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Seems people in general have started to project their lifes disappointments, stresses, and greater human needs onto a digital dimension like video games. Growin

by mannanj 4mo ago

Seems people in general have started to project their lifes disappointments, stresses, and greater human needs onto a digital dimension like video games. Growing up they used to be about fun. I have endless memories as a child playing Mario N64 and it not needing to be about playing a particular way; only as a I got older and competition and disappointments being human as an adult added up did I notice this shift you mention in online game communities. I like to ask now, "have you heard of playing for fun?" It's surprising how little people seem to remember that games are made for fun & learning ("play" as a human construct). edit2: taking back this edit on political conjecture to say something shifted that I'm not sure what. edit: in online games I played growing up too, this negativity/anti-fun change came probably around 2004 with bigger changes in the US political climate as well.

goodmythical 4mo ago
I don't know, I won a friendly Super Smash Bros tournament circa ~2011 with kirby spamming down b with what was it, the c-stick? Whatever it was where you could do the super move or whatever automatically instead of having to choose how much power you wanted and just generally clicking random buttons. The friends who all played vastly more often than I did and had all their techniques and edge jumps and recoveries and stuff practiced were furious. Lots of "you can't do that" "that's not fair" "that's not the way you're supposed to play" etc. edit: oh, I see your edit. Yeah, it's definitely not new.
- mannanj 4mo ago
  yeah I could have left politics out of this, I didn't think much before writing that. /insert joke about token limits being reached or reasoning effort being too low I personally can feel that analogy about you winning in a way that made others feel wronged or offended or have their models about the game broken, and see it connect to the theme of the thread. Which is that people forget and mistake games for serious ventures. I don't know when exactly that happened, if it was a bigger cultural shift, a shift in incentives and behavior by game producers, and also by players I suppose, and or if its just how adults shift in their playing of games as they grow in age. Either way I think thats fun, and cool that you made it so far with a strategy like that! One of my favorite ways of playing games is uncovering strategies like that =)
  - goodmythical 4mo ago
    I figure it's kind of always been that way, no? Online games inheritted it from local games. I've never tried to win a game of poker, and every game I have won if from tilting "pros" off their game because "I don't bet right". You can even see it in tabletop roleplaying. Where you're "not supposed to meta-game" or "you can't have a lawful good lich (who's ultimate goal is to live long enough to save the town from evil collegues)" or "someone's got to play healer" or whatever. I always like subverting norms to see what happens. A group of clerics on a quest for an ancient tomb might need to convince/coerce some local muscle. The lawful good lich lets everyone play with themes of racism and prejudices. A group without a healer is kind of just playing on hard mode because there's no safety net. But lots of groups won't go for those kinds of things, or will only allow them occasionally. I just play for fun. I win by having fun. The score is somewhat irrelevant.
    - mannanj 4mo ago
      Sounds like you and I both like rebelling and challenging cultural norms, and being counter culture? I also love understanding people and find these ways of playing and being fun. If I'm not having fun, I lose interest in winning. I found my groups and communities in odd, niche areas like mindfulness communities and men's groups therapy - maybe you relate? Are you also selective with groups and friends, and keep a smaller circle perhaps?
Apocryphon 4mo ago
Games have also become more like work, bloated Hollywood blockbuster budgets lead to endless busywork content that pad out playtime.
- s1artibartfast 4mo ago
  kinda funny sentiment to express in a thread about a completely community built free game without adds. You should play it!
  - Apocryphon 4mo ago
    I’m talking about AAA games in general, it’s not commentary about this title, which my computer likely can’t run.
    - coryrc 4mo ago
      It probably can. The game is pretty lightweight.
parineum 4mo ago
> edit: in online games I played growing up too, this negativity/anti-fun change came probably around 2004 with bigger changes in the US political climate as well. Tying this to politics is odd to me. Online gaming has been toxic since day one. Anything that depersonalizes is going to be toxic and that is inherent in the online space. In the smaller communities you can actually get to know people and have some kind of reputation but as the community size grows, the consequences of bad behavior fade because nobody can remember.
- mannanj 4mo ago
  ah yeah I could have just not said that, it was just a brash thought dump, not really thoughtfully considered and not something I'm too pressed on digging a moat into. i.e. its not a strong belief I hold, but an intuition. The goal really was to explore the idea that something shifted that has led people to lose the fun in games. If I were to repost that, I'd say that instead and not try to make conjecture about politics. Sorry.
- mannanj 4mo ago
  > Anything that depersonalizes is going to be toxic and that is inherent in the online space. In the smaller communities you can actually get to know people and have some kind of reputation but as the community size grows, the consequences of bad behavior fade because nobody can remember. Do you think or have noticed that bad behavior is less likely to occur in smaller communities, or is simply swept under the rug or ignored due to some other dynamics at play?
  - parineum 4mo ago
    Two main examples came into my mind when I was writing that. I used to play a lot of counterstrike on private servers and I played some ultima online as well. With counter strike, I frequented one server and got to know the players on it a bit. You'd chat a bit after you died but, mostly, I'd just see the same names most of the time. There was usually an admin online and bad behavior (mostly not game related but social behavior) would be banned eventually. In UO, there was a lot of player interaction where I would actually make friends and aquatintes with people I interacted with a lot. You end up building a community within a community of people you like to play with. Both of those groups had different ways of filtering bad behavior but, I think the key difference is that they both had a pretty significant social interact component. CS seem semi-accidental but the post death chatting gave it a little something I never got from other fps games. MMOs have really gone completely away from social gaming. They've streamlined so many processes that actual relationships aren't really that important.
oreally 4mo ago
It depends on the perspectives. Some people play to achieve things, to progress, not meander around doing things that they've done before and getting the same results. You blame gaming as a scapegoat and escape from real life. I'd like to differ. The reward-effort-sense of a regular job is getting worse and worse over time. Take a job for example - you take guides and classes and interviews worth an examination only to do low level stuff. Then you find out the humans governing you are incredibly flaky on their promises. It's just not as satisfying compared to finding a guide and getting your worth out of it.

