I'm not talking about violent games like Resident Evil and Grand Theft Auto. I mean regular games like Tetris, Farmville, Chess, or even pinball games. Video games waste a lot of time and you really don't achieve much from playing them. I have read stories about people that have gotten addicted to games and neglected their duties at home. Is that enough to consider them sinful?  I'm interested in your opinions.

Quote from: ClarkSmith

I'm not talking about violent games like Resident Evil and Grand Theft Auto. I mean regular games like Tetris, Farmville, Chess, or even pinball games. Video games waste a lot of time and you really don't achieve much from playing them. I have read stories about people that have gotten addicted to games and neglected their duties at home. Is that enough to consider them sinful?  I'm interested in your opinions.

Yes, spending 36 hours in an Internet Cafe playing ____ while your 2-year-old starves and sits in his own filth at home is mortally sinful. Any grave dereliction of duty would be.

Making a god out of anything is a violation of the First Commandment. To whatever degree you make it your god, that determines the seriousness of the sin.

But there's nothing inherently evil or incompatible with the virtue of Charity about click-click-clicking on virtual farms or arranging electronic blocks in the right order so they fill a complete row with no gaps.

It's common sense, really.

Quote from: Traditional Guy 20

Video games are a waste of a man's time and unlike cinema was morally evil from the very beginning. So yes I call any man who spends a moment of his time playing video games a boy-child and not a man. I used to play that crap myself until I "grew-up" and my healthy body and healthy mind has thanked me profusely for giving that crap up.

This response, on the other hand, lacks a properly Catholic moderation and is somewhat wanting in common sense.

"Morally evil from the beginning?" How was "Pong" any more (or less) inherently evil than Edison's early vignettes of dancing Turks and trains pulling into stations?

A video game - so long as it is not sinful in content in itself (i.e. excessively, realistically violent, immoral, vulgar, etc.) is like any other game: morally neutral. A man spending "a moment of time" (i.e. a moderate and short amount of time that does not interfere with his duties) playing Tetris, or Pac Man, or Asteroids is no less a man and no more morally corrupt than a man who spends a short amount of time playing Pinochle, or Sudoku, or Backgammon, or even one of the many sports you have frequently lauded in the past.

If we seek to have a Catholic work ethic - and not the Protestant work ethic that pervades insidiously in anglophone cultures - then we must recognize the right of every person to rest and leisure in moderate amounts. Leisurely pastimes that excercise the body (like the sports which you encourage participation in) are perfectly fine and legitimate, as are ones which exercise the mind and dexterity, like board and card games and, yes, simple, morally neutral video game of the kind referred to above.

Can video games be a waste of time and an occasion of sin? Yes, of course, absolutely; but so can Pinochle, Sudoku, Baseball, Rugby, etc... "Everything in moderation," as VCR rightly and succinctly put it. As for children, because they often show a predilection for becoming addicted to video games, I would recommend greatly restricting the time they are allowed to play (and, it goes without saying, the kind of games they are permitted to play).

I don't mind card games as long as they are not used for gambling purposes

but you know speaking of anglophone, do you not obsess over Chesterton and Belloc,who were English?

That makes you more anglophone than me.

Anyone who plays video games never does it in moderation, as I surely know, considering I used to play them, and therefore sits on their a** all day doing nothing but engage in these useless activities.