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A very interesting piece of long form journalism cum memoir about the way video gaming has subsumed and changed the way we live, interact, and think.
To the uninitiated, the figures are nothing if not staggering: 155 million Americans play video games, more than the number who voted in November's presidential election. And they play them a lot: According to a variety of recent studies, more than 40 percent of Americans play at least three hours a week, 34 million play on average 22 hours each week, 5 million hit 40 hours, and the average young American will now spend as many hours (roughly 10,000) playing by the time he or she turns 21 as that person spent in middle- and high-school classrooms combined. Which means that a niche activity confined a few decades ago to preadolescents and adolescents has become, increasingly, a cultural juggernaut for all races, genders, and ages. How had video games, over that time, ascended within American and world culture to a scale rivaling sports, film, and television? Like those other entertainments, video games offered an escape, of course. But what kind?
In 1993, the psychologist Peter D. Kramer published Listening to Prozac, asking what we could learn from the sudden mania for antidepressants in America. A few months before the election, an acquaintance had put the same question to me about video games: What do they give gamers that the real world doesn't?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by coolgopher on Monday March 06 2017, @04:58AM (21 children)
In the generation before mine, "video games" were called "books". They offered the same then as now, escape from a mundane reality.
Stories and story-telling are an integral part of human culture, video games are just the latest form.
As for the pure twitch games, they offer easy competition, just like sports do, only more accessible.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday March 06 2017, @05:08AM (14 children)
Books? You mean static blobs of string information that are devoid of interaction and immersion? Wow, log in already. Unnamed sources have informed me that Roko's basilisk will punish you for not supporting the superior medium: virtual reality open world video gaming.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday March 06 2017, @05:47AM (6 children)
"devoid of interaction and immersion?"
The level of immersion in a book is dependent on a few things. Your interest, your reading ability, and your imagination, for starters. Level of comprehension of the reading material is important as well. I've spent weeks immersed in Middle Earth, long before anyone thought they were up to the challenge of making films, videos, movies, or whatever they might be called. A person who cannot become immersed in reading is probably not taking reading seriously. That goes for people of all ages, whether they simply failed to learn to read 50 years ago, or they are ten years old today, and don't believe that reading is important anymore.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06 2017, @02:17PM (4 children)
And the Greywolf(?) series.
We've had book based interactive fiction since the 60s-70s and possibly much longer.
Given that and the fact that higher level code doesn't look much different than it, given simple inputs and outputs, and gaming has been going on in both genres for around 50 years now.
(Score: 2) by driven on Monday March 06 2017, @02:44PM (2 children)
When you say "interactive fiction" are you referring to the "choose your own adventure" type books? I used to love those as a kid but they are much too simple now. Is there anything similar out there at an adult reading level?
(Score: 1) by purple_cobra on Wednesday March 08 2017, @03:16PM (1 child)
I picked up one of those books in my teens from some book club or other; it was called 'Grailquest: The Castle of Darkness' and I must have read it a fifty times or more. There was a dry, absurd sense of humour running through it and although it seems there were 8 books in total, they were never easy to get hold of in my little one horse town in the eighties, nor did we have much in the way of disposable income (see Monty Python's "Four Yorkshiremen" sketch for extra notes on equivalent deprivation).
Details on that book series here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grailquest [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1) by purple_cobra on Wednesday March 08 2017, @03:27PM
Should have put the title through a search engine before posting: they're all available on archive.org in multiple formats. The distraction this provides from the bureaucratic hell that is the UK probate system is very welcome.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday March 06 2017, @03:06PM
I can't recall when I first stumbled over those sort of books. I guess that I was a young adult. The books seemed so simple, no real plot, the characters couldn't develop. I ran through the story, came back and took a different route, came back and did things differently, all within a short period of time - half an hour, maybe an hour. I watched for similar books for a little while, and they were all so simplistic, that I just quit looking for them. To make such a thing complex, you would need thousands of pages, not a mere hundred or so. An extremely complex story would require tens of thousands of pages. Pages in a book can probably be equated to lines in game code, if you try. That makes the book far to unweildy to tell a complex story with real characters. No one wants to drive to the library, just to load that one book in the trunk, and bring it home for two weeks.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Monday March 06 2017, @03:43PM
That doesn't change the fact that the set of video games is strictly a superset of the set of books, assuming visual novel style video games and discounting the physical paper as a part of the book experience (modern e-readers and e-books support this generalization).
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Monday March 06 2017, @07:30AM (1 child)
Books? You mean static blobs of string information that are devoid of interaction and immersion? Wow, log in already. Unnamed sources have informed me that Roko's basilisk will punish you for not supporting the superior medium: virtual reality open world video gaming.
You are false data. Therefore I shall ignore you. [youtube.com]
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 3, Informative) by Webweasel on Monday March 06 2017, @10:42AM
Bomb #20: Intriguing. I wish I had more time to discuss this.
Doolittle: [frantic] Why don't you have more time?
