While many culture wars raged in the 1980s, I fought in the Game Wars. In this war, computer/video games and Dungeons & Dragons were under attack, with the mildest criticism being that these activities were a waste of time. While modern culture wars usually involve claims of (typically made up) dire harm, it is still worth considering this criticism as culture war never ends and never changes.
Back in the 1980s, I was often accused of wasting my time playing games, be they computer games or tabletop games like AD&D or BattleTech. In some cases, these criticisms were benevolent—friends and relatives were concerned for my wellbeing (one of the greatest sins a New Englander could commit is wasting time). Some other folks were merely deriding my choices.
The criticism that an activity is a waste of time is a value claim. While people who make this criticism are usually not consciously applying a normative theory, they claim the activity does not have (or produce) enough value to be worth doing, usually relative to activities they see as valuable. For those who like normative theories, this could be presented in consequentialist terms: if a person is doing an activity that lacks value, they are not generating value. They should be generating value, so they should be doing something else. This criticism is based on what the critic thinks other people should (and should not) be doing. As people like to think of time as a currency, wasting time can also be presented as spending the currency of time unwisely, as one might waste money. During the 1980s (and beyond) I often faced such criticism.
When I was in college and started studying philosophy, I wondered why I was expected to defend the value of gaming to people who spent hours chugging beer and watching other people play sports. Laying aside my residue resentment, there is a philosophical question about where the burden of proof falls when someone claims an activity is a waste of time. There is the pragmatic answer, which is determined by imbalances of power. For minors, those with power can include their parents. For example, a child might need to convince a parent that playing D&D is not a waste of time, so they are allowed to play. For almost all of us, those with power include the politicians who can pass laws banning or restricting activities. As an example of this, I offer the philosophy major.
Every philosophy major has been asked what they will do with their degree and, as a professor at a public university in my adopted state of Florida I have been repeatedly compelled to defend the major. In this pragmatic case, the goal has been to persuade those compelling me to show that the major is not a waste of time by convincing them that it results in something they value (this always involved employment and income). As they have the power to end the major, they can simply put the burden of proof on me.
There is also the pragmatic context of social cost and annoyance—people who can impose that cost or annoy those doing the activity with their criticism can thus impose the burden of proof simply by demanding it as a condition to cease their criticism.
As this essay appears in a philosophical context, I infer that many readers are familiar with the claim that philosophy itself is useless (a waste of time). Bertrand Russell (1912) has perhaps the most famous reply to this criticism, although Frankfurt (2005) has the best titled response in his work Bullshit. My experience defending gaming prepared me to defend philosophy and my experience in philosophy now enables me to discuss the waste of time criticism philosophically.
In the case of gaming in the 1980s, the challenge we gamers faced was to show that it has value. One could also frame this challenge in terms of establishing that gaming has meaning and can be part of a meaningful life. In terms of addressing the challenge, a key issue is whether the goal is to persuade the critics that gaming has value or if the goal is to prove that gaming has value. This would, of course, apply to any activity one is defending.
If the goal is to persuade the critics, victory is getting them to stop saying the activity is a waste of time or to even acknowledge that it has value. If the goal is to prove that an activity has value, then this is a matter of logic—what is needed are plausible premises and good logic. In the case of any culture war, the goal is always persuasion, and logic is not very effective in this role.
As the waste of time criticism is based on the view that the activity does not produce adequate value, responding to it requires showing that it does. One way to do this is to operate within the concept of value used by the critic and show that the activity does produce what they value. As an anecdotal example, I was able to silence some people who said gaming was a waste of time by showing them I got paid to write gaming material. As another anecdotal example, I have defended the philosophy major by providing the latest employment and salary data for philosophy majors.
Another option, which is usually more difficult, is to convince the critic to accept a concept of value under which the activity does generate value. For example, people who defend philosophy often try to argue that the non-monetary value it produces is valuable. During the Game Wars both approaches were used. And we eventually won that war. But war never changes and never ends. So, how was that war won and how might similar wars be won in the future?
In pragmatic monetary terms, the culture war over video games was clearly won when gaming moved from a niche nerd activity to a billion-dollar marketplace ruled by corporations like Microsoft, Sony, EA, Ubisoft and Valve. Of course, this path of “victory” might have come with a higher cost than if the war had been lost. But under capitalism an obvious way to persuade many people that an activity is worth doing is to show how it generates money.
In more artistic terms, the cultural elites signaled their acceptance of the value of gaming with the 2012 The Art of Video Games at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the MoMA exhibit the same year. Getting the cultural elites to accept something as valuable obviously helps in persuading some people that the activity is not a waste of time. In terms of mass acceptance, it makes sense to give the smart phone some credit here. As mobile games appeared, almost everyone with a smartphone became a casual gamer, thus making it harder for people to see gaming as a waste of time.
While tabletop role playing games are not as profitable as video games and are perhaps not seen as artistic as video games, Critical Role (and its animated series on Amazon Prime like The Legend of Vox Machina) and Netflix’s Stranger Things show that D&D is now a valued part of the culture. The victory parade for D&D was when Brennan Lee Mulligan ran a D&D game at the Hollywood Bowl on June 1, 2025. I remember, vividly, declaring to my D&D group that we had won the war. Anecdotally, it has been a long time since anyone accused me of wasting my time gaming. But I must admit it still feels a bit weird when people are impressed that I’ve published so much gaming stuff.
Some might think that there is more to the war over waste and worth than appeasing or persuading those with power and that there is also a philosophical issue here. As a veteran of the culture wars, I know that these pragmatic fights are won (or lost) with persuasion rather than logic. But, as a philosopher, I agree that there is obviously an important philosophical issue worth considering when we discuss whether something is a waste of time.
These discussions raise the question of value in terms of what is worth our time and what is not. As would be suspected, this discussion always runs hard into the subjective vs objective debate in value theory. Is the question of whether an activity a waste a matter of what it is worth to the person doing it or those with the power to stop them or is there an objective basis to such discussions? Or something else? This is obviously not going to be settled, so the rational approach is to consider arguments for and against an activity having worth within the context of arguments for a particular theory of value. So, the challenge is developing a theory of value and then assessing an activity within that theory. Obviously, one could embrace the pragmatic approach discussed above, which is how it plays out in practice and how I fight the culture wars. But I fight them in good faith—I only try to persuade people to believe what I can also support with (largely ineffective) logic.
A Philosopher’s Blog is Now on Substack!
You can subscribe and read for free.