This captures a lot of what I've been feeling lately. I can't stand most games, they just make me anxious and I will quit playing them after a few hours or even minutes. Too much stress and surface experiences has had me looking in the other direction. Take, for example, GTA 5. I've probably spent more hours riding cars and bikes in GTA5's beautiful countryside and outback than playing actual missions. Just hours and hours of riding during rain or sunshine, dawn or dusk, in the city or the most remote mountains. It's beautiful and serene and made me realize that I don't really need dozens of hours of frantic gameplay. But as amazing as those experiences are, they aren't the core focus of GTA5 and that's a missed opportunity.
I am ready for video games with these beautiful moments - and please keep them short! I don't want to spend hours and hours on a game anymore, at least not traditional ones - but I have no idea where to find them.
I mostly disagree with this article. There's very few nonviolent games I've played that I enjoy. I guess you could say I'm the average consumer, but there are certain trends in industries that are predominant, because that's what people want. I think all media generally has its worth defined by how it is a conduit of unrealistic experience.
For instance, the biggest blockbuster movies usually contain unrealistic scenarios of violence and heroism. The biggest romance movies are usually unrealistic. The most popular music is usually describing a hypothetical situation that people feel drawn to.
I think that's responsible for the trends we've seen in graphics, 3d, virtual reality. People willing to consume media are people that don't have or want the opportunity to be extraordinary in their lives. The more realistic graphics become, the more they feel that their experiences in media are real experiences.
So my point is basically that games exist not just for the novelty of playing a game, but also to let people live their fantasies, and some fantasies are less realistic than others, and therefore will be better represented in games. Anyone can have a relationship with another person. You don't need Lydia in Skyrim for that, and likely if you try it in real life, it'll be much more rewarding than in a video game. If you try gutting someone with a sword in real life, you'll go to jail.
This whole portrayal of video games (and other media) as "art" will never take off outside of technological hipster circles, for the same reason most people don't spend hours in art museums ever day. They're not interested in media for its own sake as artistic, they're interested in the proxy experiences that it offers, that people can't get elsewhere.
One of the main problems with single-player video games is that a lot of people work alone and don't want to spend their free time doing something that feels kind of like work, but doesn't seem to offer much in return. They'd rather spend their time socializing or doing something that will improve them in an obvious way.
A personal anecdote - I loved single-player video games until I was 18, but I stopped cold at that age. 5 years later, I tried to get back into it. I played some games that I used to like. I don't feel the things I used to feel while playing. Leveling up in Diablo just feels like accomplishing a chore - it feels meaningless.
This author seems to think that video games, in general, are definitely for everyone. I don't agree. Just like there are people who don't like reading or listening to music who manage to live whole, well-rounded lives, there are people who don't like playing video games.
This is exactly how it is for me too. When I was younger I would feel so connected to the game world, and the wonders of exploring the game world were real wonders to me. Discovering some new village in Ultima 6 made me feel like a great adventurer. A finder of something. If it was important in the game world then it was important.
These days it falls out just like you wrote: if I try to play a game, I mess around for a bit and then think: I could spend this time doing something creative. Making something, learning something. If I found some modern equivalent of a hidden city in a game, I'd think: so what? Who fucking cares? What does that get me?
I still can't figure out if this means there's something really wrong with me, that I can't even enjoy meaningless pursuits; or maybe that my sense of 'meaning' is so restricted; or if it's the opposite, and my reticence to do those things is a sign that I'm spending time the right way, or at least, that I have the right objective function in how I evaluate my time?
Of course, I'm a miserable bastard. That's probably an important data point. But I'm not sure how I could change even if I was sure that I should.
And here I am, acting in reverse. I loved multiplayer games much more than single player when I was in my teens, but since graduating college a couple years ago I've only been drawn toward single player experiences.
I don't care about beating other players or grinding out at some arbitrary mechanic that's going to get patched in two months just to be "better" than my friends. I'd rather sit back and enjoy a well made game for 40-100 hours and talk about my experiences playing it later.
A lot of video games are designed to satisfy our desire to be accomplishing things. I think if you already have things in your life you are working towards then these kinds of video games don't have much of an appeal.
I used to spend a lot of time playing video games, and one of the things that allowed me to break away from it was realizing I was using video games as a proxy for accomplishment in real life.
I think this one of the reasons games like diablo are more appealing when we are younger some of as kids/teens don't have things we prefer to do with the time.
As a counter-point, there are so many genres of VG that at this point there really is a game for everyone. Sure, we all grow up and our tastes change, like in music and movies - you just rent this one movie you enjoyed so much when you were 18, and now it's just a cringefest. Doesn't mean, tho, that you dislike movies or that movies are not for everyone.