Bomb #20: Because I must explode in 75 seconds.
Still one of my favourite movies.
Priyom.org Number stations, Russian Military radio. "You are a bad, bad man. Do you have any other virtues?"-Runaway1956
(Score: 2) by riT-k0MA on Monday March 06 2017, @09:34AM (1 child)
I read books.
Immersion? within a few seconds/minutes of reading a book, the words fade and all I see is a kind of a film or even a sort of memory. A film where one can (in most books) read the character's inner thoughts and feelings.
Compared to gaming (something else I do), gaming feels a lot more distant to a book. Ok, in most games you decide the story, but you still don't get the character's thoughts and feelings most of the time.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday March 07 2017, @02:01PM
What does that even mean, exactly? How would that work? In most games, "the character" is YOU. So you want the game to tell you what you should think and how you should feel? That's part of what can make a game more immersive -- with books you're stuck in someone else's head. Someone who may be nothing like you. Someone you may not understand. With a game, it's you. Reading a book while you're thinking "Man this guy is an idiot, why the hell would he do that? Why doesn't he do it this way?" can REALLY break that immersion. But playing a game and going "Hmm, this seems like a good idea---OH SHIT NO IT ISN'T!" doesn't. At least not until you die :) Not that there aren't benefits to getting the story through someone else's mind too, but immersion isn't necessarily one of them.
Although my girlfriend does have some game she loves where the main character has panic attacks and such, so sometimes games DO actually try to push the character's feelings through to the player as a game mechanic. She says it's realistic enough to even induce them in her occasionally. Don't recall what game that was though. It was for the PS1 or PS2 I think.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Monday March 06 2017, @01:12PM (2 children)
Very CLI vs GUI.
I've noticed CLI types tend to be well read and GUI types tend to be extremely stylish.
GUIs are very hard to learn for literate people, like trying to learn some weird made up kanji. Its none the less a lot easier for CLI people to learn a GUI than for completely illiterate people to learn a CLI. Illiterate people can't CLI whereas literate people are merely inefficient and annoyed by GUI.
Once you learn one CLI they're all the same or at least trivially learnable, much like literate people can switch from Tolkien to Ringo a lot quicker than someone illiterate can learn "see spot run". Decades ago like in the 80s this bred the concept of the "computer people" where young people would learn one CLI and therefore be pretty decent at all of them and this would really confuse old timers, and this meme still lives today even when teens are pretty much idiots at computer use just like have always been WRT sex drugs and music.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday March 06 2017, @03:04PM (1 child)
GUIs are very hard to learn for literate people, like trying to learn some weird made up kanji. Its none the less a lot easier for CLI people to learn a GUI than for completely illiterate people to learn a CLI. Illiterate people can't CLI whereas literate people are merely inefficient and annoyed by GUI.
I agree with you that there is often a different set of personalities for people who prefer CLI vs. GUI.
But I think this is a false dichotomy. A well-designed GUI can be very efficient and helpful for lots of tasks. A well-designed GUI can be easy to learn and use. As with everything, different tools are appropriate to different tasks. I almost always have both CLI and GUI open on my desktop, which I use for different things.
Once you learn one CLI they're all the same or at least trivially learnable
Huh. I guess you weren't around the folks I knew who grew up using DOS and complained continuously when they showed up to university or whatever and were suddenly forced to deal with a UNIX-derived system.
What I think you might be getting at here isn't so much about GUI vs. CLI as it is about documentation and discoverability. Modern poorly-constructed GUIs are often incredibly poorly documented and have all sorts of features that are only discoverable by trial-and-error, by having a friend show you, or by surfing the web for "15 top things you didn't know you could do with your iPhone!"
On the other hand, a traditional CLI (and even most traditional GUIs) has built-in documentation available with a clear command (like man or --help or whatever). And complete documentation has traditionally been available in an easily indexed form in books and now through websites. But admittedly it is a bit harder to make a CLI discoverable in the same way as a well-designed GUI, with its ability to nest, group, and organize commands. (Sure, you can list all commands available to you in a particular shell. But unless you're in a limited environment, that may not be so useful.)
To me, the difference you're talking about isn't between those who like CLI vs. GUI, but between those who are willing to RTFM vs. those who aren't. Literate people are willing to deal with documentation and actually prefer learning things that way. People who can't stand reading a book are more likely to click random buttons or swipe erratically until something happens that does what they want.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Monday March 06 2017, @03:39PM
I guess you weren't around the folks I knew who grew up using DOS and complained continuously when they showed up to university or whatever and were suddenly forced to deal with a UNIX-derived system.
On Acorn systems and anything CP/M derived, there was a command 'cat', short for 'catalogue' for listing the contents of a disk (later, of a directory). I still occasionally type 'cat' into a UNIX terminal and wonder why it's taking so long to list the contents of the directory...
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Monday March 06 2017, @07:18AM (3 children)
"In the generation before mine, "video games" were called "books""
As someone straddling these generations (I used to read a tremendous amount, and I have been gaming for decades), your are right. But: as TFA points out, the difference in a video game is that *you* are in the story.
