Video Games

not when your addicted, not for children when they could be spending time doing better things, even as adults there are better things than games, like reading books, far better for you.
Games just hit the sweet spot, in terms of enjoyment, but you come away from them with virtually nothing gained other than an experience, which you'll quickly forget and aim to replenish with a new gaming experience and on and on it goes.

I disagree. Computer games have long since moved on from being an interactive visual stimulus. I don't play games to shoot people in the face repeatedly, I play them to be absorbed into a story. Indeed, as technology advances, the video game industry attracts more and more people from the film industry as script writers.

Unfortunately, 90% of video games only have a story at all because it is now 'expected' of them. Any narrative acts simply as a thin veneer which is widely ignored, while people get on with shooting people repeatedly in the face. 6 or 7 years ago I would have been a staunch defender of video games, I would have poo-pooed any suggestion that they breed violence.

Now, I'm not so sure. The novelty of shoot-em-ups and sand box crime-spree games have long since worn off (not to say I don't indulge in occasional face-shooting), yet I still enjoy playing certain videogames for their ability to entertain you with a good story. Games like deus ex, which I can still happily sit and put hours into, regardless of the very dated graphics and creaky game play.

Anyways, I think it's wrong to dismiss games as simple attention occupiers. It might be all they are for you, but there is far more to (some of) them than that.