There’s a tl;dr at the bottom but I did a lot of editing to make it shorter and interesting… it’ll be more entertaining if you read it beginning to end, especially if you’ve ever been a gamer.

To understand the truth behind video games, we have to understand we play them (men specifically).

There are a lot of optional activities you could choose to spend your free time on. Drawing, dancing, skiing, pottery, fighting, climbing, hiking, sex, masturbating, dating, etc. Video games are one of those activities.

More men than women play video games, this is a known fact. You could name a couple of highly successful guys who own a video game system and play either regularly every now and then, but you know ZERO HB9-10’s that play video games. The women you do know that play are usually low SMV and masculine (with some minor deviation).

Anything we do of true freewill has to have some benefit for us (as with most things human beings do), and most activities we choose to involve ourselves in of our own accord usually have a payoff, or have positive consequences that could be described as “rewarding”. Video games are no exception.

Most game that you or others have either ever played or liked, new or old, have a big component in the sense of providing the player a reward and / or a sense of accomplishment (immersion and narrative are present but 99% of the time pay backdrop to these elements):

  • Call of Duty - “You’ve unlocked the m5 scope with the camo grip!” or “You’ve unlocked 54th prestige!”
  • The Legend of Zelda - “You’ve found a treasure chest with the next cool item” or “You’ve defeated the evil boss of the stage”
  • Super Mario - “You hit the block and found an item that makes you invincible or much more powerful than you were” or “You got to the end of the stage” or “You rescued the princess”
  • PacMan - “You got the highest score” or “You got to see the next scene animation (whatever it’s called)”
  • Pong - “You got the ball past the other person’s (or CPU’s) defense”

The important thing to note, is you could make all of these games without the pronounced feeling of success for meeting a set criteria. A Call of Duty game with everything unlocked, and no kill death ratio or anything easily identifying your skill or time level spent with the game. PacMan with no score and no ghosts. Pong with a barrier so no one can score. A Super Mario where you could choose to play any level from the start, and just immediately go to the last level and beat the game. Or in fact any game where you could just jump to the game ending screen.

In the end, the purpose of games like any other activity you might choose is to provide purpose and enjoyment.

Though many might call it a sport played at it’s highest level, gaming remains a sedentary activity. The big thing with video games, is while most people choose to make parallels with games and movies / tv / music in terms of relaxing activities, video games is the only sedentary “male dominated” activity. Interesting.

There are different reasons we derive enjoyment from the activities we entertain. Upon close inspection, the main components we enjoy in games are the feeling of getting stronger or richer, or the feeling of accomplishment in the sense that you already had, or fostered the skill necessary to get through a level or a portion of the game. This is predominantly a male area of interest, hence why video games are a predominantly a male space.

As outlined in the book “The Way of Man” by Jack Donovan (great book, read it), throughout time, especially not in civilized times, while women have been tasked with caring for children, men have always been responsible for providing for the group, for hunting, and for gathering supplies, and for competing with other men for those things (provisions, meat, supplies). So it’s in our nature to be driven towards competition, to succeed against big odds. We’ll come back to this point.

Video games are similar to music / tv / movies in that they are manufactured for your pleasure, but video games are something unique in that they are usually created in the goal of getting you to buy and play them for a profound sense of accomplishment. This is why “Achievements” came to be in video games, why they were created, and why they became so popular. When “Achievements” first came out, people specifically went out of their way to buy games (full price) with easy to obtain achievements just to compete and feel a sense of satisfaction. Pretty ridiculous right? It’s a construct which plays on males instinctual urge to compete / fight / win. This is why “Pay to Win” games are so successful, because they capitalize on this urge to accomplish a manufactured challenge designed to make you want to take it on, and designed to make you feel like you accomplished something.

Before we move onto non sedentary activities, again like I said, video games are the only sedentary male dominated activity. Assuming all things being equal….If you enjoyed video games as much as other sedentary activities, it would be more pragmatic to be interested in others for the simple fact that you will be infinitely more interesting to woman, and in turn will make you find women more interesting. Small talk and finding commonalities and establishing a conversation is much easier talking about similar life experiences or hobbies or interests and books / tv / music / movies can play a big part in that. Not saying any of that is required, it’s just saying that out of the already sedentary activities, video games are the most useless in the grand scheme of your life. (so it’s ok to swear off these sedentary activities all together, but don’t use the it’s the same as music / movies / tv rationalization because it’s not). And if you reaction to this is “fuck women, I’m all about the male activities anyway” and your goal is male bonding or masculine activities, there are much better activities than video games for that anyways.

I know what you’re thinking. It’s the same for sports activities, right? You manufacture a set of rules or terms, and you try to win to based on those rules and terms to get that sense of satisfaction for winning or playing by the rules well. And that’s true, but there are 3 big differences.

