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MMORPGs can also give you this stress, especially ones where you are invested heavily into the experience. Spent some time on a MUD with actual roleplay and per

MMORPGs can also give you this stress, especially ones where you are invested heavily into the experience. Spent some time on a MUD with actual roleplay and permadeath where people were crazy to the point where some would do all-nighters for intelligence stakeouts, battles, and other events. Many of the team leaders also set up a "hot pager" system so they could be quickly reached to assist while they were offline. In moments when my character was near death I was often panicking and really feeling the tunnel vision of combat stress. The stakes were high in that a character and assets you spent over a year developing could be wiped out in an instant if you lost your focus. Eventually I couldn't take it and stopped playing. On the other hand, there are games that are just straight up work - EVE is an example (haven't played it myself but do know people who do) and Rimworld if you play with an optimization/perfectionist mindset.

oblio 5y ago
I played Dota for more than 10 years. Besides the fact that I now have RSI (maybe not just due to Dota, possibly due to time spent in front of screen, overall), I realized after a while that I was a sort of people manager for 12-18 year olds and maybe I could just do the same thing at $DAYJOB and end up getting paid better :-)
- nicoburns 5y ago
  One of the bizarre parts of these games is that you can effectively become a people manager as a 12-18 year old.
  - duskwuff 5y ago
    And if you're good enough, you can even get paid for it. (Not well, mind you...)
    - hprotagonist 5y ago
      and historically, hired at Yahoo when that meant something.
- novok 5y ago
  Ironically dealing with pub team psychology to get immature people to work together was good prep for being a manager in some ways.
andai 5y ago
>there are games that are just straight up work [...] if you play with an optimization/perfectionist mindset. Does this apply only to certain (kinds of) games? Does it come from the way the game is structured? Or does it have more to do with the community around it? For example RuneScape these days seems to be all about optimization, while back in the day it was more about exploration. (I guess for people who are still playing, there's nothing left to explore...)
- ev1 5y ago
  you optimise what you have left when you have nothing else to do. there is no exploring left in runescape, for the most part - virtually every corner and easter egg is effectively documented or reverse engineered in some way.
  - JetAlone 5y ago
    Yes, this. It reflects my experience of playing pokemon with friends, too.
    - ev1 5y ago
      It disappoints me. The usual result of any new game I am looking forward to is effectively first a massive private equity/VC funded pile of advertising and spam that exists to pay people to reverse engineer new games just to datamine it onto a wiki covered in advertising that is filled in by children desperately chasing the next bronze or silver contributor badge for having over 1k edits or some bs like that.
      - JetAlone 5y ago
        I'm now imagining an MMO game where these kids ends up on a mystic adventure to collect, deconstruct, and optimize otherworldly entities in order to collect badges and gain power. They're in a race against time to defeat a burnt out, disappointed emperor who wants to end the world. But plot twist, the final boss is a tyrannical monster symbolic of the self-destructive extrinsic desire for approval and recognition. Spoiler, the world does have to end, because there's a better one outside. The servers of the actual MMO itself are rigged to break on completion setting absolutely everyone free and leaving the lucky winner feeling like they earned a whole pile of clout but they won't be able to prove it because a deluge, thousands, of pre-planned counterfeit footage and testimonies of the game's end are disseminated IRL by the devs which will drown theirs out, and if they didn't keep records or lose them, ideally gaslight them into one day considering that maybe they didn't actually beat the game, maybe there was another ending, or something beyond it because there are some variants and truncations or extensions to the endings depicted. The devs make money by secretly recording proof of the real winner's true identity, and creates a collage of their adventure on a canvas, selling the result to a billionaire who thinks this whole thing is neat and was in the market for a unique way to launder money anyways.
rozab 5y ago
The legendary GDC talk, The Prototype that was Banned from Halfbrick, describes the unpleasant adversarial effects of some multiplayer games like this, and how they can escalate to be really unpleasant experiences for all involved. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9WMNuyjm4w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9WMNuyjm4w
- geocrasher 5y ago
  Wow. Have never seen this. Thanks for the link!
smitty1110 5y ago
> On the other hand, there are games that are just straight up work I'm getting Victoria 2 flashbacks just reading this sentence...

oblio 5y ago

I played Dota for more than 10 years. Besides the fact that I now have RSI (maybe not just due to Dota, possibly due to time spent in front of screen, overall), I realized after a while that I was a sort of people manager for 12-18 year olds and maybe I could just do the same thing at $DAYJOB and end up getting paid better :-)

nicoburns 5y ago
One of the bizarre parts of these games is that you can effectively become a people manager as a 12-18 year old.
- duskwuff 5y ago
  And if you're good enough, you can even get paid for it. (Not well, mind you...)
  - hprotagonist 5y ago
    and historically, hired at Yahoo when that meant something.
novok 5y ago
Ironically dealing with pub team psychology to get immature people to work together was good prep for being a manager in some ways.

andai 5y ago

>there are games that are just straight up work [...] if you play with an optimization/perfectionist mindset. Does this apply only to certain (kinds of) games? Does it come from the way the game is structured? Or does it have more to do with the community around it? For example RuneScape these days seems to be all about optimization, while back in the day it was more about exploration. (I guess for people who are still playing, there's nothing left to explore...)

ev1 5y ago
you optimise what you have left when you have nothing else to do. there is no exploring left in runescape, for the most part - virtually every corner and easter egg is effectively documented or reverse engineered in some way.
- JetAlone 5y ago
  Yes, this. It reflects my experience of playing pokemon with friends, too.
  - ev1 5y ago
    It disappoints me. The usual result of any new game I am looking forward to is effectively first a massive private equity/VC funded pile of advertising and spam that exists to pay people to reverse engineer new games just to datamine it onto a wiki covered in advertising that is filled in by children desperately chasing the next bronze or silver contributor badge for having over 1k edits or some bs like that.
    - JetAlone 5y ago
      I'm now imagining an MMO game where these kids ends up on a mystic adventure to collect, deconstruct, and optimize otherworldly entities in order to collect badges and gain power. They're in a race against time to defeat a burnt out, disappointed emperor who wants to end the world. But plot twist, the final boss is a tyrannical monster symbolic of the self-destructive extrinsic desire for approval and recognition. Spoiler, the world does have to end, because there's a better one outside. The servers of the actual MMO itself are rigged to break on completion setting absolutely everyone free and leaving the lucky winner feeling like they earned a whole pile of clout but they won't be able to prove it because a deluge, thousands, of pre-planned counterfeit footage and testimonies of the game's end are disseminated IRL by the devs which will drown theirs out, and if they didn't keep records or lose them, ideally gaslight them into one day considering that maybe they didn't actually beat the game, maybe there was another ending, or something beyond it because there are some variants and truncations or extensions to the endings depicted. The devs make money by secretly recording proof of the real winner's true identity, and creates a collage of their adventure on a canvas, selling the result to a billionaire who thinks this whole thing is neat and was in the market for a unique way to launder money anyways.

rozab 5y ago

The legendary GDC talk, The Prototype that was Banned from Halfbrick, describes the unpleasant adversarial effects of some multiplayer games like this, and how they can escalate to be really unpleasant experiences for all involved. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9WMNuyjm4w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9WMNuyjm4w

geocrasher 5y ago
Wow. Have never seen this. Thanks for the link!

smitty1110 5y ago

> On the other hand, there are games that are just straight up work I'm getting Victoria 2 flashbacks just reading this sentence...