Long Live Play? Huh?

"When they tell your story, what will they say?"

Few words, and they inspire one to be more than they are.

Taken in context of the above commercial though, I feel they fall flat.

For some reason that will take awhile for me to fully externalize (hey I'm an introvert - cut me slack) - the moment they started to cheer for "Michael", who is probably the gamer in question, one word came to my mind.

ESCAPISM.

Great, so we're celebrating the gamer. The person who saved the world over and over again, won WW2, took down hades, destroyed sephiroth, saved the princess blah de blah. Erm.

We did not. We did it in a GAME. What happened, was not real. The only thing real, was you spent time, in a fantasy setting, living your fantasy. There is something happening in real life called.... real life.

Granted, my point of view, i.e. data point of ONE, hardly reflects the masses. Do I game? Sure I do. Not as a form of escapism though, it is purely a form of relaxation to allow my mind to connect the pieces together I've been working on. Not much different from going for a swim or a walk around the park, except that there is a very high chance that I get addicted to games. I know myself, hence the avoidance of owning a console myself (glares at the now-dead ylod PS3)

The point of this post? No point at all, apart from the fact the commercial rubs me the wrong way and I just wanted to emo about it. Seeing the $249 PS3 ad at the end was win. I shut the browser down. Sorry sony, want me to get another PS3? Buck up and give me FF7, in hd. With *all* the damned bugs.

With a bit more thinking, I think what truly irks me, is time. Or, the fact that time is probably the only resource that once used, cannot be recovered. Gaming, eats up time. No doubts about it. Is it a skill that once learned, can enhance our daily lives? I really doubt it. For example, I have completed FF7 like 3 times. The first run was about 17 odd hours; the next two runs I tried to do all the side quests, get the gold chocobo etc (till date, I have not killed the Emerald or Ruby Weapon. Insert sadface.) - easily 50 hours if not more, resetting the game just to get a bloody black chocobo for breeding. Seriously, what was i thinking?! Did I gain some skill in real life from breeding chocobos? (Side note: I still think chocobos are AWESOME and uber cuddly. Not as cuddly as wolves but I digress....)

I'm going to end this post now, as thinking about this just makes me more annoyed. I have stuff to do. In real life.

EDIT: I thought an answer to the question: "They'd say you spent your entire life playing games!" Wow! Compared to say, "He spent his life looking after dementia patients".... I really much prefer to have mine as "he spent his life learning stuff and not doing anything" to that, seriously.