Last week my younger brother and sister came to visit. We had a lovely time catching up, joking around, eating junk food and playing with my baby daughter. At one point during the day, my brother made a (rather formal) request of his sisters: Could he take the PlayStation 2 back to his home after Christmas?

A few years ago, this would have sparked outrage in my sister and myself. The PS2 was gifted to all three of us one Christmas many years ago from our parents to replace a broken original PlayStation (may it rest in peace). My brother therefore had no more right to it than we did, which was why it had remained at our parents home to be enjoyed in holiday periods, rather than follow any one of us to university. Since then times have changed. I now live with my husband and daughter, and we have bought our own consoles. My sister isn’t a massive gaming fan, and only used the device to watch DVDs. Therefore, we relinquished our claims and granted our brother the magical black box.

This started us on a discussion of video games in general. In our family, there are two very different views on video games. The first is that video games are a valid and entertaining way to spend ones time. The second is that they are a waste of time that could be better used improving oneself or learning things. My brother is firmly placed in camp A, whereas my sister is resolutely set on the second opinion. What followed was an amiable discussion on why my brother likes to relax after work each day with a couple of hours on the computer: something my sister accepts, but says she will never understand (‘Why can’t you watch TV or read a book? At least you’ll learn something.’).

I am not writing this post to prove either of them right or wrong. How people choose to relax and spend their ‘down time’ is up to them. But it got me thinking about the views on video games in general, and reminded me of several occasions where they have been unfairly blamed for entirely unrelated things. I’ll explain more in a minute.

Before I start, I am absolutely, completely biased. I like games. I think that, in moderation, they can be a harmless escape from the stresses or real life and a way to relax. Therefore you might not think my arguments are completely fair. You’d be right.

So first off: this claim that video games are a waste of time. I could go on about this for ages, but I’ll try to be brief. Is anything we do to relax a waste of time? If we read a book, go for a walk, watch TV, bake a cake? Some activities might appear more obviously productive or beneficial then others (e.g. walking is good for you, and cakes can be eaten later), but ultimately, whichever one you choose, they all serve their primary purpose: they are enjoyable. They fill your spare time. You feel entertained and relaxed afterwards. If a video game fills this need, then that is no waste of time. Not to you, at least.

My sister’s argument that you don’t learn anything from games is also null (in my wholly biased opinion). The claim that you CAN learn something from watching TV or reading books may stand… If you’re watching Planet Earth or reading textbooks. But, in an age where younger children owning iPads is becoming increasingly common, there is a matching trend in educational gaming. I remember getting free CD-ROMs in cereal packets where a friendly skeleton named Seymour Skinless (huh huh) taught us about different parts of the human body. We also had a Disney game which taught you how to type. For older users, games can teach strategy and teamwork; valuable skills in any workplace. There will be some people who will point out that lessons in morality that are not-so-cleverly concealed in various other media are lacking in games, but what with the increasing popularity for video game backstories, I’d say that this is covered.

Learning is one thing, and productivity another. Playing video games reaps no material reward or benefit when you’re done. True. But there are other types of reward. Many video games have achievements, medals or task lists that you have to complete in order to win in-game bonuses. Yes, you can’t use these bonuses in real life, but often this does nothing to diminish the very real sense of satisfaction you get.

Video games are also good value for money. Say you’re making a movie. Your job is to keep an Audie XE entertained for around two hours. You hire a bunch of people, scout out locations, reserve sets, buy equipment and costumes and get to work. Great. Making a video game is much more difficult. You have to create days of gameplay to keep a player entertained. What’s more, you need to keep them interested enough that they come back to continue playing after a break. You need everything a movie needs: a story, characters, music. You also need to animate the entire thing to (these days) an extremely high quality. You need nonlinear game progression, mechanics, possible strategies, the correct difficulty and options for social play. A two hour movie costs around ��10 to see. A ��40 game will give you around thirty hours of entertainment. And often you can play it all over again, as a different character, with a friend, or with a completely new strategy. I’d say video games therefore are excellent value for money.