I can and do relate with the sentiment that Diablo is an endless grind - but that's because it always was. Just like duke nukem always was a parody of action heroes and doom never really had a story; our younger selves simply chose to ignore that for some reason. Now we're a bit older and really spoiled - we want triple A graphics together with a solid story that, if it were a movie, would get an oscar, minimal grind and repetitiveness (looking at you, borderlands, you're just teeedious). And you know what, there are games that provide. The "walking sims" for your storyline needs, say, Firewatch; Frictional studios games to make you miserable; Stanley Parable and The Beginners' guide for your mindfuck needs; Sunless Sea if you don't mind an occasional grind and presentation from 1999 - but you're rewarded with lush writing that alone makes the game worth playing... Hell, even if the good writing's not your cup of tea, you still can enjoy such beauties as Braid, or great weirdnesses such as Antichamber.
We have this whole area polished to a place we don't even have to play - there are countless "let's play" videos, forum threads and i bet there even is a "let's play" podcast somewhere out there.
I feel the point of the article is that people who enjoy this art (notice the lack of quotes) are looked down by the people who "don't like video games" and think that candy crush or call of duty are the pinnacle of modern gaming. There's no way they'd leave that zone of comfort and give a good game a shot instead of insisting people do "something that is obviously more meaningful". The author claims that the "industry" produces "boring games", and she is partially right - games that are interesting for working adults that do not want to spend time in trivial pursuits do not get enough exposure. Should they? Probably not. Should the notion that games are a waste of time, a grind, a simulacrum of work and totally useless, change? Probably yes.
You hit the nail on the head for me too, exact same thing happened to me at age 18. I used to be such a gamer as a kid, and now I can hardly stand to even pick them up. I've continued to some play multiplayer games (mostly shooters and FIFA), but even that has trailed off and my Xbox One is mainly used for netflix. Unless there is an aspect of socialization to it I just don't find it a rewarding use of time. Even something like this, browsing HN and writing a comment, is more interesting to me at this point.
>One of the main problems with single-player video games is that a lot of people work alone and don't want to spend their free time doing something that feels kind of like work, but doesn't seem to offer much in return.
>A personal anecdote - I loved single-player video games until I was 18, but I stopped cold at that age. 5 years later, I tried to get back into it. I played some games that I used to like. I don't feel the things I used to feel while playing. Leveling up in Diablo just feels like accomplishing a chore - it feels meaningless.
"Growing up", that's what you are describing; I purchased Fallout 4 the day it came out, and after few minutes of playing and all I could see was bad hit-boxes and every NPC feels like a sound-recorder with a few different pre-recorded phrases. That game got pretty good reviews so its probably not about the game, its my perception of it. Old hobbies feeling meaningless happens to almost everyone, some people spent their youth reading but at their forties they barely read the news.
>This author seems to think that video games, in general, are definitely for everyone. I don't agree. Just like there are people who don't like reading or listening to music who manage to live whole, well-rounded lives, there are people who don't like playing video games.
Couldn't agree more; some people like extreme sports, some people don't, doesn't mean there is something wrong with every extreme sports, its just that we are different from each other, that's all.
This is partly a story about getting older & wiser, and partly a story about consuming entertainment vs creating it. Games do get less fun as you grow older, and it happens a little faster if you're in the industry and start to see the big picture clearly. And consuming things is always less fun and engaging that making things. It's the same difference between buying software and writing your own.
This article resonates with me because I have nearly the same story. I used to play a lot of games, and I worked in console game development for a decade on some reasonably big titles. The game design patterns are somewhat derivative, I witnessed the echo chamber myself. But FWIW, it's very hard to push the boundaries and end up with something people want to buy. The market likes familiar (derivative), with incremental changes.
These days, I have enough other things to do that games aren't a priority and I can't get involved in most games. It even stresses me out to think about trying to finish a game. Enough of my goals and the people in my life want my time that adding a game to the list takes away from something else I care more about.
Imagine a game, where you could re-enact decisive moments of your live, and watch other people react and get through those moments.
Of course, you would need good human/AI-Actors for this..
> She didn't like that there is a snake that can kill you. It's not that it is too hard, it's that she is deeply uninterested in being attacked in a game.
I think this hints at a big part of the problem. When we frame something as a game, we tend to evoke the concepts of winning and losing. The most brutal and obvious (lazy?) way of implementing that is to turn it into "kill or be killed". And that brutal, obvious, violent metaphor underpins the vast majority of the mainstream game industry. That's why something like Undertale is seen as fresh and subversive. That's probably even a big part of why Tetris sold so many Game Boys. But too many of us can't or won't see it. The author is probably right: those of us who have been immersed in this culture for 20+ years are like fish who too easily forget that not everyone likes to get wet.
