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The Grown-Up Video Game
Phaethon360 writes "Now, more than ever, we're seeing many Mature ratings (M+, 17+, 18) being distributed by various national media regulators. But that isn't the only indicator for a game's intended audience. It doesn't take a thousand swear words, scantily clad women or gratuitous violence to differentiate a ten-year-old's game from a twenty-year-old's. The spectrum of human emotions encompasses a wider palette than just revenge, fear, and loss, but the games that shy away from these are frequently mistaken as being for a younger audience. From the article: 'The human experience is one that is made up of great hardship, pain, loss, death, and a multitude of experiences seemingly designed to destroy a person. However, that same experience is also filled with joy, love, laughter, family and friends. ... These so-called “grown-up” games need not be relegated to the category of niche gaming. In fact, at times we find that these video games are capable of reaching mass popularity among the gaming community. It is here that we find one of our generation’s outlets for the expression of conflict.'"
>>The human experience is one that is made up of great hardship, pain, loss, death, and a multitude of experiences seemingly designed to destroy a person.
I think the authors have confused real life with video games!
There's certainly a lot of bad things that happen in life, but if you run your own life wisely, you can minimize the pain and maximize the pleasures.
I really like a lesser-known saying by Machiavelli: "Life is half random, and half under our control." While we can't control whether or not we get cancer (beyond doing certain things like not smoking and eating veggies), there is a lot we can do that is under our control, and with planning you can attempt to minimize the random events that come your way. You shouldn't expect to completely eliminate them, but if you do your best, you can get pretty good odds for living a happy life.