TFA is very long - should have been cooked down by 50% or so - but hits all of the right points. Really, I think the most important points are:
- Agency: You are in the story
- Simplicity: Video games have simple, understandable, fair rules. Real life is complicated, not always understandable, and certainly not fair.
- Meritocracy: TFA says that video games are a meritocracy, where everyone starts on an equal footing (unlike real life). It's more than that: video games are designed so that everyone can *win*. IRL, if you set modest goals, you can achieve them but over the course of years. In a game, you can conquer the world (or whatever) in a couple of hours.
Personally, as an older gamer, I find myself playing less. Games are fun, and a fine distraction, but they eat time that you could spend doing things IRL. Ultimately, after you conquered the world, the game closes and you are left with nothing. Paint a wall (granted, less exciting), and the paint is still on the wall tomorrow. Games that create an enduring world blur this boundary, which can make for interesting discussions, and is the reason that "Y" in TFA lost track of his life.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06 2017, @01:48PM
Meritocracy: TFA says that video games are a meritocracy, where everyone starts on an equal footing (unlike real life). It's more than that: video games are designed so that everyone can *win*. IRL, if you set modest goals, you can achieve them but over the course of years. In a game, you can conquer the world (or whatever) in a couple of hours.
It's more than that. In games you are almost always being treated fairly. IRL you may run into an asshole boss or college that will sabotage you and get away with it, but in gaming being doublecrossed happens rarely and when it does, the asshole usually gets poetic justice in the end.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday March 06 2017, @03:30PM
That's true of video games as they have been, but I think that's because we haven't properly harnessed their immersive quality yet. Across cultures and history people have used games to teach real skills. Eskimo girls played games where they tried to shoot arrows through a rolling hoop, and that sort of thing. For us it's common to play a video game and become so immersed that an entire day can disappear, but at the end we've gained nothing because we yoke no serious purpose to it.
There is such a thing as a "serious game," but that is more an attempt to gamify what amounts to a training video. There is no fun to it, and fails to immerse a player in a state of flow conducive to real, deep learning. You do it for work because you have to, not because you'd want to in your free time.
A better approach would be to add dimensions to the games you already love, probably best done through downloadable content. Imagine you like playing Assassin's Creed: Revelations where you run around the streets of Constantinople. You install the DLC and get additional missions that require you learn some basic Turkish. You play through those, successfully answering in Turkish, and at the end, Congratulations! You have earned college credit for completing basic Turkish.
Or you could play the Mass Effect trilogy with DLC such that when you hack a system's code to gain credits you have to run a debugger on a simple function. Congratulations! You have earned college credit for CompSci 101.
Playing Call of Duty you could be called upon to splint a squad mate's leg or apply a dressing.
You can think of a lot of scenarios to spend that time immersed in a game and coming out the other side with real knowledge/skills. With VR, there are even broader possibilities.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06 2017, @03:50PM
I really am glad I avoided MMORPGs sucking up my life. (I played them, but mostly in binges until I figured out the rules, or figured out how the mechanics worked that were intended to time sink me/hold me back.) But yes, many people today get sucked into videogames, especially persistent ones in order to feel like they are making a difference in SOMETHING even as their lives are held at a standstill, whether by their own shortcomings, the constraints of the society they live in, or simply a string of improbably bad scenarios they don't have an opportunity to avoid or overcome.
Personally, similiar to you I have stopped gaming almost completely. Besides making a difference in the RL world around you, there is sooo much non-gaming stuff to be found on the internet, and if you enjoy learning, you will quickly find it sucking up all that time you could otherwise spend on videogames. Of course many people aren't that intellectual, which is why there is still a burgeoning industry behind videogames, but also why so many of them have become 'low brow' in comparison to what we had in the past, and especially the ratio of quantity of intellectual videogames compared to mindless/stinker ones.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06 2017, @08:01AM
In the generation before mine, "video games" were called "books".
I'll try and stay awake [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday March 06 2017, @01:34PM
In the generation before mine, "video games" were called "books". They offered the same then as now, escape from a mundane reality.
I can outdo that, a century ago ham radio ops had the "amateur radio operators code" or whatever which boiled down to the Greek ideal of moderation in all things such that putting up a really great contesting station on 20M is misplaced effort if your wife leaves you, etc.
Its the same people, generations ago, I'm a 3rd generation ham. Presumably 400 years ago my ancestors were fascinated with cuckoo clocks in the black forest. Its the same mental thing.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Monday March 06 2017, @05:04AM (6 children)
Do you like dopamine? You're in luck [psychologytoday.com]. Virtual reality MMORPGs [lookingglass.services] are coming. Brain computer interfaces [scientificamerican.com] are advancing and will soon be at the point where you will get an invasive implant even if you aren't stuck in a wheelchair. Twitch streaming is a legitimate career path... for those with alpha personalities at least. Betas will need to farm items for sale. That's the future of employment BTW. Universal basic income will fund your small footprint lifestyle [fastcoexist.com] and enough nutrient slurry (make sure to try the new SoylentNews Soylent brand crossover) to keep you alive. Keep in mind that you don't actually need a window [wikipedia.org] in the apartment.