Part of the problem is that it's easier to implement a competition/kill/survive mechanism than to add realistic interpersonal social dynamics. If you want to avoid competition or at least killing things, you'll have to be a lot more creative.
It's (relatively) much easier to find an audience for a film or book that is focused on dialogue, social interactions, and whatnot, than it is to do so for a game. I applaud efforts in this area, but I can see how it's easier to go for kill/win/compete style games.
It's worth calling out - the author is at least partially using this piece to highlight the value of their own new game development studio. This colors a lot of the piece in a very different light.
> At my studio we are making games with people who don't like video games because we want to break out of established paradigms.
There are a lot of games out there, more than enough to fill any niche you could possibly want to fill. The trick is that they aren't all made by Bethesda, Activision, or EA. If you really want to get your friends interested in videogames, listen to their interests (something that the OP didn't seem to do, for all that they're starting their own studio) and point them at games that cater to their interests, not your own.
> The most important thing is that they think video games lack depth. They say things like, "Unlike books/films/podcasts, with video games I don't learn anything or change as a person".
Which is somewhat surprising, since as with any art form, there are games which are masterpieces, and there is mass market junk. Why would people specifically not like games "because they lack depth", but have no problem reading books or watching films, while the vast majority of them are drowning in the sea of mediocrity as well?
I suppose it comes from the general lack of perception about games as an art form. While established art exists for many years, computer games are relatively young art, and I suppose you can compare it to the negative view on cinema by some in its early days.
> Skyrim has the depth, but not the taste.
I wouldn't agree here. While Skyrim draws many with its exploration element, I'd say it lacks depth if you compare it to really good RPGs. It's not on par with Baldur's Gate, Planescape Torment, Knights of the Old Republic, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines or the Witcher series. The story in later Bethesda games is pretty generic and outright boring. I'd say the last good game in the series was Morrowind.
Going back to the art point above, it's the result of mass market appeal. Publishers don't want risky things which can become masterpieces. "Safe bet" of mass market mediocrity is more comfortable for them. Luckily, crowdfunding today helps with that to some degree.
Those "white men" (I guess Asian gaming isn't a thing?) are apparently doing a pretty good job appealing to women as some studies have suggested they're roughly half of the game playing demographic: http://www.dailydot.com/parsec/adult-women-largest-gaming-de...
It may be correct that women want something different than men, but I don't think its true in the way they imagine. A lot of women seem to have enjoyed "The Sims", but many of them appear to have spent their time in-game torturing their hapless sims.
Maybe I'm cynical, but I tend to be skeptical of art that's more about a cause rather than about the art itself. I'll give an example: christian rock. I have no problem with christianity, or with rock, or with rock that is about christian themes or ideas. But I think we all know there's also a subgenre called "christian rock", which is generally a tacky, pretentious and overbearing imitation of the above things in the interest of furthering an agenda or crassly pandering. The problem with "christian rock" is it tends to be more about being "christian" than about being good rock music. You can have good rock music that is christian, but "christian rock" is almost always tacky.
You see something similar recently with "art games" that are trying so hard to be "art" that they're pretentious and overbearing. The only good "art" games are the ones that ended up being interesting works of art by exploring an idea, not because they set out to be art games.
I hate to say this, but I kind of worry this could just be the same thing, but instead it'll be "serious adult" games or "feminist games" or pick whatever social movement you want here. But it won't really be about the game, it'll be about the movements values.
Different people like different kinds of games and gameplay experiences. But most of the video games industry is oriented around violent, twitchy games and RPGs.
I can sink hundreds of hours into Civilization, X-COM, or Minecraft—games of strategy and games of world-building—but for me computer RPGs are almost entirely inferior to tabletop RPGs, especially in the "open world" aspect. Shooters especially bore me: fast reflexes on a control pad are not something I particularly want to spend spend dozens or hundreds of hours developing. Then you see the YouTube comments of the people who deride everyone else for not sharing their commitment for some specific styles of twitchy games. Some gamers have developed a weird and toxic little cult around their lifestyle games.
I think board games have grown so much because they have been able to attract people who are interested in different paradigms of play: cooperative games, for example, because it seems like so many people hate player conflict. Competition adds a whole layer of interest to most board games IMO, but the most important thing is just for people to have fun.
>We want games that aren't gritty, toxic pseudo-realistic pseudo-masculine nonsense nor frustrating time wasters that leave you feeling dead inside. We want games about how each of us could be in the future, how the world could be in the future. We want games built on compassion and respect and fearlessness. This is so much more interesting.
