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Playing Games Seen as Brainless Hobby?
Richard Goodness writes "Recently I watched Simon Bysshe's film Modern Day Gamer. The film is a natural springboard for some talk of the shared experience of videogames and the legitimization of gaming as a form of entertainment. Therefore, in '2 Legit 2 Save and Quit,' I come to some conclusions." A good article, with some excellent points. I took this to heart, but I see a weekly D&D session with friends as being akin to a weekly poker game but with less financial repercussions, unless one counts all the books needed.
Even then, D&D books don't cost that much. I've seen decent used copies in book stores for less than $5 a peice, and I've also seen them in PDF form on the Internet.
Patrick "Diablo-D3" McFarland || http://AdTerrasPerAspera.com
Brainless??? I play Ragnarok Online. You know how much thought has to go into being a merchant. It's like the stock market or something. You gotta price low enough to undercut competition yet sell high enough to make money.
Should be used in moderation. Is eating chocolate bad? No. Is eating a pound of chocolate a day bad? Yes. What I'm trying to say is that there is nothing wrong with video games, or tv, for that matter, if used in moderation. But if you watch, or play, videogames/tv for 3 hours straight, I can't necessarily say that's good for you. I do think, though, that online games have more "interaction" then any other form of digitalized entertainment. And they are a great way to unwind at the end of the day.
If we are talking about brainless hobby, watching TV is much more brainless than playing games. How many people have fallen asleep playing a computer game (we are not talking about extreme circumstances where gamers have stayed up 72 consecutive hours playing an RPG). I have countless times falling asleep casually in front of the TV -- I must have not used the brain very much to achieve that. Afterall, slightly more intellectual games (adventure games, puzzle games, and even flight simulators) requires sound judgment and quick thinking.
The fact that people who 1)grew up before video games went mainstream 2)are socially closed to games and 3)have never played games - don't like games shouldn't matter to people as much as this article proves it does.
Look at your culture, man! The fact that we're embracing interactive entertainment instead of passive narrative is something to be proud of. The people who tell you your feelings are not valid, the people who tell you that you are wasting your time, the people who don't view video games as a form of artistic expression DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT. Literally, honestly, they wouldn't know Grand Theft Auto from Super Mario Brothers. Stop worrying about it, and talk to your peers, not the establishment.
TV: Reality shows, that thing where neighbors screw each other's houses up, and the one where a group of gay men play dress-up with a straight guy.
Gaming: Warcraft-type RPGs that require some deep levels of thought, FPSs that test reflexes, and..um...The Sims?
OK, so maybe games aren't perfect, but they are better than the TV that most Americans are addicted to. Give me my mouse and keyboard any day.
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
People who disparage video games are simply painting an unflattering picture of themselves in the books in tomorrow.
Warning! The link to the 2 legit article above attempts to install something from IE Plugin LTD, a spyware program which, amongst other things, tracks your surfing habits, pops up advertisements, and opens a backdoor for future program updates. Their terms can be found here.
If this is not just a fluke page served up by allrpg's advertising company, please remove the above article. Such behavior is not acceptable in a public forum. Companies should not abuse Slashdot as a way of sliming spyware onto people's computers.
Now I need to give this computer a bath.
The ______ Agenda
AllRPG.com doesn't control their advertising, they don't have the income to afford their own server. Their network, Gamesquad Network, is in control of it, and since the hosting is free (with the exception that they're required to surrender their advertising rights) they can't help it. If you're gonna blame anyone for spyware downloads, go to GameSquad Network, but don't blame AllRPG for taking the server hosting they can get.
I'm inclinded to think that it's women who are the most vocal about games being "anti-social"... at least, that's how it's been in my life.
My girlfriend doesn't like it either... because it takes time away from HER... and she's much happier being passive and watching TV like a mindless sheep, rather than having to use her brain to play a game!
When she wants to though, she can play a mean game of Mario Kart.... but before long it bores her.... so...
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
i have breain is good
make think for me
play game all day . fun and me smart!
have breain! yay!
