Witness Jonny Laidler, an English chap in the news for winning a modelling contract after his girlfriend dumped him for a skinnier model (how… refreshing?). He is quoted blaming video games for the inactive lifestyle that he seems happy to have left behind.

Now, Mr Laidler can hardly speak for all men who play video games. But he does speak to my concern that video gaming promotes a lifestyle that is socially counter-productive simply because it takes up time that might otherwise be spent out of the lounge-room, socialising. And before anyone sees my social-isolation and raises multi-player online role playing games let me make myself clear: real-life, face-to-face interaction is a far richer social experience than anything you get via machine.

Of course, many game playing guys I know will tell me they’re not playing games to satisfy their social needs. Rather, gaming is a way to zone out – a release, almost a meditation. Indeed one went as far as to describe gaming as a spiritual experience. For him, observing a few hours of digital devotion was his religion, and a welcome relief at the end of a long day spent at work. And I totally get that.

But I will counter that more conventional expressions of faith, those that occur in a church (church here literally meaning community), have the benefit of shared social experience. Alain de Botton does a good job of illustrating how seductive this community-based peace-seeking is in his latest polemic Religion for Atheists (an interesting read). There, he makes an argument that religion survives because we are social, and most religions demand that private prayer fuse with public worship, so satisfying our personal and interpersonal needs. Religions also offer handy how-to relationship messages which are helpful for humans who yearn for guidance, he writes.

Does gaming offer that? Besides the impact gaming has on socialising from a time-wasting point of view, what is the message of popular games and how do they impact on social expectations?