Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure • Hacker News Board

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#151

Post by pasquinelli » Thu, May 24, 2018, 7:37 AM UTC

gowld wrote: post #44

dfxm12 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't get to enter your initials into the machine based on how far you get. Only your score matters, and your score resets when you continue. You don't "beat" Pac-Man when you get to the kill screen, you beat Pac-Man when you get a perfect score.

High score resets whenever the machine is unplugged. Score isn't the only measure of success in Pac-man or other arcade games.

what difference does it make if the high score table is reset? if you got that score you got that score, that's your achievement, the record just commemorates it.

score very much is the measure of success in pacman and its contempiraries. what else is there?

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#152

Post by sbr464 » Thu, May 24, 2018, 7:39 AM UTC

imustbeevil wrote: post #147

sbr464 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m also put off by the fact you can’t just turn on and play a game, you need to download a 5gb game update, platform updates and are spammed with notifications, especially if you don’t play for a few weeks.

People bring this up a lot, but forget that the alternative was the game gets released with bugs that never get fixed.

I agree, and it’s nice to have new content/fixes, it just creates anxiety/frustration and leads to not turning it on, which defeats the purpose of having it. Circular rant, first world problem I know

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#153

Post by ionised » Thu, May 24, 2018, 11:44 AM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #90

everyone wrote: post #78

This reads like it was written by someone who doesnt play or appreciate games, or even know much about the artform. The point that is brought up several times, that they are classist due to their cost.. If you cant afford a game, or dont want to support its publisher or business model, but still want to play it. Just pirate it. Most games are readily available to pirate. Games have simply become as film, and novels a…

> This reads like it was written by someone who doesnt play or appreciate games, or even know much about the artform. So, like a proper adult?

Your snarky comment belies your thin implication that you yourself are a mature adult for not liking games.

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#154

Post by dTal » Thu, May 24, 2018, 1:00 PM UTC

imustbeevil wrote: post #147

sbr464 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m also put off by the fact you can’t just turn on and play a game, you need to download a 5gb game update, platform updates and are spammed with notifications, especially if you don’t play for a few weeks.

People bring this up a lot, but forget that the alternative was the game gets released with bugs that never get fixed.

The alternative is the user is given the choice to update, not forced to. This was normal for PC games a decade ago, you'd go online and download a patch. At least with the games I played, bugfix and even small feature updates were usually free.

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#155

Post by coldtea » Thu, May 24, 2018, 1:04 PM UTC

ionised wrote: post #153

coldtea wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This reads like it was written by someone who doesnt play or appreciate games, or even know much about the artform. So, like a proper adult?

Your snarky comment belies your thin implication that you yourself are a mature adult for not liking games.

My implication wasn't that I am mature for not liking games.

Only that liking games is immature -- which doesn't imply that not liking games automatically qualifies one for maturity (it's a necessary, but not sufficient condition).

Nor does it imply that I and those who share my opinion consider themselves mature (a non-X person can still make claims about what constitutes being X, and those claims can even be perfectly correct -- doubly so in a subjective, non-well defined, topic, like what constitutes maturity).

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#156

Post by Vaskivo » Thu, May 24, 2018, 1:48 PM UTC

cirgue wrote: post #39

> passive consumption over leisure This is the money quote for me. We somehow managed to convince an entire generation of people who were skeptical of the passive consumption of television that 'Hey wait, this other form of manufactured entertainment is entirely different and not at all bad for you because we're the tech industry and we aren't the people in suits."

I grew up with videogames. My whole life, my mais sources of entertainment were books and video games.

I find that whant attracts me to them is the control I have of my experience. Specially the pacing.

With books and game I can take a breather, explore/reread a portion and progress as fast as I want. In the television, cinema and music media I don't have that control. Therefore I don't like those media as much.

I'm also _really_ picky about the pacing in a movie. It's not that I don't like slow movies. I get antsy if they're not progressing as I think they should and when I'm presented with scenes that have no purpose.

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#157

Post by graphitezepp » Thu, May 24, 2018, 1:51 PM UTC

zaarn wrote: post #149

malloryerik wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think are the best games for modding? Of course Minecraft. What else? I'm thinking especially in terms of modding as a way to get into programming.

Factorio has to my knowledge a pretty neat modding API internally.

It does, Factorio is an impressive software project anyway you look at it.

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#158

Post by kchr » Thu, May 24, 2018, 2:01 PM UTC

pasquinelli wrote: post #151

gowld wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High score resets whenever the machine is unplugged. Score isn't the only measure of success in Pac-man or other arcade games.

what difference does it make if the high score table is reset? if you got that score you got that score, that's your achievement, the record just commemorates it. score very much is the measure of success in pacman and its contempiraries. what else is there?

If you consider the high score list as you would a city wall where local graffiti writers put their tags as a territorial guestbook it makes more sense IMO :-)

Sure, you know that you "won" - but there is also something to the idea of bragging about it!

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#159

Post by kchr » Thu, May 24, 2018, 2:04 PM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #87

emodendroket wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was at least in some cases explicitly about rentals. That's why the difficulty was jacked up for US releases -- Nintendo was successful at getting game rentals legally banned in Japan, but not the US.

If that's what Nintendo were trying to do they did a piss-poor job at it. I beat Super Mario World over a single weekend's rental.

Ahhh, those were the days. You knew you had 72 hours from the moment you left the store and goddamnit you would spend that time effectively :-)

Re: Digital Capitalism’s War on Leisure

#160

Post by rconti » Thu, May 24, 2018, 3:24 PM UTC

FooHentai wrote: post #128

rconti wrote: post #99

"As a result, gaming has come to privilege haves over have-nots, work and passive consumption over leisure, and the economic over the social." I can't parse this. And my eyes glazed over once I kept trying to get past it and keep reading.

It is horribly written. >gaming has come to privilege haves over the have-nots Extrapolated, I take it to mean: People with money to spend now have an advantage over poor people when it comes to video gaming Even then, it's unclear what this means. An advantage acquiring games to play because it's more expensive to get into? In success within the games themselves? Something only rich people have the time to engage in…

Yeah, I can sorta figure out what was meant by that line. I think he's saying that in-game purchases have turned gaming into something you need to have money to be able to do. I'm not sure I agree with that, though. Casual gaming is apparently more popular than ever, and plenty of good games can be played without 'buying up'.

I have to caveat that with a few statements. For one, I am a silicon valley 'have'. Secondly, I'm not a gamer.

But I distinctly remember how long it took me to save up $65.99 1990 dollars ($130 today!!!) for Super Mario 3. To say nothing of the costs of the consoles.

Smartphones aren't free, but today you can play free- or nearly-free games on hardware you already own.