I’ve been busy as a . . . um one of these lately, so I haven’t had much time for gaming, but I have had plenty of experience with what Clive Thompson calls Gamer Regret.

The dirty secret of gamers is that we wrestle with this dilemma all the time. We’re often gripped by what I call “gamer regret” — a sudden, horrifying sense of emptiness when we muse on all the other things we could have done with our game time.

I’ve often struggled to overcome that hollow feeling of gamer regret when I’ve finally smushed the big bad final boss in a console game. Even worse is the regret after I’ve spent a day inside a never-ending mmo that doesn’t even offer that satisfying “end game” moment.

But while there is always that moment of “what else could I be doing with my time?”, I believe that video games offer players feelings of fun and satisfaction that you don’t get in other “time-wasting” activities, like TV.

Finally completing a level, snagging an artifact, solving a puzzle or beating a boss will always beat the emotional rush of even the best TV episode. But it doesn’t come close to the positive emotions you can get from helping out in your community, teaching yourself a new useful skill or just being “involved” in something positive and real. So, the gamer’s internal debate continues. As Clive puts it:

The truth is, gamers never settle this internal debate. We ask the question, only to fail to answer it. We repress it, only to have it suddenly rise back up and bite us — whereupon we wrestle with it, repress it, rinse and repeat.

May it’s a good thing I’m too busy to play right now. At least it’s called halftime on the gamer’s struggle bouncing around my head.