Are video games like GTA4 a waste of time?

The problem with games like GTA4 perhaps is that it is just too good.  Too close to reality.  Sometimes I find myself playing this game hours on end every weekend.  During the time I am playing the game it's a lot of fun but when I'm done and I look back at all the hours I spent playing it I think to myself, wow what a waste of time. Personally, I think it is more constructive to create something than to play somebody else's creation.  I have been spending a lot of time trying to make money on the Internet and I find that far more rewarding.  At the end of the day if I succeed in making money it benefits my life in many ways, but if I succeed in a game like GTA for or Halo three how can I use these skills to better my own life.  Sure it was a fairly entertaining way to kill time, but in the end it doesn't do anything for my life as a whole.

On the other hand you could argue that there are certain educational elements to the game.  But if I wanted to learn more about the geography of New York City would not be better off I just went to the real place.  But perhaps this would not be very safe.  So many potential questions arise.

Well I know this at least.  I have been studying the game and if nothing else it gives me content to write about.  Being a writer of blogs as I am, I need constant new stimuli to give me ideas for content.  That is why in fact I have built this website.  I have a great deal of knowledge about this game, so why not write articles about it and see how many people would be interested to read my viewpoints on.

At a certain point in my life I was dead set against videogames.  I was convinced that they were a complete waste of time.  But it was when I was living in Japan that had this opinion.  It seems that in Japan there is so much to do other than play via games so why bother wasting your time in front of the TV set.  I would rather be out exploring this interesting and fascinating foreign land.  But now that I am at home here in North America, or Canada to be exact, I find things quite well so therefore I need videogames to fill the void. I guess this sounds kind of sad.  That is why I am on a mission to go back and live in Japan again because I need more stimuli in my life.  Real stimuli not virtual stimuli.

Anyway I'm not trying to slam the game, I'm just getting people to think more and I'm interested to hear their reactions on this very subject.