Even now as I write this the urge to play the new Elder Scrolls VI: Skyrim is very strong. Here recently though I had a discussion with a friend about vicarious living and unlike myself, my friend is not a very big advocate of playing video games and claims that they cause people to live their lives vicariously through a digital simulation rather than actually living their lives. For a long time, I would have disagreed and said that as long as you moderate your time then what’s wrong with playing video games? They are just another source of entertainment right? What it really took was my friend’s words, and what I was doing in the game Skyrim that made me realize that I was in all honesty wasting my time playing a video game.

In Skyrim I was doing everything that I normally could do in real life. Though you start off in the executioners block where you’re about to get your head chopped off, events occur in the game that end up granting you freedom in the game to do whatever you want to do. In Skyrim you are free too: wander the world, mess around with weapons and armor, go to a college to learn magic, you can be a blacksmith, practice alchemy, or even join a military resistance.

What among all of this stuff can you not do in our own lives? Granted we can’t kill dragons or shoot lightning out our fingertips—at least not without less than desirable results. Still what’s to stop a person from learning a blacksmithing trade or something similar? Why can’t you go to college and learn something with just as much mystery as the arcane arts? Why can’t we travel our own world?

I realized I was living vicariously when I was doing everything in Skyrim that I wanted to do in real life. I bought a house, I learned to use a sword, I saw unique places and creatures, I was skilled with a bow, and I would decorate my in-game home. I’m sure that if I could write notes on what I've learned and books about my adventures as an Imperial Battlemage then I’m sure I would, but the reality of it is that Skyrim is still only a game and will never be real.

In my real life, I have long desired to own my own home. I have recently been looking into archery, fencing, and martial arts classes. I attend a gym in hopes of reaching a sense of athleticism, perhaps similar to the level of my Skyrim character. In my small little corner I have tons of books which I keep shelved and easy to access. My life’s ambition is to be a writer and every day I write down my thoughts as I meditate on the discoveries I have made in my own life, and to be quite honest it is a very fulfilling venture.

There is a concept that I remember from my days in economics courses called opportunity cost which means what else could have been done in place of a certain activity is the opportunity cost of the activity that you are preforming. Since the majority of games are spent sitting down for several hours over time our health declines due to lack of exercise, sleep, and social interaction. Think of the time a person spends in a video game perfecting a certain skill; say the skill they were learning was alchemy? In that same amount of time could you not study pharmaceuticals, how to mix a certain drink, or cook a new dish? Why would you spend time learning a skill you wanted to learn falsely instead of actually learning the skill in reality?

Video games are a source of entertainment, but it is very easy to get addicted to it just as one can get addicted to watching TV or surfing the internet. Like the effects of drugs and alcohol, sources of entertainment have no lasting value beyond making you feel good temporarily. Eventually the entertainment factor wears off, and you have to go buy the newest thing or start over to get that feel good feeling. Eventually I would become bored of my Imperial Battlemage and return to my virtual life as a Commander in Earth’s Space forces and the one human Spectre agent in the entire galaxy. After that I would probably once don my Mjonlir armor and awake in the vastness of unknown space to fight a new enemy.

When you spend too much time in video game you being to live vicariously through them instead of actually living your own life, and you end up in a never ending cycle of lives that are not real and have no real meaning to life. What should we do then, I say to those of us who feel as I have, and even some who don’t? As human beings we always have a choice; we have a sort of red pill/blue pill scenario. Do we continue things as they are and hope for something that might actually come by living vicariously through a digital life simulation or do we try to discover the potential of the unknown world around us? Regardless of the choice that is made, you should be aware that in our real lives we cannot load our last save.