When you spend an hour with your child, the child matures by another hour worth of your attention. The relationship also becomes an hour stronger, plus you gain memories associated with the hour. With single player games there is only the memory, no relationship building and no nurturing provided. Good observation about most games make us someone important.
It's certainly possible to learn and mature from one's experience in single-player gaming. And many games give the experience of developing a relationship.
A game can give the illusion of a relationship, but it is not a real relationship with another human being. The evolutionary reasons why we need relationships are because having other humans care about us helps us live better lives. A game, which does not care about you, may partially satisfy that evolved need but cannot provide any of the real-world benefits of an actual relationship with an actual person who actually cares about you.
You're begging the question. Games already fill human needs - that's why we play them - and things like entertainment are no less real-world than physical objects. I believe Love Plus already e.g. buys players gifts (based on their wishlists)? A game won't yet do things like taking care of you if you're sick, sure, but I suspect that's only a matter of time.
You think I am begging the question because you think that
> things like entertainment are no less real-world than physical objects.
but this is false.
A relationship in the real world with a human being is not the same thing as a relationship with an AI that you interact with through a screen. It is less real. Are you still experiencing feeling? Yes. Are you communicating? Yes. Is it real? Yes, of course it is real, just like my iPhone is real, servers in a datacenter somewhere are real, and the medium is real even though it is a different medium. Nonetheless, it is less real because it is not a human being.
From an evolutionary perspective, we enjoy certain things (type A) because they lead to other things (type B) that make our survival and reproduction more likely. This is what the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy is about. When a machine process gives you the type A things but of course cannot ever give you the type B benefits that actually created those evolutionary pressures, then you are on some level being fooled. When I say "less real" this is what I am talking about.
The fact that you point out that a game won't take care of you while you are sick shows me that you get my point.
Email in my profile if you want to take the discussion further. It's getting a bit off-topic here but I am interested in the topic, and yes, in the real, human conversation we are having. ;-)