Friendship is streaming. Such as streaming hot piss into a bottle hooked up to your junk while watching MLG pro gamers stream on Twitch/console/Beam [alternativeto.net].
This is an untapped force.
Yuuuu-Huge potential for online voting. A lot of commentards here will tell you that online voting is insecure. But they clearly haven't considered how the blockchain can be used to solve all online voting security issues. In fact, unnamed sources [washingtonpost.com] tell me that the SEC Blockchain will launch in about 3 years.It's mildly disappointing, but good to see that the numbers are trending upwards. We definitely want to see around 500 million Americans playing vidya games in excess of 48 hours a week by 2025.
Let's not be too hasty here. Don't
trustbet on anyone over 30 [pbs.org]. Anti-aging [wikipedia.org] needs to be developed to ensure that gamers of all ages find their role/niche in the gaming workforce. But yes, people of all genders can expose their tits/moobs for views.I heard that younger men are getting married less often. I wonder if there is some kind of correlation hidden in the data.
He got lucky! College is worthless for most Americans. He found the aforementioned subjective happiness! Unlike the disaffected youth of days past, he's online and loving it!
Ouch, you're about to get clouded machine learning style hard in the job. At least you'll have gaming to fall back on.
But of course. You need a VR headset with high dynamic range color and a high contrast ratio [wikipedia.org].
We found the first and best use case for strong AI [wccftech.com]. Not designing starships, but crafting narratives in real time!
Better to embrace a pale reflection than a murky darkness!
Uh-oh. It's cleanup time. Dank memers are gonna get gassed.
Finally, a true and honest metric for determining the world order. GAMING.
Trump is a philosopher-God-king for the gaming community. He talks the talk and walks the walk. He doesn't have to touch a controller. He IS the controller.
Yes, this is a secession movement. Reality is seceding from reality. Virtual reality is virtually real and virtuous.
In conclusion, it's all ogre. We on that Next Level shit [erowid.org]. Oops, wrong one [wikipedia.org].
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday March 06 2017, @05:19AM (3 children)
takyon, just asking, you alright?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday March 06 2017, @05:21AM (2 children)
I'm alright/10.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TytGVo1O3_w [youtube.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by aristarchus on Monday March 06 2017, @05:36AM (1 child)
OK! I almost never click on youtube links, since life is like a box of chocolates, especially Runaway's links, but Pleasantly surprised! Fleetwood! From a different generation, "Party on, Dude!"
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday March 06 2017, @05:38AM
I aim to please!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oF9yHO-UUws [youtube.com]
Dopamine levels are increasing, Cap'n!
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06 2017, @09:13AM (1 child)
Let's not be too hasty here. Don't trust bet on anyone over 30. Anti-aging needs to be developed to ensure that gamers of all ages find their role/niche in the gaming workforce.
I play more games now at 40 than I did when I was 30. But then again, twitch games have never been my thing, and your link talks about reaction times. I do ok in games like Team Fortress 2 and Gran Turismo, but something like Call Of Duty was never my thing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06 2017, @03:51PM
Agree here. I cannot fathom how "Cock of Duty" as my friends call it can be entertaining. Somehow that game is the only game women play, whereupon they encounter foul-mouthed ADHD "tweens" and conclude that it's representative of video games. Their loss I guess, and I guess the women who pick up Monster Hunter when its popularity waxes from time to time (not all are traps either amazingly) are traitors to their gender or something.
The twitchiest I'll get is probably the Armored Core series, but I especially liked how 5 at least had more emphasis on being somewhat tactical. Big fan of the Gran Turismo series. I think I was in high school when the first came out, and it's one of the few games I'll buy a new system to play. I don't do the whole cockpit thing, but having an actual steering wheel and pedals really helps.
Monster Hunter is probably the other one I'll get a new system for. If you try to twitch play Monster Hunter like Cock of Duty, you'll get your ass handed to you in short order. That one in particular I've found the 3D on the 3DS really helped me; I suck at gauging distance in games.
Come to think of it, Gran Turismo is probably the most competitive game I like, though that territory battle mode in Armored Core 5 was fun while there were still people playing it. Generally I tend to enjoy cooperative games a lot more, and I just don't have the time to dedicate endless time to grinding. If I wanted to spend my free time doing repetitive bullshit, I'd just get a 2nd job.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06 2017, @05:06AM (5 children)
You have no idea. Books are not synonymous with fiction, and fiction is not the same as entertainment. We have a whole generation that cannot be alone with their own thoughts, mostly because they have none. But really they need to be distracted from the ennui of their lives by the motion of images on a screen, and a score, because they have nothing better to do. Video games have destroyed art, destroyed science, and according to the gamergaters and MRAs, have destroyed romance and human relations. Once Zuckerberg gets you into the Oculus Rift, there will be no way out. Play on.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday March 06 2017, @05:13AM (2 children)
Don't worry, bro. It can be open! Open as in "runs on Linux [soylentnews.org]".
