Originally Posted by
Mythricia
The effects gaming can have to life is one direction to look at it, but you can also look at is as your life leading to more gaming.
Doesn't make a lot of sense does it, so lemme explain;
Not everyone is the same. Not everyone has the same prerequisites for having a great social "IRL" life, and it's not even their fault or under their control. I, for example, I've got an Asperger diagnose. This implies a lot of things, but one of them is, frankly, I'm not a social genius - of course I don't let that diagnose overrule my own will, I don't start QQing and say "I can't socialize because that's just how I was made" - that's just silly. But what it DOES mean, is, that I find it more comfortable to talk to people and socialize, for example, online - in games, forums, IM's, e-mails, whatever really - it's a medium that I can handle, as opposed to being with lots of people in-person - I can practise and get better at it, but in the end all it does is make me want to turtle-shell and toss rocks at anyone walking within 100 meters. I imagine there's quite a lot of autistic people in the gaming world - the digital world is alluring to us, it's logical, systematized and persistent. So yeah - not everyone has the same foundation of life, and thus not the same standards, expectations, or habits.
Anyway, this pretty much means that I spend more time by the computer because it's a medium that I handle better. For me this implies gaming too, since well, it's fun - and it involves other people. The term "IRL" is bullshit frankly, because even if you're talking to someone via a computer, you're still interacting with a real person - sure, not in the exact same way as you would in-person, but in, for example, my case - that's a good thing.
Of course this is more of a minority - some people simply just play too much games for no real reason other than addiction and lack of other things to do - I can't speak for those, but I can speak for people who have other reasons for spending a lot of time by the computer/gaming/online/not in your local pub. A lot of us got other things on our mind, other things to spend our time with - often creative, too - that can lead to us spending even less time "outside and socializing" - and don't we have the right to, if we want to? You do your thing, I do my thing - as long as I don't directly affect you, why should you bother arguing about it.
People are gonna try to flame this, and bring up ingenious things such as "psychological diagnoses is just bullshit that people hide behind because they fail at life" etc, I've heard any variation of that before.. But hopefully some people will read, stop, and think "Well, oh, I didn't really consider this".
Also, saying that gaming doesn't alter your social skills in any way is downright false and short-sighted - you can actually learn from talking to people in games, you meet people from other cultures, you meet people from other countries, other parts of the world entirely maybe that you might not otherwise have the opportunity to - and that does teach you something hopefully, for good or worse. Maybe small and shallow things, but still, you might just learn. And for all you know, you could meet someone that you got to know better over time - which could turn out to be of great value to you - who knows?