I just thought I would post a little response to Sara Pehrsson who said the following on 10/30/2000 8:17:36 AM:
"What do they get out of [games like Doom]?". As a gamer, I feel somewhat qualified to answer this.

1) The best Quake (sequel to Doom) player in the world, Dennis Fong, has turned his skill in this game into a multimillion dollar gaming empire. He and many others actually make money at this sort of thing. Granted, this is the least likely case, but many people develop these skills as a career or in the hopes of getting into this as a career.

2) It's just fun. Any skills I might have developed playing these games are a result of spending a lot of time playing the games. It is not an "effort" (as Sara put it) on my part to play games. It takes me about as much effort to play games as it takes to watch TV. In fact, it takes me more effort to watch television than it does to play games. This is just personal opinion, but I don't like most of what television has to offer. Everyone has hobbies, for many people it's gaming. As soon as a game begins to become "effort" I put it away and play a new game.

3) Regarding the statement that these games have "little personal or social value"; I think I answered the question of personal value already, but the social value is often underappreciated by non-gamers. Some of you may have heard of LAN parties, well my friends and I have a tradition; every thursday night we get together for our game night. We have dinner, hang out for a while and play games. More often than not, we are playing computer games. We occasionally play other types of games, but we usually play on computers. Does anyone question the social value of friends getting together to play pool, poker or basketball? Is this any different since we are using computers? Some might say so, and that is a valid opinion. However, as far as we are concerned, we are getting together to play games. It's a group activity that we all enjoy together. If we consider it to be social, can our opinion be discarded simply because others do not find enjoyment in this? Add to this the power of the Internet and now we can play with friends who live in other parts of the world. A friend in Michigan can't go snorkelling with us anymore, but we can all go online and play StarCraft together.