Destroyed arts? It is art! Of course, even using a girl's ass to press ink onto a canvas is art! If statements are art, what better performance art than the rejection of the material world?
Science? Science is chugging along and producing high resolution displays and dense GPUs needed for The Next Level of VR gaming. Machine learning, too. We'll definitely need some form of AI to amp up the narrative to the max, yo.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06 2017, @05:23AM (1 child)
takyon, just asking, you alright?
I'm guessing, not.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday March 06 2017, @05:28AM
Guess again! I'm virtual!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cU8HrO7XuiE [youtube.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06 2017, @01:56PM
We have a whole generation that cannot be alone with their own thoughts, mostly because they have none.
"Damn X is ruining our children." - every older generation in the existence of mankind
Humanity will survive just fine. 400 years ago, some grumpy grandpa like yourself was probably saying the exact same thing about books.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06 2017, @02:54PM
I play video games. I play Star Citizen, PSO2, Civ 4, and various others. I don't care if this makes me shallow. I don't care if this makes me a misogynist by definition. It's what my boyfriend and I enjoy.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06 2017, @06:10AM
I like stories. They are a good way to convey ideas, to entertain, provoke emotions etc. I read/play a lot of visual novels which are classified as games. I also spend a lot of time playing RPG_s which have a similar role as VN and traditional novels for me: they provide a story, and in come cases it may be interactive, and others not.
Video games (as well as novels, and anime in my case) also fill the roll of providing shared social context. They give me something to discuss people which I often find more interesting than our local professional sports teams.
Now that I got the justifications that fit with social norms out of the way (That's not what the article is about!), I'd like to comment on the article:
What did the game offer that the rest of the world could not? To begin with, games make sense, unlike life: As with all sports, digital or analog, there are ground rules that determine success (rules that, unlike those in society, are clear to all). The purpose of a game, within it, unlike in society, is directly recognized and never discounted. You are always a protagonist: Unlike with film and television, where one has to watch the acts of others, in games, one is an agent within it.
I strongly disagree with this claim. I play games that are mostly not about winning. Sure on my first play through I won Undertale (I guess?), but maybe I really lost? Its not clear. Also with regards to sports, I play casual level Ultimate Frisbee, and its pretty much never been about winning. When I played today, we mostly didn't keep score, and switched teams a lot. Thus the claim that sports are about winning, and games are as well seem really flawed to me. When I played WoW, and layer Wildstar, it was about exploration, not clearly defined success: it was less linear goal oriented than when I go on a hike in the real world. Also, life doesn't make sense? Really? You have fun while you can, then you die: there is nothing to be confused about.
I do not have goals. I do not strive to achieve anything. This is the same in real life, and in games. There is nothing special about games in that regard here: they are just one form of novel stimulus I enjoy, and thats really all I live for.
Again from TFA:
In those games, too, players typically begin in the same place, and in public agreement about what counts for status and how to get it. In other words, games look like the perfect meritocracies we are taught to expect for ourselves from childhood but never actually find in adulthood.
I know my utility specked Druid in WoW wasn't good at anything. I also didn't give a shit. I also sure a hell don't view a visual novel or most of my RPS_s as a meritocracy, that doesn't even make sense: they are stories and they love to advertise their moral choices and such (though most games that advertise that suck at it). I also never expected the adult world to be a meritocracy. Really, does anyone actually think good people rise in the world rankings? That is only in specialized ranked areas, which include a small subset of games, and many real life activities. Again, video games arn't special: there are some competitive ones, but most gamers arn't trying to climb the ladders, and I certainly never have. This article makes about as much sense as claiming "Since artists all start with blank pages, and there are art contests, art is a meritocracy, and therefore people turn to it to get what they wanted out of adult life."
We turn to games when real life fails us — not merely in touristic fashion but closer to the case of emigrants, fleeing a home that has no place for them.
Of fuck you. Games are a medium, that you are thinking of is the genera of fiction, but even in that case the argument is bullshit. Games (and fictional stories) are part of life, and life just is, it can not succeed for fail someone. Sure, I'm an an antisocial introvert, and I love to spend time thinking about imaginary worlds. But you know what, the "reality" most people spend their time thinking about isn't actually different is any way. If I spend a few hours crying over a VN about terminal illness (Like Narcissu) and you brows the news headlines that happen to cover a similar topic some day, who's experience is more real? Which is more relevant? I'm not escaping the world: I'm augmenting it. Sure theres lots of pointless fun in video games, but people also watch football on TV. The world is many dimensional, and hierarchical in its aspects: you do not leave, you only explore other areas. I love "real life": it contains so many fun things, like video games.
