On video game addiction

I do feel like I'm stemming the tide a bit on my addiction.  I'm starting to treat it more seriously as time goes on because time really does tell the story.  Is this what it's like for alcoholics when they say "I'll always be an alcoholic."?  

I'll always be a modeler?  
There are worse things in life to be I guess.

I had a strong epiphany yesterday when I was playing Demon's Souls for the PS3 and got killed and had to start over at the checkpoint.  
It was so frustrating.  
All the work I'd done had been erased essentially.  

It's something that gamers have to understand very well because we're dying all the time and we have to learn from those mistakes. Still I had been playing for hours and it seemed like I'd really gotten nowhere.  It made me wonder how I was using my time.  I talked with a friend about this and she reminded me about loving life and wasting time.

Life is made out of time so what are you doing if you're wasting your time?

...and at that point I felt that video games were kind of a waste because I literally hadn't gotten any further than that starting point. That's not exactly true and I still did learn some stuff but the point stands.  It's just sheer stubbornness.  Even with the mobile games.  At a certain point it just feels like work and if it does why are you doing it?  We're supposed to be enjoying this!  It's called "recreation"! 

Right now I feel that building models is better because at least you have something tangible at the end of it and you're using your hands in the crafting.  It's creative and it will survive if you want it to, they can represent something if you want it to.  They can be whatever you want really. 

When you put that beside video games it's a bit clearer.  Games keep you on a predetermined path, you may spend who knows how many hours doing the same thing over and over again and they're more expensive usually.  The aspects of creativity aren't really there, the hands-on idea of creating something isn't there either so when you think about it, what are we really getting from the games that we spend so much time playing?  What do we get at the end of it all? I've beaten hundreds of games, have so many save files from over the years... what did I actually get for that time?  The 200+ hours I spent on Skyrim?  Or all the Final Fantasy games?   And if you play games that's something that you have to ask yourself.  There's no real freedom.  Whereas with modeling... it's almost complete freedom.  That's the point!  To bring creation to our recreation.

With this, something physical remains so in the grand scheme of things perhaps being a plamo addict isn't that bad at all.