How do you get your parents to let you play video games all day

If by "all day" you mean 24 hours then offering such advice would probably be unhealthy. But for gamers who take their trigger fingers and eye strain in moderation, explaining the benefits and approved equivalents might just go a long way if your parents are of the flexible variety.

The case for the pursuit of gaming could be thus:

1.) Games are the penultimate creative experience.
While this doesn't hold true to some of the more shallow of games (though that's not to dismiss it's potential merit of entertainment), modern video games can be seen as the result of the desire to put oneself into the reality crafted from every corner of the creative market. Top notch quality games are not only great opportunities to mess around inside a virtual environment and satisfy the craving to solve puzzles, collect, conquer, build and destroy, but also serve as a viewing platform for other creative mediums.

Games introduce us to mediums such as a story with the potential to be the greatest novel, cinematic scenes and lovable characters and acting paramount to the latest movies, even entirely orchestrated music that brings a tear to your eye compiled by some of today's most renowned composers.

Certainly, shooting drug addicts isn't anything particularly remarkable, but an edge-of-your-seat game that thrusts you into a melancholic underwater dystopia ruled by philosophical convictions and daunting father figures in diving suits may just push the creative envelope one step further than watching television all day.

2.) Games are a learning experience.
Even in the most hardcore of games, perhaps, especially in the most hardcore of games, learning and adapting is integral and key to overcoming whatever difficulty the game presents. The game is very much like a logic equation. The game hands you a limited degree of control in a simulated environment, it establishes specific rules and then places a problem on the map and pushes you to take hold of your virtual capabilities and manifest them in a form that can overcome the problem.

Whether it be hacking into a robot, matching a rhythm, or felling Diablo himself, games are not only efficient forms of practice in premeditation, problem-solving, perseverence, and goal-setting, but an actual constructive portal of learning that presents challenges in a fun manner and rewards completion of tasks with additional freedoms, further complexity, and best of all, accomplishment. Whether they want to believe it or not, your parents can't reasonably deny that it feels better to say I beat Dante Must Die Mode than it is to say I aced the algebra test.

3.) Games are a social experience.
For online gamers and split-screen fans, Games offer another educational outlet; human interaction. Until computer characters can adequately replace us, human character interaction remains a major factor in most online gaming, particularly MMORPGs. Such games generally feature access to both sides of the coin, competition and cooperation. While competition certainly has it's merits if not taken too seriously, the biggest attraction here is the cooperative aspect of gaming.

Being able to communicate effectively, collaborate efforts, and to coordinate strategies collectively are important social building blocks for the more well-rounded of individuals, and coop games offer that in large doses. In some games, coop can be meticulously brainstorming out a way how to enter a heavily guarded room undetected with your buddy, or as silent teamwork as group of friends trying to escape a warzone without leaving anyone behind.


Truly, in the right hands, games could be a family thing.
Just make sure you don't overindulge. Headaches caused by excessive eye strain by bright monitors in dark rooms can be nasty, and if you feel negatively toward the concept of NOT playing a game, then you may be focusing too much on it and probably shouldn't be playing it as much as you are in the first place. An obsession certainly won't help your case any.


So ultimately, unless you happen to be Leeroy Jenkins, you could rationally make the argument that, yes, you could read a book, but a video game makes for far more enticing and liberating fiction.