I think that anyone who would say "video games are mindless entertainment" obviously does not understand enough about games to make such a judgment. That said, games run the whole spectrum from purely mindless entertainment to extremely though provoking.
Lets start out with an example, two games that I play alot are Kolf and KBounce, both are relativily simple and quite mindless games. These are games that I play during commercials on TV if i'm watching a show, during a lul in the conversation when i'm on the phone, while i'm waiting for a huge file to compile, or any other time when I just want some small distraction while I wait on something. These games are really mindless.
Lets look at another game that I play quite a bit. Soul Caliber II. This is a game that combines quick reflexes with strategy to defeat an opponent. It's not chess but it will keep you thinking, especially when you are playing against a human opponent, who's tactics are not quite as predictable as the computers.
Now for a third game, Neverwinter Nights. Since it's hard for my friends and I to get together and play D&D like we used too, usually a couple nights a week we will fire up Neverwinter Nights and play a DMed quest. This game definitly involves heavy thinking. Not only are there puzzles to be solved and tactics to be developed, but you must also manage inventory, remember to play in character, keep track of your health, spells/special abilities, the status of your party. If you are the DM for that particular game things get even more complicated as you have to have interesting and realistic in character text for NPCs, keep the flow of the story going etc.
Now, lets look at what non-gamers see when the look at each of these games:
Kolf and KBounce - a bunch of clicking
Soul Caliber II - pressing buttons and beating eachother up.
Neverwinter Nights - clicking on monsters and IMing your friends (remeber to someone who has never played D&D there is no challenge to playing in character, in fact few of them probably even realise there is such a thing as in character)
The thing is, most people have played solitaire (pretty brainless), or have played those brainless games on Pogo or the click the box game or whatever. Those are brainless games for (mostly) brainless people. When these people look at other games being played, they do not realize the though requied and associate the difficult level as being the same as the games they play. One has to realize that it is difficult to "see" thinking.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
WTF?@? A /. reader who admits to using IE??????
Moderators: Modding me OT is petty and a serious waste of mod points.
I have been playing games since elementary school but became quite hardcore by high school. And honestly I do think that through playing games, I lost many chances to become better and grow personally. In a sense, I'd say that I became dumber by playing games.
I don't know about you, but for me playing games is a relatively brainless activity in the sense that the same decisions are made over and over again; and I've excelled, from Counter-strike to poker to Civilization to Simcity to Star Wars Galaxies (made over 25 million creds as a merchant). Yet since my interest is business I should be spending my time developing my curiosity and to think about what is possible than the critical thinking that serves me so well in games.
I wish I wouldn't have started on games, especially when I see my 12-year old brother becoming addicted. Yes, I'm dumber because of games, but I had my fun.
People who criticize video games are hypocrites -- every single one of them. They would never DARE to level a complaint against any of the other trite, meaningless forms of entertainment.
It's ironic that women are the first ones to criticize video games. Conventional forms of entertainment (film, TV, literature, music, etc) don't allow any kind of social interaction -- something women are unusually fond of. Video games, on the other hand, do. Most games support multiplayer, in-game chat, emoticons, etc. Why aren't girls all over this? I'm surprised they aren't the primary consumers of video games.
The criticism of games as mindless time-wasters, that is. Sure, there will always be those games, but for several decades now games, computer and otherwise, have differed from other forms of cultural expression only in their format and to a lesser degree in that they tend to reflect a much more heterogeneous pool of authorship.
:)
The fact is that in its first decades (turn of the C19th until about 1920), moving pictures were broadly considered to be the inferior cousins of theatre performances or opera. Just as with the explosion of colour film and synch sound following the late 1920s, and the rise of the Hollywood studios, we will see a phenomenal rise in the ubiquity of computer games in hand with rising levels of technological knowhow, cheapening hardware and bandwidth, and peoples' increasing desire to define their own worldview and pastimes.