Great. That's fantastic. We always need more games, and more types of games. Just about anything can be made into a game (for evidence, just look at Phoenix Wright. Being a lawyer was never so much fun). And frankly, I'd love to see different games from more perspectives.
But.
Sometimes I want what this article dubs, "gritty, toxic pseudo-realistic pseudo-masculine nonsense," or "frustrating time wasters that leave you feeling dead inside." I get home at night, and maybe it's just me, but I want to raid dungeons and slay dragons. I want to storm the tower and save the princess. I want to kill sentient mushrooms by jumping on their head. I want to battle a handful of strangers, armed with a Rocket Launcher, improbably large collection of other weapons, and my own wits and reflexes.
And sometimes, I want to fit together blocks falling from the sky in a demented abstract russian nightmare.
In short, I want your experimental art games, but I also want the kinds of games that we already have. And we already have a lot of good ones, so stop insulting them, please.
...Anyways, if any of you are interested in game design, and also in the idea of games as art, and that games can be more than just entertainment, can appeal to more than just gamers, I would reccomend checking out Extra Credits (they're on YouTube now). Plus, their channel also does a pretty cool history show.
I stopped playing video games like 10 years ago for the same reason stated in this article: I couldn't finish any new game I started.
But I recently started to play again after years of no touching one. I weirdly enough I love it again. I can play solo games, enjoy them and finish them. I can play online games and enjoy the competition.
I think a lot has to do with how people cannot focus anymore on anything more than 10 minutes. I used to be like that. Checking phone notification, look at reddit every 5 minutes, etc. I worked on it for a long time. Stop running after the quick gratifications and enjoy the long term. And now I am back to being a gamer :)
Same here. There's a wealth of amazing games that I haven't played, considering that I stopped being an active gamer somewhere during the GameCube 'era'.
But in the same way that I seek out 'old movies' carefully, I'm very selective in my gaming choices. Currently I'm working my way through Red Dead Redemption and the Avernum series, but a large amount of games from the Xbox 360 area don't appeal to me at all anymore, for example.
You make a good point. I know I can't remember the last time I finished a recent big console game but my reason is that many of them take so damn long to finish. According to http://howlongtobeat.com/ many of these games take hundreds of hours to complete. For example in 2004 Half-Life 2 took 19 hours to complete while the recent Witcher 3 takes 165. Skyrim takes 215 hours. I don't think there is anything that can hold my attention for 215 hours.
It seems like relatively fewer kids today are getting immersed in the worlds of Zelda and long RPG games. I certainly agree that lack of attention span has something to do with it.
I think we need to distinguish between video games as "multimedia entertainment experiences" and video games as play.
Minecraft is essentially computerised Lego. There are few higher accolades I could pay to any game, because Lego is a phenomenally deep plaything. The more semantic meaning that the designer of a Lego set provides, the worse the play experience becomes. A bag of plain bricks can become anything, but a dragon molded as a single piece can only ever be a dragon. Likewise with Minecraft - Story Mode is a brief, dreary and hollow experience compared to Survival or Creative.
Each football match or chess game tells a unique story. The players create a spontaneous drama using the particular interplay of their skills and ideas. Infinite variety emerges from a leather ball and two sets of goalposts. A box of crayons and a piece of paper are in themselves meaningless, but create boundless meaning in the hands of an imaginative person.
My gripe with most modern games is that they try too hard to tell a story. Designers in the AAA and indie space are often preoccupied with emulating the attributes of other media, rather than exploring the unique possibilities of video games. Any modern gamer is familiar with the "movie with quick-time events" trope, games that shoehorn meaningless interaction into linear storytelling. A game can (and perhaps should) be a blank canvas rather than a work of art.
If you can't find meaning in a boxing match, if you can't grow and learn through playing Catan, if you take no joy from a lump of modelling clay, then the problem lies with you. We have many media that are infinitely better suited to depicting relatable characters and portraying the real world. The unique strength of games is play; games are at their best when they emphasise this core strength.
Nice polemic piece. Only goes to show that people don't know what huge variety of game experiences there are out there.
And also, we need to move away from the idea that some games or genres are objectively better or more interesting than others. It's all relative to the audience - some people have a stronger reaction to some experiences than to others, and will seek out different things.
Nick Yee has been doing excellent, data driven research on the interaction between player preferences, game types, and personality types - there's some intro material from his gdc talk on their web site: http://quanticfoundry.com/gdc/
My wife loves portal and portal 2 because you get to explore and not get shot at without walking into it with early warning. For 90% of the game, you can just drop the controller, come back the next day, and everything will be just how you left it. No pressure.
Honestly, the games I find the most engaging are simple 2D platformers and beat-em-ups. Maybe fighting games too, though I'm only interested in the single-player mode.
