A Thought

[Alrik Fassbauer]

I just wrote this in the News Comments section :


A part of me thinks that non-physical releases were put on us by The Industry, because that keeps us people from making pirate copies. Non-physical releases are so much easier to control for The Industry, because well, they are located on servers, and nowhere else. Even better are software-as-a-service non-physical game releases.
And that people wideöly accepted that via / through steam et. al. .

It feels to me as if The Gaming Industry somehow made "us" "gamers" happily accept some kind of feed of which we would know that it is unhealthy. But it tastes so good ...

It kind of feels like brainwashing to me.

On the defense of the Indies, however, I must admit that physical releases eat up so much from the profits of a game - and that in times where proper game development gets so expensive that no-one is actually about to immerse oneself into those insanely high numbers of spent money for development costs.
Game development, however, partly became so much expensive because people want better and better graphics, for example.
I'm not an expert, but I *personally* believe that the " gamers' " desire for great graphics is almost the main factor in driving development costs so high.
Plus, this desire is fed by graphic card manufacturers, too.

That great graphics don't necessarily add up to the "fun" aspect of a game, well, that can overly be seen by the example of Stardew Valley.

A heretical view could be, however, that the "fun" aspect ismn't the motor or the driving force in games anymore. "Fun" feels so much diffrent to me that what I currently see being delivered by most bigger game companies.
To become an even bigger heretic, I'd dare to even say that it's the "adrenaline factor" which is driving game development these days, not a "fun factor" ...
And adrenaline, in my opinion, it makes people become addicted ... to an "adrenaline rush" .

 

[Arkadia7]

Yea, I think the gaming industry is happy about how most games are downloadable and they don't have to necessarily release physical copies anymore. Obviously that saves the gaming studios and developers a lot of money, so they prefer it that way. I don't think its brainwashing though, that goes a bit too far. It just is based on profit, and that is easy to understand. They want to make more money.

And, your next point, no doubt the "adrenaline factor" is a key factor in many first person shooter games and their huge success, like the Call of Duty series.

I don't think that is a "bad thing" though. Just from reading your various posts, it seems to me that apparently you tend to think that masculinity or masculine traits are "bad" (for whatever reason, not sure why) and I simply disagree completely with that opinion.

If you are obliquely referring to violence and video games, it has been proven scientifically in studies there is no link.

Ok, so I just watched a show called "Killer kids" and it had a case with a young kid, and he ended up killing his parents, and he was a video game addict, always stayed in his room playing shooter games. So did the Sandy Hook shooter, and a few others. That doesn't prove anything, though.

Because these kids (all males) were "off" right out of the gate, from early childhood, they often exhibit anti-social and sadistic personalities, and torture animals and so on. Often, they come from broken homes, no mother or no father, no authority figure to set boundaries, or their parents are drug addicts or alcoholics, or abusers who abuse them as kids. Some are just psychopaths. Some are just evil, "bad seeds".

On the other hand, some of these "killer kids" come from a fine traditional two parent family, with highly successful parents, loving parents, and their parents are baffled at why their kids ended up doing the evil that they did.

And to continue, anything else could have been a tipping point for them, if video games weren't around. Like, tv shows or movies. Did you know some killers talk about movies that inspired them? Or books. Same, some serial killers like a certain book, which I won't mention, but it has been mentioned by a few of them - more than one of them say they like that same book. Like, its a bible to them.

Should violent video games be banned? Based on this, shouldn't books be banned? And music too? Some music is popular with criminal types. Maybe they get inspiration from dark metal music? Do you see how the whole theory breaks down? It doesn't make sense to ban everything based on the 1% to 5% (probably the true statistic is less than 1% to be honest) of psychopaths/sociopaths/born evil who will take it as inspiration to kill people.

Anyway, my 2 cents.