Where there is demand, so there will be supply. Uptake of interactive games has never been higher; the quality and complexity and scope of games has never been greater. Games are the way of the future.
(Speaking as a film geek, old-skool DnD geek, and RPG game designer
L
That's the whole point. Just because video games are entertainment, doesn't mean that they're devoid of valuable cultural expression. There are video games that speak to their players just as profoundly as Casablanca, Beethoven's Ninth, or Catcher in the Rye.
Video game, ultimately, are superior to all known forms of entertainment, because of the vastly greater subjectivity that video games permit. A novel is a simple, static thing, with predigested emotions and experiences. A video game is dynamic, and can be as much an expression of yourself as it is of the creators. The experience is your own, the emotions are your own.
I guess jumping from Moz to Opera would become your new 'most drastic improvement' in a 'tech change', then. Go do that :)
Have you ever watched someone playing Everquest after 8 hours straight? I can tell you, this guy *really* looks dumb, and *is* getting dumber as he clicks and clicks and clicks like a mindless zombie to get his XPs. In my case, it was UO, and I think that intensively playing it for 2 years didn't make me any good (but it still is better than EQ :) ). However, I would not say that games like civ3 gets you dumber. On the other side, I remember having looked at myself in the mirror once, after having played civ3 the whole day... and I felt dumb :)
That's the same thing with TV and books and everything. Not all TV programs or books have the same intellectual value. Watch reality shows all day, and I guarantee you that you'll feel (and will be) dumber.
perception is reality
Or you could just use Firefox, like every other sane person.
Just try it out, its a small download. I dont know _anyone_ who has tried firefox and stuck with IE. Not even my mom.
http://www.mozilla.org/download.html
I'd like to do an experiment with an Everquest player so that everytime they right click a piece of cheese comes out.
I wonder what would happen?
Cheap storage VM.
I'm still downloading the Modern Day Gamer video, so I can't comment on that yet, but here's a basic summary of the article:
Video Games are not seen as a legitimate hobby, while other activities that may or may not be as brainless or antisocial (watching tv, reading books) do get respected as legitimate hobbies.
The author makes the point that video games actually do foster a community, both in the sense that MMORPGS are played with other real people with whom you can communicate, and because even single player games can develop an online community with forums where players share tips, tricks, and strategies. Furthermore, video games also provide players with levels of shared experience, from watching the same intro clips to beating the same bosses. These shared experience can form a foundation for social interaction.
The author concludes with observation that like other media, there exist both bad and good video games. However, people seem to be judging video games based on the lowest common denominator, games like Grand Theft Auto, instead of the games that have a more obvious social and intellectual value.
>Moderators: Modding me OT is petty and a serious waste of mod points.
Re:Warning! Link should be removed (Score:0, Offtopic)
[nelson muntz]Har Har![/nelson muntz]
TIAEAE!
I'm inclinded to think that it's women who are the most vocal about games being "anti-social"... at least, that's how it's been in my life.
...I'm going home.
;)
This is a conversation I have actually had (paraphrased).
Me: Let's have sex.
Him: Can't. Diablo 2. *click click click*
Me:
Him: Okay, 'bye. *click click click*
How much more anti-social can you get?
Seriously, though, video games are anti-social. So are television, books, meditation, jogging, and about eight zillion other things. There's nothing wrong with solitary pastimes. The problem comes when you let them eat your life.
Or when my boyfriend (no longer the same guy as above...of course) makes us late because he hasn't found a friggin' save point yet.
-Carolyn
Like Daddy always said: if you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit.
If they choose to host with a company that tries to infect visitors with spyware, then they have made that choice, and should be held responsible for it.
Seeing as how me and my buddies use StarCraft sayings while playing cards, drinking, or at the gym, I personally have to agree that video games are social. I even helped my friend improve his bowling by telling him to be like the battlecruiser, "Take it slow." :)
If a gamer plays a game brainlessly, that's his/her fault, not the game's. Games are goal-oriented, and consciously trying to achieve a goal (especially when the goal is motivated by competition) is anything but brainless. If anything a game is exactly the opposite. Please, as an example, show me a game that doesn't require the player to engage in some sort of decision making. Next, try and show me a game where brainful playing loses to brainless playing. Any activity is brainless if you do it brainlessly - some activities just provide more oppurtunity for thinking than others. Gaming is definitely an activity that provides the oppurtunity for thinking.