Playing around with some old games over the weekend and last weekend, I forgot how addictive they were.
Yesterday, I told myself "I'll play a bit of Super Mario Bros. 3 and see how far I can get on one life"... and before I knew it, I was in World 2.
The weekend before that, I played some Golden Axe, and I got a huge chunk of the way through the game before I had to turn it off to go do other things.
It's my personal opinion that 1985-1995 was the single best era for gaming, as it was dominated by addictive fast-paced games that you could just pick up and play. One of the things that turns me off about modern games is that the "just pick up and play" mentality is gone... too many unskippable cutscenes, forced tutorial levels, etc.
> things that turns me off about modern games [...] too many unskippable cutscenes, forced tutorial levels, etc.
Perhaps in the AAA space but down in the more indie spaces, you don't get those. My current set of favourite games (Rocket League, Binding of Isaac, Risk Of Rain, Rogue Legacy, Delver) certainly don't have any of those.
My main gripe with video games is that they're addictive. Boring or not, they push you to play another 5, 10, 60 minutes... before you know it, you ruined your evening, and wasted your time and the next day at work...
Kudos to the artists, developers, psychologists who can build that. And probably I am weak.
At the end of the day, they are very successful in making me addicted, that's why i am staying away, that's why I am not a gamer.
I feel like she just needs to find better less judgmental friends; they certainly don't sound like people I would want to associate with. They belittle her work, refuse to try things she enjoys and overall come off fairly unpleasant. New friends, real friends, are in order.
I've been playing games since Commodore 64. I've played through Amiga, early PC, Playstation, etc games. The problem is that gaming became an industry and the companies behind AAA games want you to spend as much time playing their game as possible. The 100% fun of Chaos Engine which took 4 hours became 150 hours of boring side-questing (I look at you Skyrim). The somach-wrenching action of Freespace 2 became endless leveling up, unlocking, achievement gathering in Battlefield or World of Tanks. This problem you describe is quite refreshing though but familiar if I think about it. I can only name a few games from recent years which have deep narrative (SOMA, Talos Principle for example) but most of them have some gameplay problems which you have to get used to. For example SOMA is unnerving, Talos Principle is full of hard puzzles. If you are not already a gamer you won't see what gaming can give you. This is a Catch 22 which is really hard to bypass. What I would really love to see is something like Dwarf Fortress which is __very__ deep but combersome in a neat package which can entertain me for a few hours (or weeks if I want). I also really like the direction Quantic Dream took with their games which are interactive movies with optional exploration. What I __REALLY__ miss though is well-written story and characters with real personality with the protagonist (the player) marching through a monumental and engaging storyline like we saw in Mass Effect. I really wish I could erase my memories of playing Mass Effect, System Shock 2, Undying, Half-Life and others so I can replay them and enjoy them again for the first time.
[+] [-] arkitaip|9 years ago|reply
I am ready for video games with these beautiful moments - and please keep them short! I don't want to spend hours and hours on a game anymore, at least not traditional ones - but I have no idea where to find them.
[+] [-] COGlory|9 years ago|reply
For instance, the biggest blockbuster movies usually contain unrealistic scenarios of violence and heroism. The biggest romance movies are usually unrealistic. The most popular music is usually describing a hypothetical situation that people feel drawn to.
I think that's responsible for the trends we've seen in graphics, 3d, virtual reality. People willing to consume media are people that don't have or want the opportunity to be extraordinary in their lives. The more realistic graphics become, the more they feel that their experiences in media are real experiences.
So my point is basically that games exist not just for the novelty of playing a game, but also to let people live their fantasies, and some fantasies are less realistic than others, and therefore will be better represented in games. Anyone can have a relationship with another person. You don't need Lydia in Skyrim for that, and likely if you try it in real life, it'll be much more rewarding than in a video game. If you try gutting someone with a sword in real life, you'll go to jail.
This whole portrayal of video games (and other media) as "art" will never take off outside of technological hipster circles, for the same reason most people don't spend hours in art museums ever day. They're not interested in media for its own sake as artistic, they're interested in the proxy experiences that it offers, that people can't get elsewhere.
[+] [-] tomdell|9 years ago|reply
A personal anecdote - I loved single-player video games until I was 18, but I stopped cold at that age. 5 years later, I tried to get back into it. I played some games that I used to like. I don't feel the things I used to feel while playing. Leveling up in Diablo just feels like accomplishing a chore - it feels meaningless.
This author seems to think that video games, in general, are definitely for everyone. I don't agree. Just like there are people who don't like reading or listening to music who manage to live whole, well-rounded lives, there are people who don't like playing video games.
