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(some) Video games are addictive, by design.
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Heh.
I think what he was saying was that, if someone is playing WoW for 6 hours a day, it's kind of hard to imagine that he's also handling the rest of his life just fine with no problems. 6 hours a day basically means that outside of work and sleep you're doing nothing but playing WoW.
What do you think the average person who is not playing WoW is doing?
Also do keep in mind that WoW is an MMO, so there is the opportunity to socialize with random new people, which TV at home does not grant.
Average TV viewing is ~4 hrs a day, isn't it?
Definitely the most WoW I've ever played at a time in my life, however, was also one of my healthiest moments. I was teaching skiing on a flexible schedule from four to six days out of the week, for the six hours of daylight that the mountain stayed open. I had just gotten my laptop after months with no computer at all, and I just went all out. I can't imagine how those two weeks could be construed as unhealthy, or abusive gaming, even though I probably pushed the 40 hour mark if not actually hitting 42. Afterwards though, I think I was off WoW for a bit, because that was a bit too much too fast.
So you're saying the difference between the three states is whether the person cares/has money?
I think people get bogged down in whether someone is ADDICTED or NOT ADDICTED. Like an addiction is some sort of binary state. For example: I feel a strong compulsion to smoke when I drink. I find it difficult to resist this compulsion. Am I addicted?
I think that a lot of people who get labelled as WoW addicts really just don't have much compelling stuff going on in their lives so the WoW treadmill is actually a better choice (in their mind) to the real options.
If you're only playing WoW like 3 hours a day then I guess that could be OK. Or if you don't have a job and have a lot of spare time.
Anyway, I decided today that I'm going to try and avoid playing any video games for a while. Because I know that I have a really bad habit of getting sucked into a game and playing it for waaaaaay longer than I intend to, and it's causing me some problems. I never got into MMORPGs though.
I played EVE for six months. This describes my last month of play. Then I was "wait, what?" and didn't renew.
I've seen phish twice, once with bruce springsteen, and have GB's of bootlegs.
I havent smoked weed in over a year.
No one's going to argue you on this. Disney has always been an evil, evil company.
I reckon most of us would argue that videogames are an art form. But it's hard for me to accept that a game like WOW, which revolves around what amounts to an exploitative mechanism identical to what casinos use, really counts as "art." Are the garish signs and lights at a casino slot machine room "art"? I don't think so; to the extent that they are art, it's solely window-dressing in service of the fundamental mechanism of extracting money from you vis psychological manipulation.
There are games that I would unhesitantly say are art. Many games focus on the "experience" of playing—of exploring new worlds and narratives, surpassing challenges, or (in the case of Rock Band) experiencing music viscerally. That is what games should be about.
When a game is "about" performing mindless, repetitive actions to achieve randomly distributed virtual rewards, I think it makes a mockery of the aesthetic potential of the medium. Call it what it is: virtual gambling. You pay with time and you are rewarded virtual currency.
Actually you pay with real money too.
I would see your point if things were challenge-free. But there are challenges in an MMO. It does take coordination and people being on the ball for some (not all) of the content. Not everyone is necessarily playing for the loot (the gambling aspect, as it were). The loot is important to those, but only in that it helps to conquer the Lich King or whatever other challenges there are.
Some people actually play for the 'glory.' Yeah, over time those past achievements become child's play as gear gets better, level caps are raised, etc. But the experience in that moment is genuine I think.
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Though, repetitive grinding is my least favorite part of Final Fantasy games. In the FF13 thread there are all these people talking about the best places to grind to get loot to presumably defeat enemies after you finish the game ... I don't understand this. A lot of FF games, which I otherwise love, fill the field with endless, easy monsters that can be mindlessly slayed over and over again—why? To extend the playtime for marketing purposes? I simply refuse to believe that people actually enjoy pressing X five times every 20 seconds for 3 hours. A means to an end, maybe, but I wouldn't shed a tear if that kind of gameplay was outlawed by Barack Maobama in a government takeover of videogames.
The argument isn't whether video games are addictive. Or whether they are as addictive as other things. Or even the nature of how they are addictive, if they are.
The argument, is that game designers are specifically designing their game to attempt to induce a psychological addiction in the customer. Whether you believe such a feat is possible or not, they do, and are trying to succeed in it.
And they aren't doing a half bad job of it if you ask me. Personally I do believe this sort of game design is exploitative. And I think any company that as a business plan tries to get its customers as addicted to its product as possible is amoral. At least with cigarettes there are warning labels and people are aware. With exploitative games, there is no such warning. And it doesn't help that its only a minority of games which operate in this way. With legions of fans, with so much time sunk into them that they will viciously defend their favorite "game".
I don't really enjoy discussions of "are video games art?" because they always come down to wankery about the definition of "art." But if your argument is that a game can be "art" when it focuses on - in your words - "exploring new worlds and narratives, surpassing challenges" then there is definitely this element to WoW. There is also the casino element, I do not deny that, but in terms of exploring new worlds I would point to images like this or this to show how much atmosphere there really is in the WoW game world.
And regarding "surpassing challenges,' contrary to a lot of naysayers, clearing a heroic or 10-man dungeon is challenging. It definitely requires coordination and leadership. Yes, there are a lot of aspects of the game that aren't, but that element is still there and becomes the forefront of the game at the highest levels.