Thats one of the very few things I get defensive about. Don't diss on reality. Its fucking awesome. Have you seen emergent behavior? An evolved blob of cells can write an amazing story, and from it we can construct entire worlds of our own.
So I don't know how that article ends, I just can't read and further: I'm going to go consume better fiction because our amazing reality has far better to offer than the TFA.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Monday March 06 2017, @08:14AM (1 child)
Carpal tunnel syndrome, trigger finger, lateral epicondylitis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpal_tunnel_syndrome [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trigger_finger [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennis_elbow [wikipedia.org]
Put them all in one arm, and you'll never play video games again.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday March 06 2017, @08:23AM
Easy solution: hook them up to a neural VR interface (like the Matrix). Then they'll be able to enjoy freedom of movement and sensation without the need for actual movement.
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(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06 2017, @10:06AM (10 children)
"Why Ever Stop Playing Video Games?"
Because they are propaganda. They are a vehicle of mind-control. The human mind is bombarded with things (goodies) it cannot easily resist. The mind enjoys a brief encounter with un-reality, and to the mind, CRT is also life. The mind does not know the difference between what is real and what is not.
The Cabal in control of world governments and the human mind gives away video games and drugs to keep you occupied so you will not see what is being done to you. They are sucking your energy out of you, and it makes them stronger. This is sort of like how chickens are raised for their flesh and eggs. Keep the chickens occupied until it is time for the chopping block.
Humans should stop playing all video games because games do not add value. They tire you down physically and mentally (and also emotionally ?) when you should be doing something useful, creating something that makes all our lives better.
What the propaganda article tries to brainwash us with is that we should all do what the secret societies (the hidden hand) want us to do.
Drop the video game controller and do something useful. Create a group of Recovering Gamers. Say "NO" to gaming.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday March 06 2017, @10:17AM (3 children)
Because they are propaganda. They are a vehicle of mind-control.
Lemme get this straight: you're saying that video games are the control mechanism the lizard people use to control us? OK, got it.
"I came here to kick ass and chew bubble gum, but I'm all out of bubble gum!"
Roddy Piper, "They Live", 1988. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096256/ [imdb.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06 2017, @11:31AM (2 children)
Video games also kill your imagination. Just keep clicking until you win (virtually).
What a strange kind of win.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Monday March 06 2017, @08:14PM
Have you seen Minecraft?
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06 2017, @10:45PM
I would imagine they kill your creativity about as much as watching a movie, looking at a painting, listening to music, etc. Geez, these kids don't even have to make their own symphonies? Lazy punks.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Monday March 06 2017, @01:31PM (2 children)
Thats a good rant AC, no sarcasm that was well written in its genre.
However it fails in the assumption that all gaming is hyper repetitive FPS infantry propaganda.
What is the morals, ethics, and mind control aspects of Tetris. Tetris is hardly the only purely abstract game out there. Arguably EveOnline when I was playing around 05 or so was just an accounting spreadsheet with a nifty 3d screensaver I donno if its advanced beyond that but a game that boils down to given spreadsheet number X grind to generate X+1 doesn't seem to have a meaning other than "addiction is fun".
How about heavily modded minecraft, what is the secret society aspect of making a really freaking nice enderIO and storage drawers based cobbleworks, I'm rather proud of mine? What is the morals and ethics of using RFTools mod to create a dimlet based dimension made of draconium to "cheat" the grind built into Draconic Evolution, as best illustrated by Direwolf20 over the course of about two hours of video to eliminate weeks of grind and jump right into mid-late game draconic? Or knowing that I can cheat the grind and not enjoying the grind at all, what if I just cheat in 100 stacks of draconium powder and call it good, save all that time and kilowatt hours?
Or maybe Zachtronics TIS-100 I still chuckle a little at the line "It's the assembly language programming game you never asked for!" Its sorta like rockeys boots from 1980 and Intercal had a love child and they wrapped it up in a strange story line. Maybe a better analogy is its project euler or that bio-genetic site (brain freeze, I love that site but blood caffeine levels are too low) got a video game UI. So what about puzzles? Maybe an even better analogy is TIS-100 is just an assembly language programmers crossword puzzle.
Here's a real mind bender... A bunch of my friends get together on google hangout weekly to get drunk and play Pathfinder. If my work and life schedule were a little more stable I'd be joining in. Now is that healthy socializing, problem solitary drinking, problem social drinking, video/computer gaming because it involves apps for dice and chat and shared map graphics, all of the above, or none of the above? And how do the secret societies fit into this?
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Monday March 06 2017, @05:12PM (1 child)
What is the morals, ethics, and mind control aspects of Tetris.
Is "free software should never have existed because it destroys the market" (source [slashdot.org]) enough of a moral for you?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday March 06 2017, @06:49PM
More like a hollywood actor talking about politics or my plumber talking about astrophysics, an authority in one are doesn't apply too well to others. So I wouldn't be surprised if the Tetris author had weird opinions about FOSS or biochemistry or if zero point nine repeating is in fact equal to one or whatever.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by EvilSS on Monday March 06 2017, @02:30PM
The Cabal in control of world governments and the human mind gives away video games and drugs to keep you occupied so you will not see what is being done to you.