[+] [-] shanusmagnus|9 years ago|reply
These days it falls out just like you wrote: if I try to play a game, I mess around for a bit and then think: I could spend this time doing something creative. Making something, learning something. If I found some modern equivalent of a hidden city in a game, I'd think: so what? Who fucking cares? What does that get me?
I still can't figure out if this means there's something really wrong with me, that I can't even enjoy meaningless pursuits; or maybe that my sense of 'meaning' is so restricted; or if it's the opposite, and my reticence to do those things is a sign that I'm spending time the right way, or at least, that I have the right objective function in how I evaluate my time?
Of course, I'm a miserable bastard. That's probably an important data point. But I'm not sure how I could change even if I was sure that I should.
[+] [-] Rumudiez|9 years ago|reply
I don't care about beating other players or grinding out at some arbitrary mechanic that's going to get patched in two months just to be "better" than my friends. I'd rather sit back and enjoy a well made game for 40-100 hours and talk about my experiences playing it later.
[+] [-] EndlessSky|9 years ago|reply
A lot of video games are designed to satisfy our desire to be accomplishing things. I think if you already have things in your life you are working towards then these kinds of video games don't have much of an appeal.
I used to spend a lot of time playing video games, and one of the things that allowed me to break away from it was realizing I was using video games as a proxy for accomplishment in real life.
I think this one of the reasons games like diablo are more appealing when we are younger some of as kids/teens don't have things we prefer to do with the time.
[+] [-] arpa|9 years ago|reply
I can and do relate with the sentiment that Diablo is an endless grind - but that's because it always was. Just like duke nukem always was a parody of action heroes and doom never really had a story; our younger selves simply chose to ignore that for some reason. Now we're a bit older and really spoiled - we want triple A graphics together with a solid story that, if it were a movie, would get an oscar, minimal grind and repetitiveness (looking at you, borderlands, you're just teeedious). And you know what, there are games that provide. The "walking sims" for your storyline needs, say, Firewatch; Frictional studios games to make you miserable; Stanley Parable and The Beginners' guide for your mindfuck needs; Sunless Sea if you don't mind an occasional grind and presentation from 1999 - but you're rewarded with lush writing that alone makes the game worth playing... Hell, even if the good writing's not your cup of tea, you still can enjoy such beauties as Braid, or great weirdnesses such as Antichamber.
We have this whole area polished to a place we don't even have to play - there are countless "let's play" videos, forum threads and i bet there even is a "let's play" podcast somewhere out there.
I feel the point of the article is that people who enjoy this art (notice the lack of quotes) are looked down by the people who "don't like video games" and think that candy crush or call of duty are the pinnacle of modern gaming. There's no way they'd leave that zone of comfort and give a good game a shot instead of insisting people do "something that is obviously more meaningful". The author claims that the "industry" produces "boring games", and she is partially right - games that are interesting for working adults that do not want to spend time in trivial pursuits do not get enough exposure. Should they? Probably not. Should the notion that games are a waste of time, a grind, a simulacrum of work and totally useless, change? Probably yes.
[+] [-] AdrianB1|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] extr|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ksk|9 years ago|reply
What are you basing this on?
[+] [-] notgood|9 years ago|reply
"Growing up", that's what you are describing; I purchased Fallout 4 the day it came out, and after few minutes of playing and all I could see was bad hit-boxes and every NPC feels like a sound-recorder with a few different pre-recorded phrases. That game got pretty good reviews so its probably not about the game, its my perception of it. Old hobbies feeling meaningless happens to almost everyone, some people spent their youth reading but at their forties they barely read the news.
>This author seems to think that video games, in general, are definitely for everyone. I don't agree. Just like there are people who don't like reading or listening to music who manage to live whole, well-rounded lives, there are people who don't like playing video games.
Couldn't agree more; some people like extreme sports, some people don't, doesn't mean there is something wrong with every extreme sports, its just that we are different from each other, that's all.
[+] [-] ionised|9 years ago|reply
I find other people (like public servers in Battlefield or the screaming/hacking teenagers in GTA Online) ruin games more often than make them better.
[+] [-] dahart|9 years ago|reply
This article resonates with me because I have nearly the same story. I used to play a lot of games, and I worked in console game development for a decade on some reasonably big titles. The game design patterns are somewhat derivative, I witnessed the echo chamber myself. But FWIW, it's very hard to push the boundaries and end up with something people want to buy. The market likes familiar (derivative), with incremental changes.
These days, I have enough other things to do that games aren't a priority and I can't get involved in most games. It even stresses me out to think about trying to finish a game. Enough of my goals and the people in my life want my time that adding a game to the list takes away from something else I care more about.
