What’s the difference between a gaming pass-time and a waste of time?

None of us have as much time as we would like, when we do get time to have downtime and play games, most of us do it to relax and have fun. Different people find different types of games fun, and you can like multiple types of games. There’s no one true way to play games, all game types are valid — someone built it because it excited them enough to take the time and effort to share it with other people they thought would enjoy it too. That said, what one person finds fun may not be fun for others. And context can matter.

I was reflecting recently on the difference between a pass-time and wasting time. Gaming overall is a pastime, for most of us it isn’t how we make out living, it’s something we do when we have some time to spare and want to relax or de-stress. Ultimately it doesn’t ‘achieve’ anything, while there are educational games or you can reapply skills you learned in games to other areas of your life, we generally don’t play games for the real life skills benefits: we play them for personal enjoyment. Which can be a worthwhile thing on its own. As a society, we’ve become focused on needing to constantly use our time productively to the point of burnout. Games (and similar leisure activities) are theoretically an escape from that.

So why is a pass-time good, but a waste of time is bad? 

I think it comes down to choice and agency. I can choose to spend the whole day fishing, knowing I may not catch dinner, but that may not be why I’m there. Choosing to do an activity that you know may not result in any sort of tangible benefit is fine when you actively choose to do that. Being stuck in traffic when you just want to get home feels like a waste of time, a barrier between you and the thing you want.

It’s the same with game design: you can have in-game activities that are chill and don’t really generate much on the way of in game or personal benefits — like fishing in most games. If you choose to do that activity it’s great. Fishing mechanics are in a surprising number of games, so it’s obviously popular. If another in-game system forces you to go fish and you can’t progress or access another system you wanted to engage with until you catch a specific fish that has a very low RNG drop rate, that can feel like a waste of time.

What’s your favorite game to just hang out in, or game mechanic to pass time? What game mechanics have you encountered that enraged you because they stood between you and what you wanted to do?