So where can I sign up for those free video games and drugs exactly?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06 2017, @02:37PM
you might be overplaying your hand a bit. not that you're wrong, but you might want to youtube Jon Rappaport .. look for things on creativity and all that. i'm not going to do the work for you, but please understand that the black magic thing as you letting yourself get told what works and what does not. one gets depressed with off-the shelf software in business as one does in the construction of one's own mental life. the cabal you speak of is immaterial, its all the people who bought in and expect to profit from being able to tell you what to think. no big deal really. just realize that we can have billions of world-views without anyone loosing a thing. .. billions of minds in the same game or world-view.. that's the matrix. not worth raging about when you have ideas of your own.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 06 2017, @03:17PM
Humans should stop playing all video games because games do not add value. They tire you down physically and mentally (and also emotionally ?) when you should be doing something useful, creating something that makes all our lives better.
Like turning beer into piss. Gaming is already an improvement over the old ways.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06 2017, @11:03AM
The Bread has to be real, but the Circuses don't have to be.
And that's important in a finite world: http://www.overshootday.org/ [overshootday.org]
Given the same resource cost, more people can be satisfied by virtual Circuses than by real Circuses. That way the 0.1% can reduce their odds of getting "pitchforked"...
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday March 06 2017, @01:47PM (1 child)
ascended within American and world culture to a scale rivaling sports, film, and television?
The graph of addiction is interesting in that it mirrors TV, where "our cultural leader" shows have like 97% non-viewership, likewise most kids don't game very much. Has to do with the fragmentation of society where the most popular activity is something almost no one participates in, so its not surprising the numbers are about the same for TV and gaming.
I can assure you as a parent of school age kids they don't spend much time in the classroom. The state mandates a little over a thousand hours per school year of classroom indoctrination, includes recess and hall time but not lunch hour. In weird America only a third of the people are employed and those few employed either work less than part time to avoid bennies at like three jobs, or are salaried and "have to" work 60+ hour weeks because so many are unemployed if they're unwilling to slave away. I'm one of the few Americans left who work 40/wk every week. Kids just don't go to school very much. There's some kind of little house on the prairie mentality where kids had 12 hour school days 6 days/week or something, but thats dead. My daughter only goes to school before 9 until a bit after 3 and my son is an hour earlier on both counts. That's it. Even "back in the good old days" when I was a kid and Reagan was prez, high school only ran something like 7:15 to 2:30, roughly.
Another interesting point is my wife games on facebook for likes and friends. Its just another meaningless game, but I'm sure its not being counted because the only true gaming is FPS and high school girls probably hang out somewhere cooler than facebook now (facebook is for grannies and aunties now a days).
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday March 06 2017, @03:38PM
Kids just don't go to school very much. There's some kind of little house on the prairie mentality where kids had 12 hour school days 6 days/week or something, but thats dead.
First of all, that was NEVER the case. While we don't have good statistical data on school day length going back that far, we do have statistics on school year [ed.gov] over time, which rose from ~130 days to ~180 days between the late 1800s and around 1930; since then, the school year length has been more-or-less constant. Also, it should be noted that average student (even those who were enrolled) generally attended only a bit over half of those days back in the 1800s -- on many days, there were farm duties or whatever else to attend to, so kids simply didn't come to school that much.
As for school day length, yes school days used to start earlier in the morning and/or end in the late afternoon, though frequently with a lunch break of 2 or more hours to go home (common still in walkable city/town schools through the 1960s or 1970s). Thus, the effective number of instructional hours per day was rarely above the ~6 hours of instruction most kids get today. Maybe your school when "Reagan was prez" was outside the norm, but stats we do have going back to the 1980s don't show a significant change in instructional hours.
Also, the U.S. is hardly lagging in total school hours globally. (See, for example, here [pewresearch.org], or the chart here [wikipedia.org].) The U.S. is near the top of most lists in total instructional hours per school year, despite lagging in many educational performance metrics.
(Score: 1) by StarryEyed on Monday March 06 2017, @01:51PM (2 children)
Because it's all downhill after Fallout 2 and Planescape Torment.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mth on Monday March 06 2017, @02:07PM (1 child)
A new Torment [inxile-entertainment.com] game was released last week. I must admit I never played Planescape: Torment, but I'm impressed by the new one. It most certainly is an RPG, in the sense you get to role play a character and make decisions like that character would; it is not an action game that's labeled an RPG because it has stat progression.
(Score: 2) by Hawkwind on Tuesday March 07 2017, @12:47AM
(Score: 2, Funny) by nitehawk214 on Monday March 06 2017, @01:54PM
Because I need to go to bed. I have work in the morning.
Well maybe one more round...