[+] [-] Declanomous|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Pica_soO|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ionised|9 years ago|reply
Subjective.
[+] [-] 0xcde4c3db|9 years ago|reply
I think this hints at a big part of the problem. When we frame something as a game, we tend to evoke the concepts of winning and losing. The most brutal and obvious (lazy?) way of implementing that is to turn it into "kill or be killed". And that brutal, obvious, violent metaphor underpins the vast majority of the mainstream game industry. That's why something like Undertale is seen as fresh and subversive. That's probably even a big part of why Tetris sold so many Game Boys. But too many of us can't or won't see it. The author is probably right: those of us who have been immersed in this culture for 20+ years are like fish who too easily forget that not everyone likes to get wet.
[+] [-] mercer|9 years ago|reply
It's (relatively) much easier to find an audience for a film or book that is focused on dialogue, social interactions, and whatnot, than it is to do so for a game. I applaud efforts in this area, but I can see how it's easier to go for kill/win/compete style games.
[+] [-] jplayer01|9 years ago|reply
Games can be so much more than mainstream gaming has allowed them to become.
[+] [-] falcolas|9 years ago|reply
> At my studio we are making games with people who don't like video games because we want to break out of established paradigms.
There are a lot of games out there, more than enough to fill any niche you could possibly want to fill. The trick is that they aren't all made by Bethesda, Activision, or EA. If you really want to get your friends interested in videogames, listen to their interests (something that the OP didn't seem to do, for all that they're starting their own studio) and point them at games that cater to their interests, not your own.
[+] [-] qwertyuiop924|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shmerl|9 years ago|reply
Which is somewhat surprising, since as with any art form, there are games which are masterpieces, and there is mass market junk. Why would people specifically not like games "because they lack depth", but have no problem reading books or watching films, while the vast majority of them are drowning in the sea of mediocrity as well?
I suppose it comes from the general lack of perception about games as an art form. While established art exists for many years, computer games are relatively young art, and I suppose you can compare it to the negative view on cinema by some in its early days.
> Skyrim has the depth, but not the taste.
I wouldn't agree here. While Skyrim draws many with its exploration element, I'd say it lacks depth if you compare it to really good RPGs. It's not on par with Baldur's Gate, Planescape Torment, Knights of the Old Republic, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines or the Witcher series. The story in later Bethesda games is pretty generic and outright boring. I'd say the last good game in the series was Morrowind.
Going back to the art point above, it's the result of mass market appeal. Publishers don't want risky things which can become masterpieces. "Safe bet" of mass market mediocrity is more comfortable for them. Luckily, crowdfunding today helps with that to some degree.
[+] [-] nitwit005|9 years ago|reply
It may be correct that women want something different than men, but I don't think its true in the way they imagine. A lot of women seem to have enjoyed "The Sims", but many of them appear to have spent their time in-game torturing their hapless sims.
[+] [-] overgard|9 years ago|reply
You see something similar recently with "art games" that are trying so hard to be "art" that they're pretentious and overbearing. The only good "art" games are the ones that ended up being interesting works of art by exploring an idea, not because they set out to be art games.
I hate to say this, but I kind of worry this could just be the same thing, but instead it'll be "serious adult" games or "feminist games" or pick whatever social movement you want here. But it won't really be about the game, it'll be about the movements values.
[+] [-] panglott|9 years ago|reply
I can sink hundreds of hours into Civilization, X-COM, or Minecraft—games of strategy and games of world-building—but for me computer RPGs are almost entirely inferior to tabletop RPGs, especially in the "open world" aspect. Shooters especially bore me: fast reflexes on a control pad are not something I particularly want to spend spend dozens or hundreds of hours developing. Then you see the YouTube comments of the people who deride everyone else for not sharing their commitment for some specific styles of twitchy games. Some gamers have developed a weird and toxic little cult around their lifestyle games.
I think board games have grown so much because they have been able to attract people who are interested in different paradigms of play: cooperative games, for example, because it seems like so many people hate player conflict. Competition adds a whole layer of interest to most board games IMO, but the most important thing is just for people to have fun.
[+] [-] qwertyuiop924|9 years ago|reply
Great. That's fantastic. We always need more games, and more types of games. Just about anything can be made into a game (for evidence, just look at Phoenix Wright. Being a lawyer was never so much fun). And frankly, I'd love to see different games from more perspectives.
But.
Sometimes I want what this article dubs, "gritty, toxic pseudo-realistic pseudo-masculine nonsense," or "frustrating time wasters that leave you feeling dead inside." I get home at night, and maybe it's just me, but I want to raid dungeons and slay dragons. I want to storm the tower and save the princess. I want to kill sentient mushrooms by jumping on their head. I want to battle a handful of strangers, armed with a Rocket Launcher, improbably large collection of other weapons, and my own wits and reflexes.
