First, click this link to view a Stephen R. Covey Time Management Matrix:

http://www.orgcoach.net/timematrix.html

Do that. Stare at the matrix and then continue reading.

Okay, have you stared at it yet?

Good.

I have to explain what to do with the "not important" boxes numbered III and IV: Do nothing that dwells in those traps. By doing unimportant things, you lose time you will never get back.

Playing games for fun can, and often does, match: "many popular activities"; "time wasters"; "pleasant activities" (this one is from another version of Stephen Covey's Time Management Matrix); and "escape activities"-all in the "not important" boxes. They can feel so fulfilling that our bodies and our materialistic, fun-addicted culture can convince us that unimportant activities are actually important to us

to the point where our self-esteem level is dependent on how much fun we are having right now.

Doing unimportant things increases the negative stress in your life. For so many, fun most often perpetuates misery.

THE APOLOGY FOR FUN: We cannot come close to maximizing happiness without fun.

What is the point of living? The universe is so large, why can we say what we do matters beyond our deaths? What's the point of moving people from a miserable life of poverty and war to a miserable life of wealth and peace? I.e. what's the point of taking people from unhappiness to unhappiness?

And would you pick a life of no stress and no fun over a life of high stress and lots of fun?

That last one is a weird question because it beckons the question: Can a person avoid being stressed out when their life has no fun?
That last one is a weird question too because it beckons the question: Can a person have no fun? Thinking can be fun.

Argh!

So the best apology for the apology for fun is: If it is the only way to maximize happiness, why not?

And now we have a paradox between the polemic and the apology: Fun brings misery and bliss.

But I believe the apology wins, and here is why: Fun shared between human beings is a powerful bonding experience, something that, when done habitually, makes something that lasts; fun fosters relationships when had well. Fun can also relax the body and mind which, for some people in some situations, prevents personal destruction. (Fun as praised in this paragraph goes in the 2nd box of the Time Management Matrix, "Important and Not Urgent." The matching descriptions in the box are "recreation" and "relationship building.")

These arguments may seem petty when we say: "Well, other activities do those too." But then we can regress to: "If it is the only way to maximize happiness, why not?" and combine it all.

Only fun can foster relationships, prevent madness, and bring states of bliss all at the same time. We cannot come close to maximizing happiness without fun because fun brings bliss. The apology for fun wins.

In part 2, I discuss how this relates to playing computer games for fun.

Utility of Playing Games for Fun Introduction.

Hedonism
noun
the pursuit of pleasure; sensual self-indulgence.
The ethical theory that pleasure (in the sense of the satisfaction of
desires) is the highest good and proper aim of human life.

"How is gaming no different from hedonism?" a special forces operator asked me. And I told him about The Sims and its time management lesson- how in The Sims, time, the game's non-cheat code-based resource, presents a utilitarian calculus from which our sims and we gods achieve things.

Lots of simoleans. Lots of commodities. Lots of friends. Death by furniture fires. Or, if game time is 'misused,' you have sims whose average happiness remain low for (in the first game) ever, with those few points of rapture in their lives being a horror show in juxtaposition with whatever else in their virtual lives you see.

The Sims is both a satire and a proponent for our lives, I told him; therefore, computer games are fun and can be didactic art at the same time!

But his question still pokes me because I know why he asked it: Most computer games, as of now, teach us nothing particularly useful nor provide game spaces where we practice potentially useful skills, including most of the best games. Most of the best games instead maximize fun.

So here's the question he should have asked:

"How is playing games that only maximize fun not a waste of time?"

I believe the best way to answer this question is to analyze fun and
time management.