Video Games & False Significance
Why do we long to be significant? The desire fills us all, manifested in a million different ways. Some people feel significant through athletics, others music, and others money. How we choose to satisfy this desire makes us all unique.

The majority of the significantizers exist in the real world. Video games offer a digital substitute for those real activities. If you’re into music you can become a Guitar Hero. Into sports? Try Madden NFL.
Rock Star Sensation
Tragically, gaming keeps gamers from learning the skills that actually make them significant. They become a guy playing in the living room with a cheap plastic guitar with colorful buttons. The Wall Street Journal says, “Many professional rockers, however, say the game lets them act out a fantasy that their real lives don’t quite match. Sometimes, pretending to be a rock star for a few minutes can be more fun than being one.”
Like aspartame, these games taste more potent than the real world they reflect. But are artificial at their soul.
The Wall Street Journal wrote an article that talked about how dozens of top tier bands like Korn, Incubus and Donnas became wrapped up in Guitar Hero. Real rock stars pretending to be fake rock stars. According to the Journal the band Three Days Grace struggled with Guitar Hero cutting into their recording time for their new album.
Guitar Hero gives the rock star sensation as much as, or more than being a true rock star. The game constantly gives players feedback through cheering crowds. The better you play the more they cheer. It cuts through the boredom of traveling from gig to gig and the responsibility of honing the skills needed to become a real rock star.
The game just drops you on a stage in front of an audience ready to lavish their affection on your skilled playing. If you can get the buzz playing a game, why go through the years of practice needed to become a real rock star?
This may be an extreme example since not many people can become rock stars but it illustrates the point:
Virtual activity becomes a substitute for real activity.
In the game… I’m special
After hearing me give a talk about gaming, one child admitted to his mother “In the game I’m special. In real life I’m not.” This simple statement points out a tragic truth. The more we invest in a non-existent world, the poorer we become in the real one. King Solomon said this a different way, “The man that soweth food will have his full share, the man that chases fantasy will have poverty.” Video gaming is a bad investment. Why waste your time, the most precious treasure you have, trying to level up.
Leveling up in real life
Imagine how much you could accomplish if you “leveled up” your real life abilities with as much intensity as you do your online abilities. If you spent the same amount of time studying, working, and taking risks in the real world as they do in the virtual world. How more effective would you be as a person? I can tell you that my life improved dramatically when I started leveling up my real life character. I started reading books like 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven R. Covey The book can show you how to level up your life. It changed my life.
Deep down we want to change the world. Video games tell us that we can change the world, but only it in the game. This is a lie. The truth is that you can change the world. But, it takes hard work, which you won’t have time for when you waste it online. People who get distracted by the virtual world will have little impact on the real one.
When we lack purpose we tend to squander our time on useless pursuits. The pursuit of happiness is a sign of a purposeless life. People spend their life pursuing happiness because they have nothing more important than themselves. The live for no ideal. No higher purpose.
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I don’t want to jump to conclusions about a parent I don’t know, but why isn’t he being shown that he’s a Prince of the Kingdom? Nobody’s more special than the Prince.