Admittedly, I am not a games enthusiast, whether video or board, but I have played both at times. In particular, I played a lot of – OK, this is totally gonna reveal that I’m an old ;P – THPS, and I’m 100℅ sure I played both RPG-type computer games as well as like Mario Bros stuff. However, I just have never really grasped what makes video games so enticing.
I suspect this is an annoying and well-trodden path, but I would sincerely appreciate it if you could find it in your heart to help me understand.
For me personally, I tend to look at things in terms of costs and benefits. Through that lens, most games seem like a bad deal. In principle, I like some of the more quirky or esoteric ones, but it quickly seems like a lot to learn relative the payout.
When I was in HS, I had a band. Has that type of interaction simply been replaced by video games?
I swear I’m not trying to troll – I really want to understand the interplay between video games and psychology. Cuz it seems like FPSes are dominant whereas not too long ago they were a single niche among many niches.
I appreciate your taking the time to read/reply.
For me, the cost benefit is about entertainment. I recognize there have been studies that supposedly show that games can help develop or maintain certain skills, but for me it’s more about learning the skill to experience the in-game reward. That’s just for some games. For others, that element exists but the game is telling a story too. One that is punctuated by struggle, maybe battles, and the overcoming which leads to power ups and more story.
So the cost-benefit is that it costs time, but it pulls you out of end-stage capitalism and puts you in flow state, engaging in another world.
I would suspect, though, that if you’re seeing video games through the lens of cost-benefit analysis, you might have trouble relaxing. People need rest.
It depends on the game, but i like long RPG’s. Sometimes, it can start to wear out its welcome. But for the games where it works well it’s cool. You get to experience this big world, usually going from a weakling to a strong character by the end. The stories can be really interesting (or bland too).
I recently decided that I am going to take on a game that could potentially take me hundreds of hours to finish and it’s daunting, but if at some point if I start to hate it, I’ll put it down and Google the results of the story and feel content.
Thank you for responding. That–RPGs-- makes sense to me. I can conceptualize a game where you’re basically able to cram more into your actual life. I feel – nay, I’ve witnessed – a lot of businesses engage in practices that explicitly disempower their customers, and I see that practice a lot in videogames nowadays. That irks me. It’s ultimately treating customers like ATMs, and I am not on board!
Your 12 day old comment history is full of disingenuous bullshit, and so is this post.
I dont understand why you would go for his history such a post? What warrants it? Doesn seem like bs to me, he is just older.
For me personally, I tend to look at things in terms of costs and benefits. Through that lens, most games seem like a bad deal. In principle, I like some of the more quirky or esoteric ones, but it quickly seems like a lot to learn relative the payout.
This is where you lost me. The title of your post is about how you don’t get “long” video games, then you go about costs vs benefits.
First I tend to dismiss any kind of correlation between how long a game is and how good it is. There are fantastic games on the shorter side. there are basically infinite games that manage to be engaging through and through. There are terrible games of all lengths that are full of boring padding.
But even seeing it through the cost vs benefit lens (in a kind of naive way), wouldn’t it mean a longer game is more “worth it”?
And why is “a lot to learn” is listed as a negative? If you are enjoying what you’re doing, you probably don’t mind that it takes some time. If you don’t, why are you playing that game at all? Games are not an investment. Like all entertainment media, engaging with them is supposed to be fun, or interesting, or evoking something you want to feel right now at least.
Regarding FPS, not sure where you got that idea. They’ve been common and popular for very long. Doom was a cliche image for the public representation of video games for a long time. Big FPS games (especially the military kind) have always sold like hotcakes and were long tied with sports games for “those games that are bought by people who don’t play anything else”. If anything, they’ve progressively lost a bit of ground to third person shooters, but they were always strong.
Whoa whoa whoa, what’s with the third degree?
I couldn’t tell you, but I imagine OP just has a sort of old-fashioned “what transferrable skills is it teaching you” view of the whole thing. They’re not being aggressive, it’s okay to just explain.