Let's take pong for example, since it might just be the least brainful game there is. You might say the decision making necessary to excel at this game is minimal. You might instantly conclude that the best strategy is to just keep the paddle vertically aligned with the ball at all times. You then might think that the best way to learn this strategy is nothing more than a matter of rotely training your motor-muscle skills - practice. But if your a good gamer, you won't stop thinking there... you'll then think... well what's the best way to rotely train my muscles to do this? Maybe I can devise a better grip on the paddle - one that will give me faster, more accurate paddle movement? In fact, I would say the best gamers never stop asking themselves these kinds of questions.
People who don't use their minds are brainless.
Every time you read this, I am going against my principles.
[from grandparent above, posting anonymously to avoid the offtopic stick.]
My primary surfing box is Opera on XP, with a resort to firefox occasionally. Sometimes I surf in from Mozilla on Linux at work. Today I was using someone else's laptop with I.E.
I don't like I.E., and I don't advocate using I.E. But I don't think shouting at the wind is a responsible way of managing a shared resource. In this case, I'd love if everyone who came to slashdot could be upgraded to a better browser, but that's not going to happen through wishful thinking.
One of the companies associated with the above link is behaving badly, and should be ostracized. They should be making sufficient advertising revenue by being on Slashdot. They should not be rewarded for gatoring your system. Period.
Chess is considered a mind-building game, so if Chess is converted to the Video Game medium, is it then, by default, a brainless activity? This obviously proves that brainless activity rests within the activity (and therefore the activator). TV is the same way, I could watch a brainless reality show (although these do sometimes provide insight into human behaviors) or an informative documentary about science or a scientist. Video Games ARE artistic expression, well most of them anyway. The expressive part comes from the developers though, not the gamers. A LAN party playing CS wouldn't be an artisitic expression, but the artists, coders and designers of CS have created something from nothing while incorporating many different artistic skills in the process - the total is almost always more than the sum of it's parts. playing a game/watching tv for 3 hours straight is overdoing it? bah! The Return of the King got 11 Academy Awards for making most of america losers then! c'mon man, losen up! Almost every Old School game would require much more time to complete than your average 3D adventure today, there's just more of them available. Why can't people just accept Video Games as a legitimate diversion? I don't care to watch sports games on TV, but most of America can be found on the couch for several hours every Sunday. I find this diversion to be more brainless than making decisions concerning your own virtual fate.
I agree with much of what has been said so far; I love games and I think the best ones are far better and more involving than most mindless, pop entertainment.
But I too have had the experience of looking at myself in the mirror at six in the morning, during finals week, after an entire night of [insert your favorite drug here] Tekken 3, and saying, what is all this for? When I can't think of an answer, I need to quit cold turkey for a while.
I also question whether all games should be included in the article's good graces. I am not one of those nuts who can't see the stunning value of the Grand Theft Autos; I've been playing them since the original. But some games are trash, and some are mindless, and some, of course, are so deeply flawed that they are barely games at all. That doesn't make me judgmental; it just means I'm exercising judgment.
As gamers, there is always a chance to judge what is great about games (realistic graphics, responsive worlds, involving stories, real community, for examples) and vote with our pocketbook. But there is another need to judge what is poor about games: what do they turn us into?
Again, I'm not trying to harp on media violence or blame Columbine on games. I think that is ludicrous. But a look in the mirror says everything about the influence of games. Games are addictive; they turn you into a gamer. By contrast, pick up a good book and read it through; what does it turn you into? If you are lucky, it turns you into a new human being.