I think the repetitive nature in single player games is frowned upon a lot, for the most part. If you notice, RPGs have toned down the level grinding requirement that used to exist in the late 80's and the first half of the 90's. RPGs are generally easier to level up in I think. There's an emphasis on narrative too, rather than challenge (I'm speaking strictly on jRPGs - the hybrid games that utilize RPG mechanics are a different beast).
Though, there are games that cater to the oldschool harshness of RPGs of old (Etrian Odyssey, the Final Fantasy 3 remake). So I guess the point that developers cater to that compulsive behavior is true.
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Even in FF13, which has a fantastic combat system. I'd like the game better if it were about 2/3 as long. I really don't need to fight through 30 different variations and combinations of the same 4 enemies in each level. Populating your game with these kind of encounters seems like a shortcut more than anything.
It feels the same way to me (well, not FF13 as I haven't played it yet, but other games of its ilk). And I don't understand the mentality. Why bother populating levels with the same fight over and over again if your game is 90 hours long? Cut 2/3rds of the fights that are identical and make the game a 30 hour roller-coaster of novelty and awesomeness.
Edit: (For single player games; the reasoning for subscription-based games is obvious)
Are there actually people who enjoy grinding the same fight over and over again not for the eventual reward? I mean, if WoW (or FF13, or whatever) had a Grindometer setting where you could choose to fight 30 battles per bar-filling/game area or 10 battles, where the 30 battles were the same as the 10 but repeated 3 times each, would there be people who picked the 30?
Not so much no combat outside of bosses, but not the same fight over and over. Wandering around and getting into fights with new and different badguys, or at least new combinations of badguys (where the mix actually makes the fight different in some way) is fine by me. Fighting 3 guards and 2 guard dogs, taking 3 steps, fighting 3 guards and 2 guard dogs, taking 3 steps, etc. not so much fun.
Perhaps a better compromise would be somewhere between that and what FF13 has going, where most of the encounters you have with enemies are challenging and require thought. (Partly because the game heals you after every fight so each one can "count")
So, in a typical FF13 level, there are like four kinds of enemies. You have a pudding monster, a flying robot, a soldier, and a mecha. Why do I need to spend 2-3 hours fighting every single permutation of these enemies, sometimes twice or three times over, often without putting any effort into it whatsoever? What does that add to the game, except playtime and the gambling-illusion of 'grinding"?
I would like to see less enemies in video game levels in general. If an enemy isn't interesting or challenging to fight, why the hell is it in the game?
I agree with you wholeheartedly in general, but swarms can work in certain types of games. If the enemies are individually wusses and you just kill one after another after another then I see it as a failing. If the challenge comes because you have to kill 50 wuss enemies simultaneously in a variety of set pieces then I'm okay with it.
Just out of curiosity, have you played Shadow of the Colossus?
The only enemies are boss fights, and the boss fights themselves are epic. There's some basic Tomb Raider-style platforming and exploration between fights, which is a little tedious, but in general that title demonstrates that you don't need to fill up a game with lots of weak minions to make it compelling.
I totally agree. There is something compelling about nuking a horde.
City of Heroes had something like that. It was a simple difficulty setting - the higher the difficulty, the harder each mission was, but the more reward you got from it.
I fucking loved it. I kept it cranked as high as I could reasonably keep it.
And i loved wandering around the world between fights. It was so beautiful and I don't think it would have been improved at all by the presence of Octoroks or sand demons or what have you.
i..e not anymore difficult, not anymore experience or loot ... just 3x as much repetition.
I enjoyed the exploration, and I also appreciated the lack of octoroks. The presence of benign critters (like lizards) kept it from feeling totally lifeless to me.
I probably would have enjoyed it more had the visuals been more varied, but I understand that they were already pushing the limitations of the PS2 without adding a ton more textures.
Oh, I see. Right.
That's a bit different from what he's asking though. Hard modes are often enjoyable by themselves.
It's more like if there was a COH option where it allowed you to choose forgo xp at all and just run the same missions over and over.
Edit: Beaten
Yup. I was there. I decided to focus almost exclusively on dailies, because I decided getting that blue dragonhawk and violet protodrake were more important than powerful equipment. It made dailies a MISERABLE experience, and I quit.
I don't know if you can measure evil, but no one does things that cause harm and remains ignorant. Those causing harm will make excuses and try to twist the truth, but they're really responsible for their role in it.
I do the same thing. Heck, one year I reported that I had more than the duty-free limit to import, because I figured I owed them for all those other years where I bent the truth, and that bastard at customs still wouldn't tax me. It was like $100 in taxes, I think.
We all need to be educated, but most of us don't know, or can't really tell the story in a convincing way, or not enough people accept the story as truth. (the same way lots of people still dismiss mental illness.)
There are a LOT of really vital things that are just not taught in public schools...
Many people still don't believe the mind is any more than their will, or it's indirect steering wheel for the will (and even those who do understand it don't know exactly how it all works, and they can't explain it to those that don't understand), I'm not sure how far we can go with talking about the interconnection of addiction and our control over it as individuals or as society.
Our tools for evaluating these problems and combating them are still primitive.