I play a lot of online game, there are waits there too. You tell the program to build a house and then have to wait a couple of hours for the house to finish building. and even before doing that you have to spend time collecting building materials, make blueprints for how the house should look, etc. It is infuriating and even more so because the waiting is utterly artificial and unneccesary. you your computer could 'build' that house in no time flat and immediately present you with the house instead of making you wait for hours before you get it. the waiting period is deliberately put in there to make the game slower.
So why do they do that? I have had a lot of time to think about it. and strangely I have found a lot of reasons. so many that I agree such waits are necessary. We need them.
1) A sense of accomplishment. Succesfully doing something give us a feeling that we can do things. We need that, in games as much as in life.
2) Staying power. Strangely, the easier a game is the sooner we get bored with it and click on to another in the hope that that one will be more fun.
3) Real life is like that. A virtual world need to convey a sense of reality in the virtual experience. All that waiting exist in the real world too (and usually the waiting there is even longer. How many real houses can we built in 3 hours :D
4) We need time to learn, time to read the manual and find out how we can build a better house :). The game give us that time in the shape of a waiting period. And so does building a real house. While the paint on the door dries we look at it. Does it close right? Will there be a draft under the door because we did not make a doorstep? We learn a lot, not just by dong thing but by doing them slowly enough to think about what we are doing along the way.
So no. I dont want to eliminate time. But if it would get my mail sent faster I will sometimes consider blowing up the post office ;-))
JakobA the unAmerican. 