Are video games a waste of time?

Lately every time I play the console a tingle runs down my back and the little man inside me (yes, the one who says "you must not do that!") Begins to scream: Do not play the console! It's a waste of time!

Now in Easter the situation intensifies: I will have a lot of free time, and what I like to do most in my free time is to give the joystick (do not think bad, dirty ...). It may be a memory of when my mother told me "do not spend so much time with the games, that you're going to be stupid", but now I feel incredibly bad when during a whole afternoon I've done nothing but play, play and play. And what's wrong? I do not know, as I do not know why I feel guilty after, for example, playing for 6 hours in a row at WoW.

In many cases we defend that videogames are culture (and they are, everyone here knows), and as such should not be a waste of time. When we spend the afternoon reading a book, we do not feel that we throw our precious time, but quite the opposite: it seems that our hours were well used because that served to acculturate our minds. So, why does my conscience continue to torment me that I lost an afternoon of my life giving to the "little machine"?

Normally, when I get home after a busy morning, I feel like throwing myself on the couch, grabbing the control of my Xbox360 and relaxing. But every time I'm less able to get to it because my "pepito cricket" tells me "If you start working and advance work you will be a much more productive person than if you throw your whole afternoon playing Fallout 3".

I ended up convincing myself that playing is like missing my responsibilities (although of course, there is time for everything). Do I give too many laps? Maybe, but I'm not the only one who happens to him because talking to my friends, they've confessed that they play more than they say, but they keep quiet because they do not seem "flawed". It seems that almost nobody presumes to play a lot, and on the other hand, few doubt in showing off if they are very knowledgeable in film or literature.

When reading this it is possible that many think: "Hey man, I just play to entertain myself, to pass the time, and I do not care if people consider that I'm wasting my time because video games make me enjoy." Well indeed, I think that's the spirit: Many enjoy going to museums, reading novels, watching movies or listening to music. We enjoy playing and that is more than enough to justify hours and hours of having a great time, and never wasting time. Is not enjoying an end in itself?

Even so there are many people who do not understand this and still think that a gamer is someone who spends hours stuck to a screen, without more. In college I even received bad looks when I said that I would be extremely happy dedicating my life to the creation of video games. Some art teachers (my career, fine arts) consider the video game a stupidity, a mata-Martians without sense, let alone if you try to convince them that it is a true work of art.

How can there be a ranking on what is worth more? How can someone appreciate a painting like "white on white" by Malevitch and look with evil eyes at "The Legend of Zelda"? The first is a painting that has barely managed to capture my attention, while this game is for me a cornerstone of my childhood, which has made me laugh, cry and want to play it again and again. If we value novels, music, painting ... How are we not going to melt before the story in motion, the audiovisual bomb that is a video game?

The truth is that I had been considering this situation for some time, and I wanted to share it with you and see what you think about it. Do you also feel guilty when you have been playing the console for many hours?