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Video Games Are Boring

gamesindustry.biz

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Re: Video Games Are Boring

#121

Post by ConceptJunkie »

arkitaip wrote: post #8

This captures a lot of what I've been feeling lately. I can't stand most games, they just make me anxious and I will quit playing them after a few hours or even minutes. Too much stress and surface experiences has had me looking in the other direction. Take, for example, GTA 5. I've probably spent more hours riding cars and bikes in GTA5's beautiful countryside and outback than playing actual missions. Just hours and…

You raise a good point. I would never purchase a GTA game because I find the whole concept morally offensive, but I am very intrigued by the exploration aspect you have described. I would love to see more focus on exploration in games. A lot of RPGs (like the Elder Scrolls series) have significant aspects of exploration to them, but tend to get bogged down in the fetch-it quests or lots of repetitive hack-and-slay.

I've got nothing against combat elements of games, but if it falls into endless repetition and involves lots of grinding, etc, to advance, then it just becomes work, not fun.

Re: Video Games Are Boring

#122

Post by edblarney »

brador wrote: post #117
edblarney wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though I agree with what you say - I would say that the conventions of games are gender oriented. They are made by guys, for guys, and girls can play along. The 'mission orientation' - the 'guns/violence' - and 'sports' - while not exclusively a guy thing - they are definitely guy-leaning. Let me say it differently: if you took a totally random sample of girls and gave them each $100M to go off and build the 'best ga…

Moat modern games are made to sell. If the buyers are looking for X then it makes sense that a business should provide them with X to turn the most profit. If females, or anyone, wants separate gameplay mechanics then they need to reward that with cold cash to build an economy and incentivize creation. Else it's all just words and forcing a square block into a circle hole. Cash is the only way to lasting change (see…

I get it, I fully agree.

That said: the industry is really built around conventions and culture. Guys making games for guys. Marketing to guys. The entire culture skews guys.

Of course they might have a hard time 'selling to girls'.

This might seem a bit 'sexist' or whatever to use a 'fashion' example, but just as a crude idea ... maybe a social game that made you a 'designer' - and you could design fashion/clothing ... you had to get a budget, design a 'runway show' ... and then get 'audience' (other players) to chime in and comment. You have to hustle and deal to sell the clothes or whatever. Hustle movie stars to schlep your stuff. Have real fashion designers and celebs chime in. Invent new textures, new fabrics.

Ok, ok, maybe a terrible idea in reality - but I'm just trying to illustrate a completely different scenario/culture/setting for which there exists no context in gaming as we understand it today.

Anyhow. I worked at an Fortune 50 and we were trying to market our 'mostly guy-ish' product to girls, and sitting around the table with 50-something rich fat men who all shopped at Wallmart, and their big idea was 'make it pink' - and that was it! :). Too funny.

Re: Video Games Are Boring

#123

Post by JoeAltmaier »

brador wrote: post #117
edblarney wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though I agree with what you say - I would say that the conventions of games are gender oriented. They are made by guys, for guys, and girls can play along. The 'mission orientation' - the 'guns/violence' - and 'sports' - while not exclusively a guy thing - they are definitely guy-leaning. Let me say it differently: if you took a totally random sample of girls and gave them each $100M to go off and build the 'best ga…

Moat modern games are made to sell. If the buyers are looking for X then it makes sense that a business should provide them with X to turn the most profit. If females, or anyone, wants separate gameplay mechanics then they need to reward that with cold cash to build an economy and incentivize creation. Else it's all just words and forcing a square block into a circle hole. Cash is the only way to lasting change (see…

The first decade of computer games, the all-time best-seller was King's Quest. It wasn't combat-related. It was problem-solving. It sold double what anything else had ever sold. Because girls liked it too. That was all it took to be #1 - double your demographic.

Re: Video Games Are Boring

#124

Post by abrown28 »

This article hijacks the history so that in one browser I have to double click the back button to get back to hacker news and in another browser I end up at facebook. It's very irritating.

Re: Video Games Are Boring

#125

Post by abrown28 »

Unlike the usual at least this one ended with the author stating they were going to work on the problem. These types of articles usually end by telling me why I am wrong and what I should be doing.

