An update: after confirming that the roommate’s parents were on the same page with us, I explained my rationale to our son and was pleased that he seemed accepting of this small concession. Thanks for all of the supportive comments and anecdotes.
OP, great that you came to a conclusion that works for your family! I’m glad he agreed to your compromise, and hope he has lots of success during his first year in college.
I still feel compelled to comment for posterity.
My upfront disclaimer is that I’m a gamer myself. I gamed all through college and graduate school, bought the latest gen consoles with my own money in college, and I currently work at a video game company working in game development. I play between 10 and 20 hours of video games per week, excluding what I play at work.
My initial reaction here was - when is he going to learn how to manage his own time if you do it for him? College is, among other things, a low-stakes environment for young adults to learn how to organize their own lives, fail a little bit, and grow up.
Additionally - and this comes from my experience as a college gamer and an RA - it’s not true that the person with the gaming system in their room will automatically have people in there all hours of the night and day. This depends entirely on the personality of the person who has the console in their room and the people they choose to surround themselves with. If you’re a responsible young adult with responsible friends, you learn how to kick them out and they learn how to remove themselves when appropriate. (As a minor point, it’s even less true in 2016 because most multiplayer games on modern consoles don’t have a local multiplayer mode. Most games do MP online.)
@jrm15
Two things. One, the majority of programming skills used and programming problems tackled in game design are the same programming skills/problems that are tackled when building apps and websites and other stuff. If, by the time your son graduates, he can build a video game, then he can also build a productivity app and get hired somewhere else. I work at Microsoft/Xbox and I see developers and program managers fluidly move between Xbox and other divisions all the time.
Two, while I generally agree with the latter half of your statement, I love working in game development. I’m surrounded by people who are passionate about games and gaming culture, who love to talk shop, and who have shared experiences with me that I was heretofore unable to talk about with other coworkers. It gets old for some folks, we definitely have people move onto other things, and there are downsides (like the notorious crunch times near release dates. This summer has not been pleasant in that regard!) But overall, it’s pretty awesome, and I get to play video games at work before they come out! (And ohhhhh, feel free to PM me or have your son PM me if you or he want to talk about game design.)
Oh, and women play games! Lots of games! More than half of gamers are women. This phenomenon is not restricted to adolescent and young adult men.