http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/08/28/playing-games-for-all-the-wrong-reasons

I saw this article a week or two ago. It was an interesting and refreshingly rational commentary, and it might make for a good discussion.

so it takes two weeks for Bibby to share stuff with us???

I'll agree that games can often be (and often are) irresponsibly used for means of escapism and avoiding problems. It's easy for me to take one quick look at my experiences with game communities in general and say maybe this kind of use for games is breeding the kind of "man children" you see too often lol. I think this article did a good job of saying this isn't always the case and we have to look at our own reasons for playing games.

Gamification seems like an interesting concept. I think it might be important to master the kind of attitude that people can have towards games and use it for good- education, productivity, that sort of thing.

Games can be art, but I think nowadays for the most part they're just built to be toys or simple tools for escapism. We can do better and we certainly deserve better. Let's work towards better games and better gamers.