Hedonism and Helping Others

The answer is both. I find that I need to have both, to help others and to have fun. Until morals tell me otherwise, my life shall be dedicated to doing those things.

For this reason, few games interest me. This mainly has to do with the fact that many of today's big budget games aren't really fun or interesting. Also it mainly has to do with few of my friends playing the games that I am, which means I'm basically playing them alone, not having nearly as much fun. Games also aren't interesting me much mainly mainly mainly because there aren't many ways I can use them to help people. At least, since I'm not a paid, read games journalist it seems so.

This year was supposed to be the one in which I decide if I want to spend my spare time writing. But I suspect that I'll need another year. There's no question in my mind that I will lose interest in having fun by myself. (I am pretty much done with that now.)

In a Quarter to Three podcast, Tom Chick said something that I want to experience. Playing Rock Band with kids. He said that there is not much out there as good as the experience of playing Rock Band with kids.

Perhaps it is because I know what it is like to try contributing to the lives of younger people that Tom Chick's Rock Band with Kids thing sounds absolutely wonderful to me.

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.