The FIRST is, very few video games are designed for you to fail. Name a video game that when you fail, you just fail completely. Most games give you infinite tries. True accomplishment is rendered from something that you could fail at, failure usually rendering more consequences then just immediately starting from where you began like in today’s video games. And most games are designed for you to win. Powerups, cheat codes, easy in the beginning, etc. Failure is always palpable in sports which is why it makes the NFL hail mary amazing, or the NBA end of game buzzer beater to win the game amazing. Super Bowl, whole year build up, no chance of return next year, all the effort put in, and any play could determine the fate between success and failure. You don’t get a restart on a Super Bowl game. Failure is much more punishing in any sport (or for that matter, any regular activity like climbing, etc).

The SECOND huge difference, is with most activities, you take home a life enriching skill, or a state of mind, or something beneficial to take with you on your life journey. Climbing Mt. Everest? You’re learning survival, endurance, balls, achieving what few men have done, etc. Dancing… physical activity (staying fit), learning confidence, exposure to women, etc. Trust me… I’ve been playing video games my entire life, and there hasn’t any stand out benefit I’m able to take with me on my life journey. Even if I sit on my ass all day and watch a season of Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones… that represents that many more conversations I can have (based on their popularity) that can lead to even deeper conversations (that’s what small talk is really).

The THIRD difference is most games are designed for you to win. Video games as I said before are predominantly a male activity, and men like to win. Games are designed to be profitable. So are sports but you watch sports for the love of the game and / or there’s always going to be a winner for at least some fans to cheer about. You buy games for the sense of satisfaction in beating them, so games are literally designed & manufactured for you to capitalize on the male demographic’s overwhelming demand for a sense of accomplishment (Again, there are games that have entertaining aspects of them that don’t have anything to do with this, but they’re merely window dressing. You might have a game with blood that people enjoy, but you would never have a “gore simulator” with no point in the game other than that). The sense of fake accomplishment you get from a game serves to fill a void where you normally would not be getting a sense of accomplishment. This compounds the reason why young powerless men in today’s society are so draw towards video games, and why men after a hard days work just want to get on the video game and shoot some dudes on Call of Duty, or level up on World of Warcraft.

What’s actually really interesting, is that video games are like masturbation in that sense. Like masturbation is a second class citizen to sex that fills the void that a lack of sex would leave, video games are a second class substitution for an actual feeling of accomplishment that fills the void that a lack of real accomplishment would leave.

Lastly, video games are not the best or only option for relaxing and winding down, don't fool yourself. Meditation is infinitely better, and drawing is good too, and we already talked about the other more worth sedentary activities. The main reason it's relaxing to you, is for the reason I mentioned: you might be stressed out or not having success in your life, and the feeling of accomplishment is what's relaxing you. Or you have success in life but you're not fully fulfilled yet... which is fine, but then that just makes video games a drug.

tl;dr: Video games are not a regular way to spend you time like other activities.. Video games are not like TV or Movies in the sense that you play games predominantly with an agenda to provide you with a sense of purpose or reward in terms of making you feel accomplishment. Video games are the only sit on your ass, male dominated activity. This means any time spent with video games vs other forms of media (music / TV / movies / books) is time spent ensuring a lack of a common ground with women in general, and video games are not a good “male-bonding” activity anyway. We play video games to play on our instinctual urge to compete / fight / win. Video games are way to fill the void left in the absence of feeling rewarded either through normal activities or life / work in general. The nefarious part is the satisfaction of playing a game is completely manufactured to take advantage of our need to compete and hunt and win and fight, without truly taking home anything of value, and without having to go through real failure.

P.S. someone make a better tl;dr because I’m too tired after writing out this whole thing.

Let me know what you guys think. I was asked to make a post on this based on one of my comments. Here’s a little of my history growing up with games if you want to read it.

History

It’s funny how TRP has provided the puzzle pieces to reflect back on my life in a new light. I’ve been playing games as long as I can remember. My first console was a Super Nintendo (which was the family’s but I played it the most).. I was always obsessed with video games from then on. I had to beat the game, find the secrets, master the technique.I got the greatest gift of my life (an N64 for christmas), I sold my N64 and all of my controllers, games, and added a bit of money for a Gamecube. I owned a PS2, PS3, Xbox 360, Gameboy, Gameboy Advance, PSP, PSVita, Nintendo DS, Nintendo 3ds, and most recently a Wii U.

Over the years I’ve slowly grown up, and luckily took up different pastimes which made me adopt RP tendencies, and I slowly pared down on the amount of gaming I was able to do, to my dismay (I mean it wasn’t a bad trade to finally be in a woman, to finally know what it feels like to have my tongue in a girls mouth… but I still missed one of my favorite hobbies). I finally found TRP after not having much success with “seduction”, and with some prodding from commenters here after 1 or 2 months, I gave up gaming so that I could 100% funnel my effort into being a valuable man. When I think back on gaming, I have a lot of good memories. But I’m confident now looking back on my life, if I could do things different, I wouldn’t have played them.