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06 2017, @02:31PM (4 children)
you stop playing games when you become productive, desire to create and build and make, and most of all, you stop playing games when you begin to value your own creativity and imagination more so than the short term dopamine rushes of games or porn or whatever else takes you away from living your own individual creative and productive life.
get real, play along with life and not some prefab reality. you can do it, you can 'be the one'.
and yeah, its the gaming that gets you depressed, not the other way around!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06 2017, @06:49PM (2 children)
A good point, but for a lot of people video games are the only real outlet. Building real things costs a lot of money comparatively, unless you're an artist or musician then it is less. Being productive in the world is much harder, people get their necessary life items from industrial manufacturers. Selling crafty home items requires such a markup compared to the manufactured ones that it is nearly impossible for artists to make a living. Hmmm, hand made coffee mug that looks pretty unique for $35 - 50, or a more boring but totally functional mug for $5-15?
I will agree that video games are a problem, but there are many other problems that drive people into the short term and easy satisfaction that games provide. Most games aren't just button mashing and require skill, problem solving, and even creativity at times. Add on to that the existential horror of modern life (ignorance sure as hell is bliss sometimes) and I can't blame people for wanting to retreat from the shitty world around them. Sure there are good parts, but generally you've got to be in a quite successful career in order to afford the good stuff like decent home, good restaurants, cultural events, or even a general feeling of security.
I think we may be seeing the effects of overpopulation and wealth inequality more than anything else. There is no frontier, most free space has been bought up and locked away. Even disused spaces are out of bounds. Human beings have to pay exorbitant rates for their few hundred square feet of personal space. No wonder people are detaching from the real world in favor of more interesting virtual experiences.
(Score: 2) by art guerrilla on Tuesday March 07 2017, @12:50AM (1 child)
"Building real things costs a lot of money comparatively, unless you're an artist or musician then it is less."
THAT, right THERE, is proving the previous poster's point: there are INNUMERABLE ways of being creative and artistic that DON'T require any -if any- huge amount of monetary investment, etc...
now, if you *insist* that you will only express your creative outlet by making faberge-type decorated eggs, diamond-encrusted, gold filigree, etc, then, yes, your idiotic choice would be 'too expensive' for most...
but when you have people who create incredible art with a piece of paper and a bic pen, and you say you can't/won't/refuse to because it 'costs a lot of money', then you show you are an unimaginative fool, and sounds like you lack the creativity yourself to, well, create...
NOTWITHSTANDING (yeah, i used it, since no one else will), that 'gaming' -uh duh- costs money, and not inconsiderable sums... for the cost of a 'good' (not even 'great') gaming PC or console, you could be on your way to even a medium priced art/hobby... not to mention the games themselves, 40-50-60$+ ? ? ? and how many of those do you get over time ?
AND you say being arty is too expensive ? ? ?
being gamey is too expensive, and a bigger timesink than the glass teat...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 07 2017, @04:49AM
It was more of a commentary on the state of the world. Unless you derive happiness and satisfaction from napkin art, or some other outlet deemed more suitable or productive, then what is the point? If it boils down to personal happiness and fulfillment, then that is up to the person. To me a great video game is like a great book, and there are often things you can do in games that you simply can not do in real life.
So you have a bias of physical matter vs. digital? My main point was that doing something productive in the real world is actually a bit prohibitive, and not everyone finds joy in calligraphy, woodworking, etc. If you can't hone a skill in order to actually be useful then all that's left is personal enjoyment / fulfillment. If you enjoy from gardening, do that. If you enjoy reading books, do that. If you enjoy playing video games, do that.
Judging others for how they spend their own time is a silly exercise.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday March 06 2017, @06:55PM
you stop playing games when you become productive, desire to create and build and make, and most of all, you stop playing games when you begin to value your own creativity and imagination more so than the short term dopamine rushes of games or porn or whatever else takes you away from living your own individual creative and productive life.
I do all those things. I'm sorry you don't have the mental fortitude necessary to do so, as well. Variety is the spice of life.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by donkeyhotay on Monday March 06 2017, @03:47PM (2 children)
When someone uses the term "video games" that conjures up different concepts for different people. There is a difference between playing, say, Candy Crush or The New York Times Crossword, and, say, Assassin's Creed. All of these are video games and therefore it should not be surprising at all that 155 million Americans are playing them. There are all sorts of video games for all sorts of people today in a way that didn't exist ten years ago.
The appeal of video games is not surprising to me. Forty years ago people used to get together to play bridge. Now they get together online and play video games. The attractions remain the same.
The trend that I don't understand is people who watch videos of other people playing video games. I recently spent a couple of days around my 19-year=old nephew. He spent almost the entire weekend watching videos of people playing video games. It makes me want to bring back the draft.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 07 2017, @12:03AM
You want you 19 year old nephew drafted into the army so he can be killed by muslims? What sort of sick perverted uncle are you?
(Score: 2) by termigator on Wednesday March 08 2017, @08:05PM
> The trend that I don't understand is people who watch videos of other people playing video games.
The reasons are likely the same as why people watch movies, TV shows, and sports.