I’ve always played computer games. My first interaction with computers was playing the original Prince of Persia on a computer running DOS when I was 5 or 6. I have now decided that I will stop playing computer games except for very rare LAN sessions, where it is more about the socialising than the gaming.
Over the years I’ve spent a large amount of time gaming. Too much time. Instead of gaming my time on computers will now be spent doing productive things, hacky things, fun things, open source things, things that I could have been doing and learning so much from doing if I hadn’t been gaming.
Gaming is great, but it’s such a waste of time. I used to equate the amount of time I spent gaming to how other people spend time watching tv, almost as a means of justifying it. When you’re on a computer it’s already so easy to waste a lot of time not doing anything productive. Gaming, for me, just compounds that scenario.
A recent post on /. featured a review of a graphic novel called Hackerteen. Hackerteen, it is explained, is not just a graphic novel but “an edutainment program created by the Brazilian company 4Linux”. The reviewer goes on to state that:
“The curriculum… arose out of a desire to deal with three problems.
- Excessive time spent by young people playing computer games on the internet.
- Young people committing digital crimes on the internet.
- A lack of professionals who work with networks and computer security.”
Obviously I’m not alone in the amount of time I (used to) spend playing computer games. There’s so much other cool stuff you can be doing using computers instead.
To spend time playing with computers and learning about the cool stuff they can do and how they work, instead of playing computer games is my belated new year’s resolution.
Oh and Cory Doctorow’s novels are awesome :)