 

[Dafela]

The negative subtext of masculine males can be problem with bullies. If a bad person who does need to bost his ego wants to be evil, being alfa male is actually a good role supporting that behaviour.
But is it connected to games being catharsis of certain aggressivity comming from frustration? Bullying is about humiliating and absolute destruction of other person with some substance of enjoying it=sadism. But "masculine" women can be as bad and nobody is talking about it. I'm not talking about figure, but about mentality. Sadly that is often swapped. Those women are so sure that emotions are bad and you are not allowed to feel empathy or weakness, but it is human to feel that way. But they feel emotions nonetheless, only they are negative. They are so sure that if they will be ugly enough it will push them into the top, sadly they are not wrong. They make their negative emotions as the law, the right to hurt others, yet they refuse to investigate if it is the truth, because they want it to be the truth. Majority of women will not go that route, because they want good relationships, but I met women who didn't care, their aggressive emotions became the most important.
I had dilema if vengeance is right, deserved, because such people are usually very vengenful, but I came to conclusion, that it is connected. That is usually their rhetoric.

So the bottom of both of it is the desire to hurt others and the right to be in charge. It seems like American culture is a lot about it. If you are not rich, you are nobody there, so everyone is in a hurry to be someone. Isn't having good law to protect weaker better? But now the twisted version of weaker is popular, so question is if that will not lead to even bigger rise of masculine behaviour.

The rising feminism seem to be so attractive for the western culture. But I guess they don't know where they are going to. "Strong women" were promoted in communism or even fashism long time ago and this extreme wasn't good.
So I tend to say - witches of the woods are real, why would you think that was only a fantasy?

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Well, "violence in games" simply just isn't my taste anymore - but yet I see so many games made with that.
I do not understand that.

I do not understand why there are no more non-violent games out there, why no big company makes them anymore, why no-one played them anymore (perhaps because they aren't made ?).

To me, it's a bit lie a so-called "vicious circle" :
"No-one would buy that, so we won't make it."
"Nobody makes it, so we can't buy it."#

Ages ago marketing or others were telling within Lucasfilm Games / LucasArts that there simply were no more adventure games buyers, and because of that, they stopped working on ANY adventure game, inclusing one of the Sam & Max. franchise.
That was documented online during a TellTale documentary called "The summer of Sam & Max".

I can only tell from what I see. and i see that no-one (especially not Kotick) would ever do a game like Q-Bert again. Or Lemmings.

When I was thinking this week or last week, i came across 2 programms absolutely NOBODY would do that EVER egain - at least not nowadays :
Microsoft Creative Writer
Microsoft Fine Artist

Take a look at them. and then, try to find ANY software (or game) that even REMOTELY looks something like them !
(And please don't gert me started with "but these ribbons are now in Microsoft Office". I mean the overall design and look of these 2 programs.)

And then you'll realise how deep we have fallen.

 

[purpleblob]

I thought this thread might be the best one to ask/discuss this without making a new thread (hope you don't mind Alrik).

There are over abundance of games nowdays. People constantly talk about their massive backlogs and how they don't have enough time to play all of these games.

I feel odd that I don't quite feel this way. I don't think there was a year I was excited for more than a few games (less than 5). I'm currently juggling 4 games (Wrath of the Righteous, Rogue Trader, WoW and Elden Ring) and I don't have enough time in a day/week to enjoy these to my heart's content - what I'm trying to say is, 4 is more than enough to keep me occupied for at least a year or so.

How do you guys manage to stay interested in more than handful of games? I'm very curious how people can end up with such a big backlog. Are you guys still keen on playing all those games or did you lose interest in 99% of games in your backlogs?

 

[Carnifex]

Purpleblob, between classes, reading, dealing with friends/family and the occasional telly show or film, I'm lucky to have the time to even play one game. And of course I tend to spend roughly ten to twelve hours a day out on the porch, weather permitting. Even back before I had so much going on I usually stuck with one game, and simply played it from start to finish. For quite some time most of my gaming was consumed by Everquest yet, even with that behind me, lots of other activities rose up to fill the void. I have friends that delight in playing three or more games at the same time, switching easily from one to the other, yet that's never been a comfortable style for me. I salute anyone that can pull it off!

