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Emotionally Numb: Expertise Dulls Consumer Experience (2021)

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Re: Emotionally Numb: Expertise Dulls Consumer Experience (2021)

#21

Post by frud »

rhyme-boss wrote: post #14

Just my personal experience, but I would say this does not hold with regard to observing nature. Once I know the name of a new fly, fish, or flower, I care more about it, and I enjoy seeing it, and connecting that knowledge with other ecological knowledge.

Nature? Bah! How do you market nature? People can just get it for free! Get with the program, we need to exploit hedonism-seeking for the widest possible range of consumers to keep our numbers up! Keep them lusting after the next big thing, keep them confused and incompetent for as long as possible so they keep buying new versions of it. From us.

Re: Emotionally Numb: Expertise Dulls Consumer Experience (2021)

#22

Post by the_sleaze9 »

ImHereToVote wrote: post #11
wiseowise wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're joyless because they become increasingly toxic the higher you get. At least in mainstream games. Do something outside of meta and you're enemy number one.

It's the fact that the games are geared towards sexed up number crunching. Anything that can't be quantified into a number is ignored by the developers. I don't know why people like this stuff. Isn't real life already filled with number crunching?

When I became a full time developer, I lost any sense of adventure or accomplishment with regard to video games.

VR still has some sense of wonder or competitiveness that I used to feel playing WoW as a kid.

Just slowly embracing my inner old man yelling at clouds I suppose, a lot of kids see eSports as a viable future career now.

Re: Emotionally Numb: Expertise Dulls Consumer Experience (2021)

#24

Post by wiseowise »

ImHereToVote wrote: post #11
wiseowise wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're joyless because they become increasingly toxic the higher you get. At least in mainstream games. Do something outside of meta and you're enemy number one.

It's the fact that the games are geared towards sexed up number crunching. Anything that can't be quantified into a number is ignored by the developers. I don't know why people like this stuff. Isn't real life already filled with number crunching?

> I don't know why people like this stuff.

Maybe because they don't have it enough in their life? I used to enjoy MMORPGs when I was younger, nowadays I understand that it's spreadsheet-assisted grind.

> Isn't real life already filled with number crunching?

Precisely, the moment I entered "real life" I lost all drive for any online games, because I "saw through" their gameplay.

Re: Emotionally Numb: Expertise Dulls Consumer Experience (2021)

#25

Post by jwells89 »

wiseowise wrote: post #9
Lariscus wrote: post #4

This might be one of the reasons why some competitive gaming communities seem so joyless after a while.

They're joyless because they become increasingly toxic the higher you get. At least in mainstream games. Do something outside of meta and you're enemy number one.

Even in more casual online games these days, not adhering to the meta will bring trouble. Maximum optimization is the default expectation, and if you play to unwind rather than to compete or have a playstyle that’s more driven by whim or enjoyment you’ll be labeled a bad player.

This has driven me away from online games, even though they were one of my primary hobbies back in the 2000s. The ambient attitude has changed so much since then.

Re: Emotionally Numb: Expertise Dulls Consumer Experience (2021)

#26

Post by scaradim »

rhyme-boss wrote: post #14

Just my personal experience, but I would say this does not hold with regard to observing nature. Once I know the name of a new fly, fish, or flower, I care more about it, and I enjoy seeing it, and connecting that knowledge with other ecological knowledge.

It's proved that kids that name their chicken, pig, lamb, rabbit, fish, dog or horse cannot accept them to be killed and cannot eat them. thus numbers on farm cattle.

Re: Emotionally Numb: Expertise Dulls Consumer Experience (2021)

#27

Post by jwells89 »

the_sleaze9 wrote: post #22
ImHereToVote wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the fact that the games are geared towards sexed up number crunching. Anything that can't be quantified into a number is ignored by the developers. I don't know why people like this stuff. Isn't real life already filled with number crunching?

When I became a full time developer, I lost any sense of adventure or accomplishment with regard to video games. VR still has some sense of wonder or competitiveness that I used to feel playing WoW as a kid. Just slowly embracing my inner old man yelling at clouds I suppose, a lot of kids see eSports as a viable future career now.

For WoW specifically, the appeal melted away as it increasingly pushed instanced competitive endgame (raids, M+, arenas) as the the central pillars of the game. What pulled me in back in 2005 was its world which was not only vast and beautiful, but shared with numerous other players, as well as the more tabletop adventure feel that casual play (and even entry level raiding) entailed back then. Things that are prioritized now like leaderboard chasing and increasingly convoluted boss encounters are not what I logged on for.

Re: Emotionally Numb: Expertise Dulls Consumer Experience (2021)

#28

Post by thealienthing »

Perhaps this holds true more to fields that stem from hedonic experiences themselves like the arts, sports, games etc. I felt this way about music after graduating from music school. I became bored and jaded to music and had to spend several years not consuming music at all. Eventually I regained my love of it.

Conversely I don’t think this applies as much to sciences. After I pivoted away from music to become a software engineer, I discovered a world that never ceases to captivate me and elicit curiosity no matter how much I grow. In fact the more expertise I’ve developed, the more intense my interest becomes.

Re: Emotionally Numb: Expertise Dulls Consumer Experience (2021)

#29

Post by Fripplebubby »

rhyme-boss wrote: post #14

Just my personal experience, but I would say this does not hold with regard to observing nature. Once I know the name of a new fly, fish, or flower, I care more about it, and I enjoy seeing it, and connecting that knowledge with other ecological knowledge.

> Once I know the name of a new fly, fish, or flower,

Does knowing the name of something make you an expert? I am not sure, I think perhaps the definition of "expertise" at use in this paper is more precise and demands more. I am not familiar with this area of research, it appears to me that this paper draws on a well-understood meaning of "expertise", probably one that is established in one or several of the citations (or, perhaps, it is a contested definition even today).

That said - I think your intuition is a useful one - knowing something can enhance your enjoyment more than knowing nothing. I think this paper asks, can you know too much?

Re: Emotionally Numb: Expertise Dulls Consumer Experience (2021)

#30

Post by mcpackieh »

scaradim wrote: post #26
rhyme-boss wrote: post #14

Just my personal experience, but I would say this does not hold with regard to observing nature. Once I know the name of a new fly, fish, or flower, I care more about it, and I enjoy seeing it, and connecting that knowledge with other ecological knowledge.

It's proved that kids that name their chicken, pig, lamb, rabbit, fish, dog or horse cannot accept them to be killed and cannot eat them. thus numbers on farm cattle.

For every 4H kid who cries, there are a dozen more who don't.

> thus numbers on farm cattle.

Try to imagine a farmer setting aside time to individually name a thousand pigs. Lol.

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