People talking about the benefits of games reminds me of people talking about the benefits of, say, a glass of wine with every meal: it's worth looking into but at the same time it's the sort of thing that obviously doesn't scale linearly with the amount / intensity of consumption.
I similarly have mixed feelings as well, but for slightly different reasons. I've read about studies that say that musical training (which is often believed to translate to improvements in other cognitive aspects of life) doesn't actually correlate to said improvements, and I suspect that the same might be true for games (e.g. solving game puzzles doesn't necessarily mean you get better at school math or whatever)
This line of reasoning is also supported by research on correlation between games and violence (i.e. the consensus is that no such causation relationship exists).
All of these suggest (to me) that gaming is just its own activity without much impact on life other than opportunity cost itself.
However, there are some aspects of gaming that can affect overall well-being, specifically aspects related to repetitiveness (e.g. grinding). Repetitiveness is something that does come up in a lot of disciplines (e.g. its soothing effect in autist kids, or repetitiveness as tool in the context of meditation, etc).
The "addictive" aspect isn't necessarily a bad thing either. Games are, almost by definition, supposed to be engaging. But that addictiveness may come in a form of trade-offs. The one aspect that I think is justly vilified is monetization strategies that tie to addictive elements of gameplay and this is something that I'd actually commend China for trying to address via regulation.
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-rolls-out-new-rules-minors-online-gaming-xinhua-2021-08-30
I similarly have mixed feelings as well, but for slightly different reasons. I've read about studies that say that musical training (which is often believed to translate to improvements in other cognitive aspects of life) doesn't actually correlate to said improvements, and I suspect that the same might be true for games (e.g. solving game puzzles doesn't necessarily mean you get better at school math or whatever)
This line of reasoning is also supported by research on correlation between games and violence (i.e. the consensus is that no such causation relationship exists).
All of these suggest (to me) that gaming is just its own activity without much impact on life other than opportunity cost itself.
However, there are some aspects of gaming that can affect overall well-being, specifically aspects related to repetitiveness (e.g. grinding). Repetitiveness is something that does come up in a lot of disciplines (e.g. its soothing effect in autist kids, or repetitiveness as tool in the context of meditation, etc).
The "addictive" aspect isn't necessarily a bad thing either. Games are, almost by definition, supposed to be engaging. But that addictiveness may come in a form of trade-offs. The one aspect that I think is justly vilified is monetization strategies that tie to addictive elements of gameplay and this is something that I'd actually commend China for trying to address via regulation.
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-rolls-out-new-rules-minors-online-gaming-xinhua-2021-08-30
Reuters
Three hours a week: Play time's over for China's young video gamers
China has forbidden under-18s from playing video games for more than three hours a week, a stringent social intervention that it said was needed to pull the plug on a growing addiction to what it once described as "spiritual opium".
https://technical.ly/2021/08/30/vacation-employee-burnout
When I've been burned out or hated my job, I didn't take vacations, because the crushing realization that I'd have to return to work was almost worse than losing myself in the uninterrupted, repetitive, dead-eyed grind. While on vacation, I'd start thinking about the countdown to the end of the vacation.
> Well, root out the real causes of burnout.
Burnout is caused by working hard at something for a long time and not having it pay off.
You can work like a dog to release a feature, and if the feature does what it was meant to do, and you get recognized for your contribution, how hard you worked doesn't matter as much. You are energized, excited to be part of a great team, ready to move on to the next stunning victory.
On the other hand, if you work like a dog on a feature and it gets cut at the last minute, or its success is undermined by some VP's dumb idea, it sucks. If that happens over and over, without a win, you're burned out.
The solution is to get a win. Work on something that you can succeed on, and succeed at it, and get rewarded for it. Could be a big thing, but even a small thing is good enough. Sounds easy, but not always even possible in a badly-run organization.
When I've been burned out or hated my job, I didn't take vacations, because the crushing realization that I'd have to return to work was almost worse than losing myself in the uninterrupted, repetitive, dead-eyed grind. While on vacation, I'd start thinking about the countdown to the end of the vacation.
> Well, root out the real causes of burnout.
Burnout is caused by working hard at something for a long time and not having it pay off.
You can work like a dog to release a feature, and if the feature does what it was meant to do, and you get recognized for your contribution, how hard you worked doesn't matter as much. You are energized, excited to be part of a great team, ready to move on to the next stunning victory.
On the other hand, if you work like a dog on a feature and it gets cut at the last minute, or its success is undermined by some VP's dumb idea, it sucks. If that happens over and over, without a win, you're burned out.
The solution is to get a win. Work on something that you can succeed on, and succeed at it, and get rewarded for it. Could be a big thing, but even a small thing is good enough. Sounds easy, but not always even possible in a badly-run organization.
Technical.ly
Vacation isn’t the answer to employee burnout
Employees are burned out. Here’s what’s really causing it.