wow

South Park last night was hilarious, but it brought up a really good point.

The episode was about the game "guitar hero" and Stan and Kyle were working really hard to get a huge amount of points (100,000) in co-op mode. They achieved this, and all their friends went crazy. Then, some guy offered them a contract to play guitar hero, took them to coke and sex parties, and treated them like rock stars.

yaddy yadda yadda, one friend betrays the other, and starts playing with someone better, one ends up playing in a bowling alley arcade, they get back together, and eventually get one million points together. Once they did, the game said "Congrats, you've played enough to get one million points, YOU ARE FAGS!"

No one can argue with that. Come on people, guitar hero is a great game, and is wildly popular, but there comes a point in everyone's life where they should put down the controller, and pick up a real guitar.

Stan's mom said it best: "If they put half the energy into (something real) as they do on that video game, they could (go places)."


As a gamer, and a game programmer, I can honestly say that I have played games more than maybe I should at certain points in my life. I have even played certain games way too much. But one thing I can say is that never, never, never has status in a game taken precedence over real life stuff.

I know people who have missed classes (and tests) to play games like Diablo II, World of Warcraft, and such. They miss work to go on raids. It's silly. It's not real. Go do something real. Use games for when the weather is too bad to go outside and play, or use games for when you are waiting on parts on a project. Or use games for that 15 minutes longer that someone takes to get ready to go somewhere with you.

Some people play too many games... It's really too bad.

So, what I'm saying is, instead your free time consisting of playing games, make your free time consist of playing games, hiking, reading, hunting, fishing, or getting together with your friends. Let the games sit, they'll wait.