Please, Sir, May I Have Another?

So, yes, like a dumbass, I'm playing through Snake Eater/Subsistence again. I'm really booking through it, though. I just finished fighting The End and have put in, by this point, I dunno, four hours maybe? The frogs are the goal, of course, so everything else is really secondary. I'm not worrying about accumulating any stealth kills either, so I'm just plowing through the boss fights as much as possible (unless like, in the case of the End, they're just pure chewing satisfaction.)

So, halfway through the game in about four hours. There is maybe, a super-slight chance that there was one frog I missed the first time around, as the location didn't seem familiar to me. But either way, I'm going to get through this game and get the stealth armor if it kills me. I've got a green felt-tip pen and a printed list of the frogs and I'm checking 'em off one by one.

Ironically, when I bought Subsistence, I thought I'd be spending all my time playing the Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2 games, but the emulation on the first game is driving me crazy--I would think that it'd be a "save anywhere" game but I've only had one successful save point in the game and no matter how far I get past it, i can't save again. Really god-awful annoying, and since everyone on Gamefaqs is too busy playing the online component, there are no FAQs about it.

In one of my posts, I alluded to the fact i've played MGS:Subsistence and Resident Evil 4 through multiple times each, and that there was a reason for that. One reason, of course, is that they're really enjoyable games that add little rrwards at the end that add value to another playthrogh. But the real reason is I'm deeply ambivalent about video games.

I've received advice from two professional writers in the past to get rid of the video games. "They're time wasters," they each said to me, in one way or another. And I'm not disinclined, of course, to disagree. I have creative endeavors of my own that I'd like to pursue and yet, when it comes down to it, unless I'm staring a hard deadline in the face, I'll boot up the video game and spend a few hours of my week chipping away at it.

If there is anything insidious about video games, it's not that they make kids violent, or promote tolerant attitudes toward drugs and alcohol (or whatever conclusion is being reached by a conservative study this week). It's that video games allow you a degree of creative interaction with a piece of art that can supplant the feeling of creative work. I mean, it's far from a perfect replacement--it might be more like methadone to the heroin of creative work--but it's a lot easier. Video games require participation at a level far less than that of creative work, and while it provides far less reward, if you're a lazy type of person that doesn't really believe in end-rewards, video games can really do the trick.

So part of the reason I keep replaying those games is out of some weird loophole I've created for myself, that these games are going to be the last games I buy or play this year. They're really good games, but even if they weren't would I still be playing them over and over, continuing to cheat myself?

I really don't like to think what the answer to that would be.