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

If you want a really outstanding game, then try out Heaven's Vault.
Its graphics isn't that good, character movement very basic - more looking like an animated film tha a game - but its story is simply breathtaking.
It takes a while until you get to the points where it becomes interesting, though, and you ned quite a bit of endurance and interest in digging out history.
Main point within the game is the deduction of how to decipher a lost language, but that isn't a difficult puzzle, only one that needs a lot of attention to details.
And don't be afraid that in the first time, things don't seem to matter/fit together at all. Just concentrate on deciphering the language - everything is logical ! - and it will all slowly unfold to you. With puzzle pieces missing, of course, since you are digging out history, some puzzle pieces are of course lost over time.
Another important part of the game if movement in a space ship (note that i didn't combine both words together, and that with a purpose), which is a bit tricky, but largely plays like driving a train on rails, from a movement perspective. For that part, however, you really should have the newest graphics drivers, I guess. The game crashed for me at that point a few times, likely because my PC is several years old now.
If I was someone in a game prize comittee, I'd give it a prize for being outstanding ASAP, despite its graphical flaws.
IMPORTANT NOTE : If you happen to read any article about it, then you should NOT read articles about its story ! It has to be *learned* to be fully breathtaking.

Heaven's Vault - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

My favourite quote about it :

“What Inkle have achieved in Heaven’s Vault is tremendous. I don’t know what to compare it to, because there isn’t anything.” Rock Paper Shotgun

And I'm 200 % supporting that quote !

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

I just had this spontaneous thought, out of a whim : Why don't big, well-known game developers do simply, small or even tiny board or arcade games ? It would be so easy, I guess ...
Really, apart from the question of "who would be buying it", doing a new version of Checkers would be merely a "finger practise", as we say here ( roughly translated). Instead of checkers stones they could use figures from their games, for example. They wouldn't even needed to be animated.
Just a thought.

 

[Morrandir]

I just had this spontaneous thought, out of a whim : Why don't big, well-known game developers do simply, small or even tiny board or arcade games ?

Because they're chasing the next big hit.
Of yourse not quality-wise, but regarding revenue.

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

I do know. And that's why I had put it into "a thought" ...

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Well, OI'm currently studying yet another boss which I'll have to defeat.

As I wrote elsewhere - I think it was in the off topic area - there is a certain tendency with game developers.
The bad ones ALWAYS have the far better toys, abilities, talents, you name it.
Bad ones are ALWAYS SO MUCH better and more sophisticated, more enhanced etc. THAN the own player character.

In gaming, this means that their attacks and abilities are usually so much ore interesting.

In my opinion, this creates i theplayer a certain point of learning impression :

- The bad ones are so grat. I want to be as badass as they are !
- The good ones are so weak ! They do not have any good looking abilities ! They have no interesting toys ! ( In hard contrast to the bosses. )
- Learning Result : "Bad/Evil is the new Good." / "I want to play evil because they look and simply are so much better than the good weaklings !"

I do not like this narrative at all.

Example : SWTOR, Genshin Impact.

The ONLY counter-example to this are Inspector Gadget and James Bond - and i very clearly DO REMEMBER that my discussion long ago was so massively derailed by creating a new discussion within it that James Bond is sexist, racist etc. - meanwhile these points are true from a modern perspective, those who created this "Anto James Bond discussion within a discussion" were with that also destroying my argument that there simply is no exception from my rule that bad/evil ones ALWAYS have far better toys/abilities/graphics, you name it. Which leaves behind Inspector Gadget as the only left example of good ones having the better toys. But, I'm totally sure that some people will find a way to badmouth him by putting him as "being childish / being for children" in order to leave no example of a good person in media having at least equally good toys as the bad one / evil one.

Again : My rule is still true. Bad ones / evil ones are always better in every point than the good ones, which are [shown as being] insanely weak which makes peple prefer to play bad ones / evil ones if they could - which can be seen within SWTOR.