by mannanj 4mo ago

goodmythical 4mo ago

I don't know, I won a friendly Super Smash Bros tournament circa ~2011 with kirby spamming down b with what was it, the c-stick? Whatever it was where you could do the super move or whatever automatically instead of having to choose how much power you wanted and just generally clicking random buttons. The friends who all played vastly more often than I did and had all their techniques and edge jumps and recoveries and stuff practiced were furious. Lots of "you can't do that" "that's not fair" "that's not the way you're supposed to play" etc. edit: oh, I see your edit. Yeah, it's definitely not new.

mannanj 4mo ago
yeah I could have left politics out of this, I didn't think much before writing that. /insert joke about token limits being reached or reasoning effort being too low I personally can feel that analogy about you winning in a way that made others feel wronged or offended or have their models about the game broken, and see it connect to the theme of the thread. Which is that people forget and mistake games for serious ventures. I don't know when exactly that happened, if it was a bigger cultural shift, a shift in incentives and behavior by game producers, and also by players I suppose, and or if its just how adults shift in their playing of games as they grow in age. Either way I think thats fun, and cool that you made it so far with a strategy like that! One of my favorite ways of playing games is uncovering strategies like that =)
- goodmythical 4mo ago
  I figure it's kind of always been that way, no? Online games inheritted it from local games. I've never tried to win a game of poker, and every game I have won if from tilting "pros" off their game because "I don't bet right". You can even see it in tabletop roleplaying. Where you're "not supposed to meta-game" or "you can't have a lawful good lich (who's ultimate goal is to live long enough to save the town from evil collegues)" or "someone's got to play healer" or whatever. I always like subverting norms to see what happens. A group of clerics on a quest for an ancient tomb might need to convince/coerce some local muscle. The lawful good lich lets everyone play with themes of racism and prejudices. A group without a healer is kind of just playing on hard mode because there's no safety net. But lots of groups won't go for those kinds of things, or will only allow them occasionally. I just play for fun. I win by having fun. The score is somewhat irrelevant.
  - mannanj 4mo ago
    Sounds like you and I both like rebelling and challenging cultural norms, and being counter culture? I also love understanding people and find these ways of playing and being fun. If I'm not having fun, I lose interest in winning. I found my groups and communities in odd, niche areas like mindfulness communities and men's groups therapy - maybe you relate? Are you also selective with groups and friends, and keep a smaller circle perhaps?

Apocryphon 4mo ago

Games have also become more like work, bloated Hollywood blockbuster budgets lead to endless busywork content that pad out playtime.

s1artibartfast 4mo ago
kinda funny sentiment to express in a thread about a completely community built free game without adds. You should play it!
- Apocryphon 4mo ago
  I’m talking about AAA games in general, it’s not commentary about this title, which my computer likely can’t run.
  - coryrc 4mo ago
    It probably can. The game is pretty lightweight.

parineum 4mo ago

> edit: in online games I played growing up too, this negativity/anti-fun change came probably around 2004 with bigger changes in the US political climate as well. Tying this to politics is odd to me. Online gaming has been toxic since day one. Anything that depersonalizes is going to be toxic and that is inherent in the online space. In the smaller communities you can actually get to know people and have some kind of reputation but as the community size grows, the consequences of bad behavior fade because nobody can remember.

mannanj 4mo ago
ah yeah I could have just not said that, it was just a brash thought dump, not really thoughtfully considered and not something I'm too pressed on digging a moat into. i.e. its not a strong belief I hold, but an intuition. The goal really was to explore the idea that something shifted that has led people to lose the fun in games. If I were to repost that, I'd say that instead and not try to make conjecture about politics. Sorry.
mannanj 4mo ago
> Anything that depersonalizes is going to be toxic and that is inherent in the online space. In the smaller communities you can actually get to know people and have some kind of reputation but as the community size grows, the consequences of bad behavior fade because nobody can remember. Do you think or have noticed that bad behavior is less likely to occur in smaller communities, or is simply swept under the rug or ignored due to some other dynamics at play?
- parineum 4mo ago
  Two main examples came into my mind when I was writing that. I used to play a lot of counterstrike on private servers and I played some ultima online as well. With counter strike, I frequented one server and got to know the players on it a bit. You'd chat a bit after you died but, mostly, I'd just see the same names most of the time. There was usually an admin online and bad behavior (mostly not game related but social behavior) would be banned eventually. In UO, there was a lot of player interaction where I would actually make friends and aquatintes with people I interacted with a lot. You end up building a community within a community of people you like to play with. Both of those groups had different ways of filtering bad behavior but, I think the key difference is that they both had a pretty significant social interact component. CS seem semi-accidental but the post death chatting gave it a little something I never got from other fps games. MMOs have really gone completely away from social gaming. They've streamlined so many processes that actual relationships aren't really that important.

oreally 4mo ago

It depends on the perspectives. Some people play to achieve things, to progress, not meander around doing things that they've done before and getting the same results. You blame gaming as a scapegoat and escape from real life. I'd like to differ. The reward-effort-sense of a regular job is getting worse and worse over time. Take a job for example - you take guides and classes and interviews worth an examination only to do low level stuff. Then you find out the humans governing you are incredibly flaky on their promises. It's just not as satisfying compared to finding a guide and getting your worth out of it.