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Videogame Developers Are Making It Harder To Stop Playing (wsj.com)
Videogames have gotten harder to turn off, mental-health experts and parents say, raising concerns about the impact of seemingly endless gaming sessions on players' lives. From a report: Game developers for years have tweaked the dials not only on how games look and sound but how they operate under the hood, and such changes have made videogames more pervasive and enthralling, industry observers say. The World Health Organization in June added "gaming disorder" to an updated version of its International Classification of Diseases, warning about a condition in which people give up interests and activities to overly indulge in gaming despite negative consequences. It is expected to be formally classified in January 2022.
Many games today are free, available on multiple devices, and double as social networks. Where once games were played and put away for a while, now game companies are routinely delivering new content aimed at keeping players constantly engaged. Some new content is available only for a limited time, a maneuver that tugs at people's fears of missing out, psychologists say. "Videogames are engineered specifically to keep people playing," said Douglas A. Gentile, a research scientist focused on the impact of media on children and adults. "They're designed to hit the pleasure centers of the brain in some of the same ways that gambling can."
Many games today are free, available on multiple devices, and double as social networks. Where once games were played and put away for a while, now game companies are routinely delivering new content aimed at keeping players constantly engaged. Some new content is available only for a limited time, a maneuver that tugs at people's fears of missing out, psychologists say. "Videogames are engineered specifically to keep people playing," said Douglas A. Gentile, a research scientist focused on the impact of media on children and adults. "They're designed to hit the pleasure centers of the brain in some of the same ways that gambling can."
We could still be plugging quarters into the machine.
I'll get back to you later tonight after I harvest my crop in No Man's Sky.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
When my kids were born, I stopped playing and never went back. I would play for hours and feel empty afterwards. That was before pay to play I could see where it was all heading. Instead I started to work on development side projects (when not spending time with my family), and now I have a resume a mile long.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Games are actually the superset of all education, art, entertainment and sports.
The purpose of playing is actually, to have a safe, and a bit simplified on its essence, testing rig, for training for something in real life. So it is the ideal education.
And just like art, it is supposed to communicate deep insights
Aaand what the "games industry" produces, has absolutely nothing to do with that.
Just like with any other industry that grew, like a cancer, on top of forms of art or sports, it tries to form things into a "product", trying to "maximize profit"... thereby ruining the entire damn point of art or sports beyond all recognition.
That is the difference between an art industry, and the artist "industry" (which isn't really interested in being an industry). They are direct enemies.
IMHO the former is just a bunch of coke-headed leeches, trying to suck as much money out of artists and their fans as physically possible, wile doing as little value-adding work as physically possible! And IMHO, prison is the correct reaction, that should follow something like that in a sane world.
But no surprise that they'd try to turn into drug dealers too. They probably haven't seen a day without cocaine in the last 100 years. And maybe LSD.
It is in the interest of every business model to get more customers, and to get current customers to use the company's products more frequently.
It is in the interest of society to regulate business, through government interference, when it is determined the business promotion is to the detriment of the current societal belief set; but damn, everything's not a disease.
Gaming Disorder.?.? Just, wow. It's not your fault, you poor addict.
There are certain groups that are really angry that young men are choosing to enjoy video games rather than go out in the world, get married, have children, and participate in society in the way they demand.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
It is society that is making it hard for game players to stop playing. As a long time player let me explain why.
I hate games that use RNG as a difficulty crutch (some rouge likes), gambler logic (loot boxes), and Feed and Starve (candy crush/pay for lives/continues) to hook me. Why ? because it makes me angry when playing their games because I know what gambling is and how it works on the mind, but more importantly, because I am looking for MORE from my game than simple risk/reward gimmicks.
It would be interesting in a study to see if people with more developed intellectual capacity fall for these game types than people who have not cared to develop their intellectual capacities. I admit that I believe that some people are hooked on these games because they either do not care or are shallow enough to allow their time to be used in this way.
That said, I think the distinction in such a study needs to be on people that actually have some form of addiction. It does not need to be major, but enough of one where it is clear that their gaming habits are at least noticeably affecting their work/friend/love/life balances.
People who play these games just to pass the time as they move from moment to moment in life should not be considered, regardless of the types of games they play. They are clearly immune or are able to see these gimmicks for what they are.