Re: Video Games Are Boring

#126

Post by advantark2 »

edblarney wrote: post #110
tnones wrote: post #89

There is nothing to support the author's typical feminist schtick of using diversity as a shorthand for blaming white men for the problems observed. Video games already have a diverse, demographically blind audience, that's why they're cheap mass entertainment. They're class and race-blind, and women do play them. Games can offer a free space to explore, play and excel, away from the judgement of real life, often wit…

Though I agree with what you say - I would say that the conventions of games are gender oriented. They are made by guys, for guys, and girls can play along. The 'mission orientation' - the 'guns/violence' - and 'sports' - while not exclusively a guy thing - they are definitely guy-leaning. Let me say it differently: if you took a totally random sample of girls and gave them each $100M to go off and build the 'best ga…

The idea that games are made for guys is in itself sexist, is it not? They're just games, and you're free to interpret them however you'd like.

Re: Video Games Are Boring

#127

Post by edblarney »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #123
brador wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moat modern games are made to sell. If the buyers are looking for X then it makes sense that a business should provide them with X to turn the most profit. If females, or anyone, wants separate gameplay mechanics then they need to reward that with cold cash to build an economy and incentivize creation. Else it's all just words and forcing a square block into a circle hole. Cash is the only way to lasting change (see…

The first decade of computer games, the all-time best-seller was King's Quest. It wasn't combat-related. It was problem-solving. It sold double what anything else had ever sold. Because girls liked it too. That was all it took to be #1 - double your demographic.

If memory serves me, the #1 selling game of all time is Tetris, and it's 50/50 guys girls.

Could be wrong.

Re: Video Games Are Boring

#128

Post by jplayer01 »

0xcde4c3db wrote: post #31

> She didn't like that there is a snake that can kill you. It's not that it is too hard, it's that she is deeply uninterested in being attacked in a game. I think this hints at a big part of the problem. When we frame something as a game, we tend to evoke the concepts of winning and losing. The most brutal and obvious (lazy?) way of implementing that is to turn it into "kill or be killed". And that brutal, obvious, v…

20 years of gaming here and honestly, the industry needs to get over its fetishization of violence and it's reliance on it as a crutch.

Games can be so much more than mainstream gaming has allowed them to become.

Re: Video Games Are Boring

#129

Post by arkitaip »

BeetleB wrote: post #65
arkitaip wrote: post #8

This captures a lot of what I've been feeling lately. I can't stand most games, they just make me anxious and I will quit playing them after a few hours or even minutes. Too much stress and surface experiences has had me looking in the other direction. Take, for example, GTA 5. I've probably spent more hours riding cars and bikes in GTA5's beautiful countryside and outback than playing actual missions. Just hours and…

Might not be exactly what you're looking for, but try playing The Walking Dead. Not very demanding on time, and it's not about killing zombies. Very story oriented, and you get attached to the characters in the game. I myself abandoned games over a decade ago - they just required too much from me. Only recently I decided to check some games out from the library. Not sure why I picked this one to play and was very ple…

I really liked The Walking Dead even though I'm not a huge fan of QTEs.

Re: Video Games Are Boring

#130

Post by saint_fiasco »

dahart wrote: post #120
1_2__3 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you took a less condescending tone your argument might be more persuasive with a wider audience.

Sorry about that, I sometimes do get condescending when I feel strongly and am pretty certain that I'm right. It is a problem, and I do want to learn how to make a strong point and not be condescending. Do you feel like my language was more condescending than the comment I replied to? I reacted to what I felt was more or less outright sexist language. "There is nothing to support the author's typical feminist schtick…

"Does that comment scare you? You sound very defensive. I'm sorry to inform you that we do have a discourse problem that is well documented, and you have identified yourself as part of the problem."

That was your comment. I changed a couple of words so it would look like it was directed at you.

Calling people defensive is very condescending and shitty, because it leaves people in a position where they have to choose between responding (and "proving you right", since they are now more "defensive") or leaving the conversation (and letting you "win" the argument by default).

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