And sometimes, I want to fit together blocks falling from the sky in a demented abstract russian nightmare.
In short, I want your experimental art games, but I also want the kinds of games that we already have. And we already have a lot of good ones, so stop insulting them, please.
...Anyways, if any of you are interested in game design, and also in the idea of games as art, and that games can be more than just entertainment, can appeal to more than just gamers, I would reccomend checking out Extra Credits (they're on YouTube now). Plus, their channel also does a pretty cool history show.
[+] [-] gohrt|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grosbisou|9 years ago|reply
But I recently started to play again after years of no touching one. I weirdly enough I love it again. I can play solo games, enjoy them and finish them. I can play online games and enjoy the competition.
I think a lot has to do with how people cannot focus anymore on anything more than 10 minutes. I used to be like that. Checking phone notification, look at reddit every 5 minutes, etc. I worked on it for a long time. Stop running after the quick gratifications and enjoy the long term. And now I am back to being a gamer :)
[+] [-] mercer|9 years ago|reply
But in the same way that I seek out 'old movies' carefully, I'm very selective in my gaming choices. Currently I'm working my way through Red Dead Redemption and the Avernum series, but a large amount of games from the Xbox 360 area don't appeal to me at all anymore, for example.
[+] [-] reddog|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neap24|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Vaskivo|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jdietrich|9 years ago|reply
Minecraft is essentially computerised Lego. There are few higher accolades I could pay to any game, because Lego is a phenomenally deep plaything. The more semantic meaning that the designer of a Lego set provides, the worse the play experience becomes. A bag of plain bricks can become anything, but a dragon molded as a single piece can only ever be a dragon. Likewise with Minecraft - Story Mode is a brief, dreary and hollow experience compared to Survival or Creative.
Each football match or chess game tells a unique story. The players create a spontaneous drama using the particular interplay of their skills and ideas. Infinite variety emerges from a leather ball and two sets of goalposts. A box of crayons and a piece of paper are in themselves meaningless, but create boundless meaning in the hands of an imaginative person.
My gripe with most modern games is that they try too hard to tell a story. Designers in the AAA and indie space are often preoccupied with emulating the attributes of other media, rather than exploring the unique possibilities of video games. Any modern gamer is familiar with the "movie with quick-time events" trope, games that shoehorn meaningless interaction into linear storytelling. A game can (and perhaps should) be a blank canvas rather than a work of art.
If you can't find meaning in a boxing match, if you can't grow and learn through playing Catan, if you take no joy from a lump of modelling clay, then the problem lies with you. We have many media that are infinitely better suited to depicting relatable characters and portraying the real world. The unique strength of games is play; games are at their best when they emphasise this core strength.
[+] [-] 60654|9 years ago|reply
And also, we need to move away from the idea that some games or genres are objectively better or more interesting than others. It's all relative to the audience - some people have a stronger reaction to some experiences than to others, and will seek out different things.
Nick Yee has been doing excellent, data driven research on the interaction between player preferences, game types, and personality types - there's some intro material from his gdc talk on their web site: http://quanticfoundry.com/gdc/
[+] [-] psyc|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 5ilv3r|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] efvxcgci|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amyjess|9 years ago|reply
Playing around with some old games over the weekend and last weekend, I forgot how addictive they were.
Yesterday, I told myself "I'll play a bit of Super Mario Bros. 3 and see how far I can get on one life"... and before I knew it, I was in World 2.
The weekend before that, I played some Golden Axe, and I got a huge chunk of the way through the game before I had to turn it off to go do other things.
It's my personal opinion that 1985-1995 was the single best era for gaming, as it was dominated by addictive fast-paced games that you could just pick up and play. One of the things that turns me off about modern games is that the "just pick up and play" mentality is gone... too many unskippable cutscenes, forced tutorial levels, etc.
[+] [-] zimpenfish|9 years ago|reply
Perhaps in the AAA space but down in the more indie spaces, you don't get those. My current set of favourite games (Rocket League, Binding of Isaac, Risk Of Rain, Rogue Legacy, Delver) certainly don't have any of those.
[+] [-] quickConclusion|9 years ago|reply
My main gripe with video games is that they're addictive. Boring or not, they push you to play another 5, 10, 60 minutes... before you know it, you ruined your evening, and wasted your time and the next day at work...
Kudos to the artists, developers, psychologists who can build that. And probably I am weak.
At the end of the day, they are very successful in making me addicted, that's why i am staying away, that's why I am not a gamer.
[+] [-] donatj|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] t0mbstone|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] edem|9 years ago|reply