This, finally, is what games are not providing enough of: the affective experience of what it means to be human. It is far too rare and precious in gaming (maybe the MMOs are onto something here). When we grow up as a community, that's what we'll demand.
Q: What did the comedian say to the crowd?
A: If I knew, this joke would be funny.
I fully agree with the article. As a Graduate Student in Math, I have to say that gaming is one of the most intellectual things I do.
Recording stats and Calculating damage are really only the beginning. The real strategy comes in the positioning and equipment/move choices.
I will now try to reconstruct one of the most interesting battles I had a couple years ago in Paper Mario (That's right Paper Mario; I was restricting a few things so it was actually kind of hard, and due to low randomness levels strategy is the way out).
Jr. Troopa 3 (end of Chapter 3)(HP: 40, Def 1, Atk. 5, flying)
Mario (Base HP: 10, Base FP: 5, Base BP: 9)
To explain the battle system:
-Mario's party goes first, then they alternate
-Mario has one partner out at a time
-Mario and his partner can take turns in any order
-Either Mario or partner can use their turn to swap to a different partner
-They both use the same HP and FP reserves. When Mario's HP is zero it's game over.
Relevant Partners:
Goombario:
Headbonk (deals 2 damage to JR (1 damage twice))
Charge 1FP(Power plus 2. Means next use of Headbonk does more damage (a total bonus of 4) after which power goes back to normal. Multiple charges stack).
Parakarry:
Sky Dive (deals 2 damage)
Shell Shot 3FP (deals 5 damage)
Bow:
Outta Sight 2FP(makes Mario take 0 damage this turn, but partner is unusable next turn (otherwise you could be cheap and just chain these)).
Mario
Jump (deals 2 damage (1 damage twice))
Power Jump 1BP; 2FP (deals 5 damage)
Action commands let him reduce JR's attacks by 1 (so 4 damage instead of 5).
Badges (like FF9 system)
HP Plus 3BP (HP+5) (There's two of these)
FP Plus 3BP (FP+5) (There's two of these)
Power Jump 1BP (lets mario Power Jump)
Damage Dodge 3BP (lets him block an additional 1 damage, so 3 damage if he blocks and 5 if he doesn't)
Mega Rush 1BP (When Mario is at 1HP, his attack power goes up by 4 (boosting his regular attack by 8 and his Power Jump by 4))
---
Now, just to build up the suspense a bit, and to give you an idea of how these combine together, I'll post a couple of the strategies I tried first that failed...
HP Plus, HP Plus, Damage Dodge
Partner: Goombario
Assuming you block each time (and JR is easy to block) you take 3 damage per round and have 20 HP, thus you get 7 attacks (since you go first). Goombario spends the first 5 rounds charging, running the party out of FP, then does 22 damage with his attack on round 6, and 2 damage on round 7. Mario, attacks every round doing 7*2=14 damage.
Total=38
HP Plus, HP Plus, Mega Rush, Power Jump
Partner: Goombario
20 HP, 4 damage per round if you block. As long as you block at least once that's 5 rounds. In fact, you want to deliberately fail all blocks but one so that you end at 1 HP (for Mega Rush). Goombario Charges for the first 3 turns, then does 14 damage with his attack, then attacks again for 2 (total: 16). Mario attacks on the first 3 turns doing 2 damage each time, then Power Jumps for 5, then on the last round he attacks with the Mega Rush bonus for 10 damage (total: 21).
Total: 37
HP Plus, FP Plus, Mega Rush, Power Jump
Partner: Parakarry
15 HP, you can survive 4 turns, and once again deliberately fail some blocks to end up at 1HP. Parakarry Shell Shots twice (10, using 6FP) and sky dives twice (4). Mario Power Jumps twice (10, using 4FP), jumps once at regular damage (2), and jumps once at 1HP for Mega Rush (10).
Total: 36
---
Now, there's actually a strategy to deal 41 damage, but for the fun of it I'll drive the mathematically inclined insane by not explaining it. In the mean time, here's a couple strategies that just barely win at 40 damage:
HP Plus
HP Plus