As a gamer myself, I hate most MMO's as a never ending grindfest, mobs stand around like cattle, bosses never really die, the environments are not really changeable by the players actions, though so mmo's try to emulate this with updates. I mean nothing says it more than... go kill 10 slimes and return here. Or running the same stage over and over and over ad nauseum where one mistake can lead to disaster and angry people because game balance in MMO's always mean as a single unit you are never strong or capable. Sure teamwork is nice but if those monsters are really that strong how can the popoulations the players represent live in those worlds? O right, I forgot, bosses are immortal, over sized and never have to leave their lairs and just happen to have mobs of defender acolytes for what reason again?
I liked terraria for the exploration, world modification, and creative boss fights, though I do not think the boss fights are really balanced.
I liked factorio for its complex crafting and logic gameplay, but mobs on even the hardest configurations are pie cake to deal with and at best annoyance.
I very much appreciate games that provide at least semi plausible reasons for things going on, not just being used as plot devices or macguffins.
it is my opinion that because society is more about giving people knowledge without actually attempting to teach them "why" that knowledge if valuable, they waste it or misunderstand it leading them to become easily suckered by so many things... least of which is a game with mechanics so simple that only a simple mind can enjoy them! Or in short, shallow risk reward mechanics! People who require "deeper" and "more meaningful" experiences are busy doing something else because these games are just too shallow to hold their attention.
So can you really blame game developers for figuring out how the simple minded tick? Nope! Just give them their money, they earned it! Or rather, they earned tricking it out of their pockets!
However, I've also seen a lot of outrage about that gaming disorder definition and had to ask myself if these people even tried to read and understand what the definition of gaming disorder is about instead of just reading the headlines and chose to get deeply offended or 'triggered'?
Let me quote the criteria:
And then of course there's also this last paragraph:
Source: http://www.who.int/features/qa...
This is quite important to understand because it also defines what is NOT gaming disorder.
If you choose it to be your hobby and spend a lot of your personal time on it, it wouldn't be gaming disorder.
If you're a professional gamer, it wouldn't be gaming disorder.
If you're an introvert and not very social to begin with, video games don't cause your behavioural pattern to change and it wouldn't be gaming disorder.
Even if you call in sick now and then because you must finish that game you got on Friday it wouldn't be gaming disorder. No, for this to be gaming disorder, behavioural patterns like these must persists for at least 12 months.
For fucks sake. These are pretty common criteria for any kind of addiction, be it substance abuse, gambling, extreme sports, and whatever. Why should activities like playing video games get a free pass? And while we're at it, the WHO should also take a very close look at social media addiction.
For me anyways. Games today are like superhero, action, and even drama movies-it's the same concept rehashed over and over again. I've little enthusiasm to start playing something I've seen 30 times already, let alone finish it.
Boring, poorly directed cut-scenes with mediocre CGI and bad voice acting over and over again.
Ooooh, let's also make the longer cutscenes unskippable.
Games that almost play themselves because your character can fight by themselves without any interaction from the gamer.
Now they are changing history in games to appease the insane SJW crowd, most who aren't gamers, by adding gender fluid male lesbian shiny-blue-haired Generals to 'historically accurate' games.
> men are choosing to enjoy video games rather than go out in the world, get married, have children, ...
Jordan Peterson calls (*) this behavior MGTOW Men Go Their Own Way.
It is not just him saying that.
There are certain men who refuse to work with women because anytime a woman claims she was harassed the man is automatically presumed guilty until proven innocent.
In Tim Pool's video he discusses a famous Fortnite YouTuber, known as Ninja, Tyler Blevins. Specifically, Tyler Blevins' decision where Tyler says would not stream with women because people would then harass his family and accuse him of having an affair.
Quoting the interview from Variety:
If you redd the the comments in Tim Pool's video you will find tons of horror stories where a man was falsely accused and had to defend his integrity -- at great cost.
Can you blame them that some men just go "Fuck it. I don't need this drama."
(*) For the record Jordan admits he was dismissive of calling MGOTW as "pathetic weasels." It takes a man with integrityto admit he was wrong. Good that he owned up to that epithet.