Now the twenty year-old stereotype of the video game nerd (VGN). The VGN stereotype is a gawky, pale, spotty-faced teen with glasses and a not-quite-cracked voice who has very few social skills thanks to spending every daylight hour in front of a screen playing video games (usually of the role playing variety). Let me tell you now that this does exist. Sometimes people truly do prefer to spend literally all of their time on games, often sacrificing other pastimes such as socialising. But like I said before: if you enjoy it, why not? So long as you don’t moan about why you don’t have any friends that is. But anyway. Most of the gaming population are nothing like this stereotype at all. They enjoy gaming ‘as part of a healthy balanced lifestyle’. Me for instance. I like gaming and, pre-baby, I used to spend an evening or two a week playing various video games. I also do cooking, walking, reading, writing, watching TV and movies and go out with friends. Video games have not taken over my life, they enhance it. And I reckon that is true for 99% of gamers. In addition to this, the gaming industry is worth more money worldwide than the music and movie industries combined. So perhaps gaming isn’t as geeky as we thought?

There are of course, the odd exception who take gaming so seriously that they become professional gamers. This is still a relatively new concept to me, and in general: gaming has only been a viable profession for a few years, and still meets with much skepticism. But it’s true. Through sponsorships and advertising, gaming tournaments with real money prizes happen all over the world. People from all over practise all year round to compete for the winnings, which in some tournaments can be seven figures. Competitors tend to be in their late teens and early twenties due to the need for high concentration and fast reaction times. If you think about it, it’s like a sport. Many will disagree with me here, but I think it’s as valid a sport as any other. You need various honed skills and compete against other individuals or teams for prize money. Like snooker, bowls, and chess, professional gaming requires strategy, focus and forward thinking. In some cases, such as the very popular Dota 2, teamwork is also involved, and a massive knowledge base. Dota 2 includes over a hundred characters, all with their own stats, abilities and powers, to choose from. Some characters complement others well, and others are foils. On top of this, there are almost as many unique items to buy during the game, and again these all have different effects. Also, each character has unique items. Professional players know every single piece of info on every single character and every single item. You might call it stupid, but that’s some serious memory skill. So what if they apply it to a game rather than, for example, becoming a doctor? They enjoy it, they’re good at it and the best of them are richer than we’ll ever be. Good for them.

On the flip side, there are those few who make a very bad name for gaming. Whereas most people use gaming as am escape from the stresses of real life, some people get sucked in to the virtual world so much that they believe it to be reality. Needless to say, the people in this category usually have a preexisting mental illness which confuses their perceptions of what is real and what isn’t. Before video games, television had the same effect. It isn’t the games fault. It isn’t anyone’s fault. But this combination can be dangerous. The Sandy Hook school shootings were committed by a young man supposedly obsessed with Call of Duty, and used a similar automatic weapon to those used in-game. Many say that video games are now so realistic that they risk tipping the mentally ill over the edge. Maybe so. But it isn’t the fault of the game. Mentally ill people need help. I can’t speak for America, but certainly in Britain mental illness is all too often a taboo subject that many people are either too afraid to talk openly about, or too ignorant of. This is getting off topic, and there are people much more qualified to discuss it, but I believe that more education and openness and support around mental illness will make incidents like Sandy Hook less likely (that and the US restricting gun use, but again that is another topic for another time). All too often, fingers are pointed at video games and other media as the primary source for violent behaviour. For example, I recently watched a documentary that investigated the May 2014 shootings in California by Elliott Rodgers, a young man who claimed there would be ‘retribution’ because no woman would sleep with him. Rodgers wrote a 140 page manifesto about why and what he was going to do (break into the ‘hottest sorority’ and kill as many women as he could). He posted YouTube videos describing how he felt and others where he followed happy couples and muttered about how they’d pay. On the day he killed six people, he put up a final video proclaiming his intentions. In the documentary we watched, there was a comment about how video games were found in Rodgers’ home and that they could have contributed to his decision to kill. What the documentary didn’t mention (I found this out later) was that Rodgers had been seeing several therapists due to various problems. I reacted to this with dismay. If Rodgers had an underlying psychological problem and left a trail of evidence preceding the crime, it was not the fault of video games that six people died. I find such a conclusion absolutely absurd.

Quite a serious note to end on, but nevertheless important. In my opinion, gaming is fine. Now if my daughter would only just go to sleep, I might finally get my Sim promoted to Rocket Scientist. It’s only been ten Sim years coming.