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Bryan-san comments on Starting University Advice Repository - Less Wrong
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Depends on the amount and specific interval of time investment. MMOs create demands like playing 3-4 hours every tuesday and thursday evening without fail for raids. This now requires a 6-8 hour time investment a week minimum with strong social pressures from online friends. That's not going to be helpful if you have a test on wednesday or friday. If you had a normal RPG or other hobby you could pick it up and put it down without social pressures and regular time investments at intervals in the middle of the week.
Given that I know plenty of people who play MMOs and participate in raids while still managing to pursue their studies/work/parenting/etc. successfully, this description of the absoluteness of the MMO time demands seems a little overblown.
Granted, I don't actually play them myself, but it seems hard to believe that you couldn't have a good time playing an MMO while also finding an in-game social group that was reasonable about participation requirements.
From our different observations of anecdotal evidence on this and the other comment thread I think that the university environments and populations you and I were exposed to were very different from one another. My environment was not with exceedingly intelligent people (likely below LW average) and was at a decent but not great university. My observations were from when I was a Freshman in college and observing other people that age though.
I've seen and heard of people who were older (grad school or working) and had much better experiences managing their time. However, I also remember meeting plenty of people when I was in high school who were much older and seemed to be playing far too much. Statistics on the topic would likely be useful at this point and people who are better at managing their time and dealing with
At this point for giving advice to Freshman aged students, I'd rather put out a warning and see how they handle it than not say anything at all. If someone isn't already adept at managing their time at that age then I honestly think that playing an MMO on a regular basis could be detrimental and far more addictive a hobby than they should be testing themselves with at such a crucial time in their life.
That's reasonable. And admittedly, I've personally avoided MMOs precisely for the time management reasons, so one might say that my words were in conflict with my actual actions... but then I've also gotten the impression that other, less addiction-prone people than me have gotten a lot of genuinely valuable things (e.g. friendships, management and organization skills, etc.), so I'm inclined to object if people present what seems to be an unfairly negatively slanted view of the genre.