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Stupid Juvenile Whiners tactics Rule #3
3. Ad hominem fallacy -- start screaming insults at everyone who disagrees (Whine). i.e. "Haters going to hate"
... and stupidity of society. I don't mean it to say gaming is bad, gaming is just the latest scapegoat.
Many men checked out because well, men have been mistreated and abandoned. When men are seen as tools and to be used as cheap labour for the rest of society. Why wouldn't they check out? Videogames is the latest scapegoat for a society so up its ass in predatory business practices and corporate lawlessness. Our entire society is just one giant highschool of stupid human predatory bullshit. I don't blame the poor and downtrodden for checking out. Especially after the big bank bailouts of 2008, and our corporate masters trying to scrub the internet of their plutonomy memo's...
https://politicalgates.blogspo...
I assume you've replaced games with some other form of entertainment. Could be TV or movies, or going to concerts, or playing ball with your kids, or gambling, or reading and responding on slashdot. Or if you're one of a lucky few, it could be your side projects if you find doing those things relaxing. (Only a small percentage of people fit into this last category, as the vast majority of relaxing activities are productivity-consuming rather than productivity-generating. So it serves no purpose for these lucky people to lecture everyone else on how they should spend their free time, since the things they find relaxing, other people just find to be stressful work. One of my millionaire friends is that rich because he finds it relaxing to read and learn about better ways to run a company, and applying what he reads to his company. His wife has to constantly pull laptops, tablets, and phones out of his hands when they go on vacation, because he finds reading that stuff more fun and relaxing than vacation.)
Entertainment helps to relieve stress, making your work hours more productive than if you did nothing but work, eat, and sleep. So the time and money spent on entertainment can be worth it. Entertainment only becomes a problem when you become so obsessed with it, it begins to detract from your ability to be productive at work.
So games can be beneficial if they function as stress-relieving entertainment, but only if they're played in moderation. I figured this out when I decided I was playing too many games and quit cold turkey. A month later I evaluated my progress, and found that the time I used to spend playing games, I was now spending on other "time-wasting" activities. I needed to relieve my work-related stress some other way if it wasn't via gaming.
Since I enjoyed gaming more than the other replacement activities, I went back to gaming. But I kept a mindful eye on how much I was enjoying the game. Most of the MMORPGs I played got dropped, because they typically required dozens or hundreds of hours of boring grinding, just so your character could be capable of participating in a few hours of excitement (raiding, or dungeon delving). They got replaced with RPGs which focused on campaigns, since those are tuned so your progress through the campaign levels your character appropriately without you having to waste time grinding. So the games I play now aren't black holes designed to suck up as much of my time as possible in exchange for as little progress as possible. They're like interactive movies, which if paced well with a good plot are enormously entertaining without sucking up more of my time than needed to tell the story.
There are certain groups that are really angry that young men are choosing to enjoy video games rather than go out in the world, get married, have children, and participate in society in the way they demand.
I just prefer to think about it as a really pleasant and asymptotically accurate method for improving the race, and I am saying as that as someone who will likely not have children.
I've never been able to understand exactly why some of these folks are up in arms about gamers and their lifestyle. These men are doing no harm, and the people who hate on them would never mate with them. The only possible disadvantage these groups would have is that these gamma males don't lust after them or show interest. But they are leaving those people alone and not bothering or harassing them. So rather than go on about video game addiction, they should consider themselves as having largely solved one of their biggest problems, and that a large and growing segment of men are choosing to do other things rather than chase and bother them, and these are men they are not interested in anyhow.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
There are certain groups that are really angry that young men are choosing to enjoy video games rather than go out in the world, get married, have children, and participate in society in the way they demand.
Blehhhhh.
Firstly, it's not just men who game, mmmkay?
Seocndly, certain companies, e.g. King do in fact employ people who's job it t ofigure out psychological tricks to maximise the literal addictiveness.
Third, no one ever gets all defensive about hipsters, just gamers. Wearing a massive beard, donning skinny tweeds and aiming for a calling making artesanal breads while living is a cheap area of Portland is *precisely* choosing to live life by different rules rather than do the whole career, slighly unaffordable car, mc mansion with 2 kids driven to the local school etc etc. Onnly enough one hears little but scorn for such people.
I'll believe the defense when I hear it about people in general choosing to live a different life. Until that time it edges rather close to "oh young male gamers are so oppressed".
SJW n. One who posts facts.