Ever changing environments, realization kicks in, one starts to ask themselves questions like ..."is playing certain video games a powerful illusion like many other forms of mind stimuli?, is one convinced that playing certain genres of video games really entertaining input for the mind?. I myself can't play first person shooter games any longer, not even for short bursts, point click shoot to kill, it just numbs my mind, some of the game worlds and the graphics technology and the hardware i personaly find quite interesting but the core play of first person shooters or even third person shooter games is dull and mind destroying to me. I even struggle to make 5 laps in a driving simulator video game before i start to get bored, round and round and round i go, lol. One just needs to find something else to do that is more satisfying and rewarding for the mind, not always easy mind you. Avoid becoming the lazy gamer at all costs, take care of your mind, sometimes your input is your output, moderation is key word, but sometimes best to avoid certain things no matter what, try to attain equanimity. Violence breeds violence there is no escaping that, yes people will try to justify anything, don't be violent to the mind be kind to it take care of it.
One could equally say:
Football. Chasing around after a ball, repetitively kicking the thing around the park, trying to get it in the back of a rectangular shaped onion sack.
Golf. Smashing a ball with a long metal stick towards a tiny little hole in a green. Then doing the exact same thing over and over again 18 more times
etc etc
The kind of fast twitch gaming that you are talking about, is fun (to those who enjoy it), because it is challenging to their reflexes and wits. Thier is also a certain amount of enjoyment to be had in the aesthetic qualities of the graphics themselves, but that comes a firm second place to how well the game tests reflexes and fast thinking.
People play games, and sports, because humans are competitive, but also just like to 'play'. Playing is enjoyable.Some games are more enjoyable than other. For example, I would suggest that football is a better game than tiddlywinks, but if I was forced to choose between a game of golf and tiddlywinks, I would probably go for tiddlywinks. Everyone has their own thing that happens to have hooked their sense of 'play', which may well be entirely different from the next persons thing.
If you are looking to work your cerebral cortex, then you probably want to be looking somewhere else other than video games, cos that isn't what 99% of video games are all about....unless you are into playing somehting like Chess v CPU on HARD.
You seem to be a fine example of someone who is stuck in a behavhiour pattern that has become wholly unrewarding to them. And that is either a symptom of depression or indeed might result in mild depression itself.
As for for the dude Dampcat who is foaming at the mouth about the increasing commercialisation of video games....pffft...whateva. I play through games and get all manner of little steam icons telling me I have completed an achievment or whatever. I don't care about any of it. I recently completed Bioshock Infinitie on HARD, yet only got about 40% of the 'acheivements' unlocked. I just ignore that crap and it's existence doesn't detract anything from my enjoyment of the game.
For all the lame assed COD style Whack-a-mole hand lead 'press a button NOW' games out there, there are plenty titles that offer more freedom and interesting ways of completing the objectives than ever before. I have just started playing the Dishonored DLC, The Knife of Dunwall. Since I always play on HARD, I got through the first level and found that I wasn't in the best condition for approaching the subsequent level, so I replayed the first level, and found a totally different route to acheive the objectives, learned lots of things about the game and the storyline that I never knew before, and realised that their lots of other options that could have been open to me as well.
Sorry, but I have been gaming since the days of Ping Pong on the Atari and although the period where I most suited to enjoying video gaming was surely between the ages of 10-20, the times when I have enjoyed video gaming the most was between the ages of 20-30 (GoldenEye, Gothic, PES series, BF2). I enjoyed gaming more as an adult than as a child cos gaming got so much better as I grew older and this is a trend that has continued and will continue. I am now almost 40. Well beyond the optimal age for enjoying video games, but I can clearly see that gaming is
better today than it ever has been, even if I will never again be as immersed in any game as I was with Gothic, running at 640*320, 10-25FPS, blocky low detail textuers, with migraines, frequent crashes to desktop, and other technical issues and bugs that I would simply not tolerate in any modern game, being simply part of the price that one had to pay, in order to play....back in the '
good old days'.